David Birmingham. Switzerland: A Village History. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. xvi + 225 pp. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8040-1065-8.
Reviewed by Riccarda Torriani (Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs)
Published on H-German (March, 2006)
The Story of a Swiss Village: Mountains, Cheese and British Tourists
In Switzerland: A Village History, David Birmingham aims to "put the history of one particular highland community into the context of the revisionist national history [and] ... make Swiss history live among readers for whom Switzerland might not be an obvious case-study for the thematic analysis of historical processes" (p. 202). This is certainly not only a laudable, but also a rather ambitious undertaking: Switzerland does indeed present a much-understudied region in the research of non-Swiss historians, in spite of the fact that its history may shed light on a number of themes that run through European history. When Switzerland has caught the attention of historians it has often been in the context of the study of nations and national identity, as it presents us with a counter-example to almost any theory on the emergence of nations.[1]
David Birmingham has aimed to move away from this perspective and has used a micro-historical approach instead, focusing on the social, political, and economic history of one mountain community. This approach is certainly ambitious, in particular when considering the notorious regional differences within Switzerland. The author has chosen to study the village of Chateau-d'Oex, now in the Canton of Vaud, in a valley connecting Gruyere in the West and the skiing resort of Gstaad in the East.
The book is organized thematically, albeit proceeding more or less chronologically from around 1000 to the late 1990s. The first two chapters have a political focus and describe the feudal powers that ruled Chateau-d'Oex: the counts of Gruyere until the early fifteenth century, and the city-state of Bern until the late eighteenth century. The third chapter is dedicated to religious matters and traces the impact of the Reformation and subsequent religious strife on the lives of the inhabitants of Chateau-d'Oex.
The Alpine economy, in particular cheese-making and dairy-farming, is the focus of the next chapter. Chateau-d'Oex forms part of the region where the famous Gruyere cheese is produced, and Birmingham's examination of the development of cheese-making, its importance for the local economy, and its significance in the wider economic framework of early modern Switzerland and Europe is interesting and illuminating. Subsequent chapters examine trade, both locally and in an interregional framework. The author shows how a superficially isolated community like the mountain village of Chateau-d'Oex became integrated in interregional and international trade in the early modern era, and thus adds an important international aspect to his village history. This is clearly where Birmingham is strongest, and where his book is most original.
The sixth chapter treats the period from the Napoleonic invasion in 1798 to the civil war in 1847, covering the creation of the Swiss state and the writing of its first constitution in 1848. Here, Birmingham's attempt at telling the history of Switzerland through the prism of a mountain village becomes less convincing. For anybody not overly familiar with the history of Switzerland in the nineteenth century, Birmingham's target readership, the story becomes rather difficult to understand. As the author provides very little background information, the reasons for the events that affected Chateau-d'Oex and the surrounding countryside remain at times unclear. Yet, the nineteenth century is well documented in Swiss history, and it would have been straightforward for the author to situate his own research within a broader context. Instead, the endnotes suggest that Birmingham relied only to a small extent on the existing historiography; he states only three texts on general Swiss history of the period, only one of which is by a Swiss historian.
The nineteenth century was, in Switzerland just as elsewhere in Europe, a period of political and social upheaval, and the following two chapters examine the impact of modernization, industrialization and political emancipation on Chateau-d'Oex. The author argues that the developments initially had a rather limited impact on village life in the mountain regions. It was only when the first tourists discovered the Alps as a destination for recovery and travel that villages such as Chateau-d¹Oex began to modernize. The nascent tourism industry was in fact, as Birmingham demonstrated in the chapter dedicated to tourism, the driving force behind the significant improvements to Chateau-d'Oex's transport links and infrastructure.
The last chapter finally describes the impact of the two World Wars on mountain life. The author argues that the First World War had a polarizing effect on village life. The hitherto unprecedented levels of state interference in the local economy and the arrival of Allied prisoners of war to the village indeed had a disruptive effect on the economic and social tissue of the village. The Second World War on the other hand reinforced and conserved traditional modes of living and did not lead to comparable degrees of social change. The author concludes with some general remarks on Swiss identity in the second half of the twentieth century, in particular on the issues raised about Switzerland's role in the Second World War.
Overall, Birmingham's Switzerland: A Village History is an interesting account of village life in the Swiss Alps over roughly ten centuries. Although there are only very few instances where the book clearly challenges accepted notions of Swiss history, its overarching theme of the degree of interconnection of an isolated mountain community and the wider national and international events is illuminating. As alluded to above, this is done best in the chapters on the economy and trade, but less convincingly in the political chapters.
The strength of the book lies in its original and varied source base, and the often very detailed descriptions of everyday life within the communities that the author has managed to reconstruct. The harsh realities of rural life in the Alps are brought home through descriptions of the daily routines of cheese-makers, subsistence farmers and lumberjacks. Its strength is, however, at the same time its weakness. It often remains unclear whether the anecdotes described were representative of life in the village, or at least of the experience of a particular social group. Furthermore, Birmingham often refers to "the rich" or "the poor" of the village, but at no point does the reader learn how many villagers were to be considered "rich" or "poor," neither in real terms nor in comparison to their compatriots in other Alpine villages. Nor are we told whether Chateau-d'Oex, nowadays a rather well-to-do large Alpine village, was comparatively wealthy or poor in relation to Alpine villages of a similar size throughout its history.
In conclusion, has the author succeeded in his rather ambitious goal of writing a micro-history aimed not purely at specialists, but also at a more general readership? In one sense, he has. The story is interesting to read, in spite of a few inaccuracies (for instance, the "Wahlen" plan in the Second World War related to economics, and was not the name for the Alpine military defense plan). Yet, as basic facts about the political, social, and economic background are often omitted, some prior knowledge of Swiss history is essential to understand the content. Unfortunately there is not a single footnote in the entire book, and the bibliography is slim and dated, leaving out many of the most recent works on Swiss history. In this sense, the specialists who would like to follow Birmingham's original and meticulous research findings might find it difficult to do so. Ultimately, although Birmingham's Village History is an enjoyable read for people with some knowledge of Swiss history, its use for academic purposes may be limited.
Note
[1]. Oliver Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761-1891 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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Citation:
Riccarda Torriani. Review of Birmingham, David, Switzerland: A Village History.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11543
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