ABSTRACT
I live 70 miles from Switzerland, visit fairly frequently, receive Swiss television, and I can think of precisely three rather random Swiss politicians: Bonvin, Niggli and Kopp. I don’t think I’m alone. Smallscale politics means small-scale careers. So if certain actors-classes and status groups-dominated regional development and determined the course that it took, they tend to remain opaque when viewed at a distance. Most people in Europe-in the late nineteenth century 80 per cent of the European population were subjects of the six great powersmore or less enthusiastically acquiesced in large-scale nationalism of a militarised and centralised type in part because national leaders (Napoleon, Cavour, Garibaldi, Bismarck) were projected on an overhuman scale. But need this have been the case?
