Historiography of Switzerland

The historiography of Switzerland is the study of the history of Switzerland. Early accounts of the history of the Old Swiss Confederacy are found in the numerous Swiss chronicles of the 14th to 16th centuries. As elsewhere in Europe, these late medieval and early modern were subjected to critical treatment with the emergence of modern historiography in the later 18th century. Swiss historiographical scholarship of the postmodern era (late 20th century) also followed international trends in its emphasis on topical history, such as economic history, legal history and social history and Switzerland's conduct during World War II. The first comprehensive historiography was Gottlieb Emanuel Haller's six-volume Bibliothek der Schweizergeschichte (1785–88), published still before the collapse of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the wake of the French Revolution. Later comprehensive treatments include Johannes von Müller's Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft (1786–1806), Johannes Dierauer's Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1887–1917, with extensions up until 1974), the Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte, (1972–77) and the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (2002–2014). Swiss chronicles The earliest works of Swiss history are the battle songs and folk songs in which the earliest Confederates celebrated their deeds, as well as the Swiss chronicles written mostly in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially the illustrated chronicles produced in the late 15th and early 16th centuries on behalf of the authorities of the city-states of Bern and Lucerne. While these chronicles were written from the point of view of the individual states, even the earliest did address issues of all-Swiss significance in some detail. With the introduction of movable type in Europe, chroniclers could reach a wider audience and begin to write about Swiss history as a whole. The 1507 Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation by Petermann Etterlin exerted great influence on later writers because, as a printed work, it was the first to be generally available.