Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
Switzerland, Europe, Great Britain, politics
Abstract
In the midst of the extraordinary current political, economic and cultural changes transforming Europe, few nations find themselves in a greater dilemma than Great Britain and Switzerland. While they must participate to a degree in the process of European economic unification, both Britain and Switzerland risk in so doing jeopardizing their political and cultural identities to a greater extent than any other countries in Europe. No other European culture reveres political independence and sovereignty as much as these two. In addition, whereas the other nation states of Europe have been involved in larger supranational European empires until recent times, Britain has steadfastly resisted assimilation with Europe since the demise of the Anglo-French Angevin Empire in the Middle Ages, concentrating its attention upon its worldwide Commonwealth. As for Switzerland, it is the oldest democracy in Europe and has never been successfully annexed by any international empire since the inception of the Swiss Confederation in 1291. There still exists, seven hundred years later in 1991, a very real and vigorous determination among the Swiss to preserve the unique political and cultural features of their homeland, regardless of the political decisions of their larger and more
Recommended Citation
Page, H. Dwight
(1992)
"Switzerland's Dialogue with the New Europe,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 28:
No.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol28/iss1/3