ABSTRACT
In the twenty-first century historians surprised to learn that the borderlines of the old Swiss Confederation had never been precisely fixed before its very end in 1798. International treaties between European powers had a key role in the definition of political boundaries. Some listed the Confederation even though the Swiss had not participated in the actual conflicts or the respective peace negotiations. Most international treaties of the seventeenth century among them the key settlement of Westphalia which exempted the Confederation from the Empire later interpreted as a declaration of Swiss sovereignty mentioned the Swiss Confederation as a single entity without reference to individual members. The case of the peace of Vervins in 1598, between Spain and France, shows that it really mattered whether all parts of the Confederation appeared or not. Surprisingly, neither cantonal governments nor the Confederations diet commissioned maps in the early modern period.
