Comment by JumpCrisscross
7 days ago
> Homogeneous in the modern use
What does it mean if it includes heterogenous populations from linguistic, historic, religious and even cultural backgrounds?
7 days ago
> Homogeneous in the modern use
What does it mean if it includes heterogenous populations from linguistic, historic, religious and even cultural backgrounds?
While it's terribly fascinating for linguists it's generally understood that the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture.
> the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture
Switzerland speaks languages from the Italic and Germanic clades of PIE [1]. That makes them about as dissimilar as Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages are from each of them.
Helvetia is a confederacy specifically because Switzerland has never been particularly homogenous. Homogeneity explains, in part, Nordic and Japanese success, though less and less the former in the modern era. It does not explain Switzerland’s.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language
Due to geography Swiss city states were able to maintain their independence and resist incorporation into larger principalities and subsequent empires. The Swiss militia that defended this was the basis for the American 2nd ammendment. Arguably it was the Swiss greater class homogeneity that explains their success.
6 replies →
I think they mean racial/ethnic.
> they mean racial/ethnic
"In early modern Switzerland, the Swiss Confederacy was a pact between independent states within the Holy Roman Empire. The populations of the states of Central Switzerland considered themselves ethnically or even racially separate: Martin Zeiller in Topographia Germaniae (1642) reports a racial division even within the canton of Unterwalden, the population of Obwalden being identified as 'Romans', and that of Nidwalden as 'Cimbri' (viz. Germanic), while the people of Schwyz were identified as of Swedish ancestry, and the people of Uri were identified as 'Huns or Goths.'
Modern Switzerland is atypical in its successful political integration of a multiethnic and multilingual populace" [1].
I know plenty of Swiss-for-generations Swiss whose complexions would not have passed as white a hundred years ago.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_people#Cultural_history_...