The title Colonial Switzerland is awkwardly intriguing given a lack of Swiss colonies overall. Yet editor Patricia Purtschert and Herald Fischer-Tiné challenge such understandings right away by describing the experiences of African-American novelist James Baldwin in Switzerland. Baldwin wrote in his essay Stranger in the Village that, “from all available evidence no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came”. According to the editors, this observation is limiting given numerous colonial encounters through trade, humanitarian dynamics or fears of “superalienation” (4); they also rightfully point to Swiss support of Apartheid South Africa. In this sense, the editors highlight the “concept of ‘colonial naiveté’, that is, claiming to stand outside the colonial project while making full use of white supremacy” (2)—a finding substantiated by the scholarship presented in this book. In other words, Colonial Switzerland looks at Switzerland “as a country shaped by colonialism in a variety of ways” (5) and thereby explores overlooked avenues of inquiry tied to the “‘colonialism at the margins’ or ‘colonialism without colonies’” (8).
The editors organized this volume around four “thematic foci that have emerged as crucial in research on the colonial entanglements of Switzerland and the Swiss” (10), beginning with a discussion of “Colonialism and Science”. Here, historian Bernhard C. Schär takes us on a “stroll through the history of Alpine Studies” (44) as he explores the production of knowledge and the role of naturalists in “comparing contemporary ‘tropical’ landscapes and peoples to European prehistory” (29). Fellow historian Pascal Germann explores similar dynamics in his analysis of race science and eugenics, and the role of Swiss anthropologists, like Otto Schlaginhaufen, more specifically. In fact, Schlaginhaufen “took the measurements of 35,511 young men undergoing Swiss Army conscription examinations” (50) as a way to gain knowledge about racial dynamics. The first part concludes with a chapter about the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifique in post-WW II Cote d’Ivoire, using biographical sketches to comment on encounters between Switzerland and Africa.
Part II highlights “(Post)colonial Economies” (89) and begins with a discussion of Swiss communities in Asia. Historian Andreas Zangger emphasizes the importance of “creating and maintaining informal networks … and the delineation of the margins of belonging” within this context (91). His contribution focuses more specifically on visitations and other encounters and travels. He, ultimately, illustrates how these “informal networks encompassing the globe characterized Switzerland’s colonial policy” (104). Angela Sanders then sheds light onto constructs of Peru as a wonderland given close Swiss-Peruvian post-WW II relations (110), pointing to the construction of Heimat homeland and the self-image of the ‘Swiss colony’ or Fifth Switzerland’ (124-125). Rohit Jain concludes this part by analysing and complicating “postcolonial anxieties in Switzerland” based on the rise of India (133).
Part III explores themes tied to “(Post)colonial Self-Representations” (155), and it begins with a chapter by historian Ruramisai Charumbira, and her discussion of a Swiss woman in British Southern Africa. Another chapter contends that “employing colonial concepts in popular portrayals of the encounters between Swiss mountaineers and the local population in the Himalayan opens up opportunities for Switzerland to imagine its own modernization by mirroring a population that operates as a placeholder for a pre-modern and rustic Switzerland” (194). A final contribution brings conversations much closer towards the present by focusing on “self-images of young Swiss in the ‘Third World’” from the 1940s until the 1970s (200).
The final part of this volume discusses “(Post)colonial Politics and Counter-Politics” (219) with a chapter on Swiss anti-imperial activities by one of the editors. Here, Harald Fischer-Tiné concludes, among other findings, that Switzerland also “needs to be taken seriously as an important site of anti-colonial mobilization in the early 20th century” given—among other factors—its liberal laws and its place within the international world of finance (243). Historian Ariane Künsel then highlights “official views of China and the construction of colonial knowledge in interwar Switzerland” (259) by analysing consular reports from 1923. A chapter on administrative practises when it comes to marriages and partnerships in Switzerland brings it all together while a thoughtful afterword by professor of sociology and social anthropology Shalini Randeria concludes this volume overall.
Colonial Switzerland constitutes, without a doubt, a valuable contribution to ongoing conversations around the study of “colonialism without colonies” (8), a scholarly interest apparent well beyond the small Alpine state. Hence, the editors of this volume rightfully spend time focusing on Switzerland as a way to expose and challenge misconceptions and to go beyond Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Moreover, and in many ways following the previous multi-disciplinary volume Postkoloniale Schweiz: Formen und Folgen eines Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien (Postcolonial Switzerland: Forms and Consequences of Colonialism without Colonies), the present study also benefits from a diversity of voices. A useful and coherent introduction and afterword, ultimately, invite readers to think about connections well beyond Swiss history. What makes the present volume “unique”, to follow Shalini Randeria’s point, “is the very implausibility of its provocative claim to demonstrate the long shadows cast by (post)imperial formations on parts of Europe that were not colonizing societies but participated in the colonial project in a variety of ways and shared its spoils” (296). Studies highlighting such “colonial complicity” (296) will hopefully help push back against widespread amnesia in Switzerland today but also in numerous other contexts.
