ONE LAND · 13 ATLASES
History of Switzerland in maps
Switzerland as it appears in 13 interactive history atlases, from 264 BC to 2015: Raetia, Switzerland, the Swiss passes. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Switzerland before it was Switzerland? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Raetia (mod. Switzerland) · Ancient Rome
| 264 BC | Tribal peoples & confederations — the opening position |
| 50 BC | Roman territory |
| Former Roman lands (lost) |
ANCIENT ROME: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Norse and Aztecs
| Other peoples and states — the opening position | |
| Chinampa fields | |
| Chinampa fields |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Swiss passes (mod. Switzerland) · Crusades
| Latin Christendom — the opening position |
CRUSADES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Industrial Revolution
A mountain country without coal that industrialised early anyway. Swiss cotton spinning mechanised in the first decades of the nineteenth century on water power, and Swiss firms excelled in precision trades such as watches, machine tools and textile machinery, and later in chemicals and electrical engineering. By 1880 Switzerland was among the most industrial countries in Europe per head, proof that skill and specialisation could stand in for coal.
| Industrialising — the opening position | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrial economy | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrial economy |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Age of Revolutions
The old Confederacy was revolutionized by France (Helvetic Republic, 1798), restored as a neutral buffer at Vienna, and then — uniquely — turned 1848 into a lasting success: after a short civil war (1847), it adopted the federal constitution it still uses. The age’s one unambiguous constitutional victory, won by the country that fought the age’s shortest war.
| Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position | |
| Napoleonic client & satellite states | |
| Neutral / uncommitted |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
| Non-aligned or stateless — the opening position |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · WWI
Switzerland · Stalin’s Soviet Union
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · WW2
Armed neutrality: Switzerland mobilized 850,000 men, mined its tunnels, and planned retreat to an Alpine redoubt — while also serving as banker and go-between for both sides. Neutrality was a strategy, not an absence of one.
Switzerland · Cold War
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
Switzerland is charcoal on the vote maps because its men refused women the federal vote in a referendum in 1959 and granted it only in February 1971; the last canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, was compelled by the federal court in 1990. On 14 June 1991 about half a million Swiss women joined a national women’s strike. The country signed CEDAW in 1987.
| Refused: women excluded; ERA never ratified — the opening position | |
| No reform yet / outside this story |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Switzerland · Refugee crises
Neutral Switzerland gave the refugee regime its home. Geneva hosted the League of Nations’ refugee work under Nansen, the conference that adopted the 1951 Convention, the headquarters of UNHCR and, in 1979 and 1989, the two meetings that decided the fate of the Indochinese boat people. In 1956 Switzerland also resettled about 12,000 Hungarians.
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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