ABSTRACT
The term “ethnic” is so vague that in the case of Switzerland people had better abstain from using it. All the biological or genetic differences, for example, between the four major cultural groups of the Swiss population have long ago become diffuse. The Swiss - or national - identity is displayed vis-à-vis other national identities. The nation which people today call Switzerland originated some 700 years ago in a voluntary alliance of three mountain communities. The alliance was formed in order to ward off a common exterior threat. Switzerland was remodeled into a centrally governed state after the fashion of France, with a capital, a central government and all the appropriate administrative agencies. A conflict sprung up between the cities and industrial cantons which embraced economic development and the conservative rural cantons of Inner Switzerland. Swiss diplomats abroad had to answer an increasing number of unpleasant questions about the trouble spot Jura and the disrupted internal peace of Switzerland.
