View Poll Results: Swiss ethnicity?

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  • The Swiss are an ethnicity

    7 16.28%
  • They belong to the surrounding ethnicities of French, German and Italian

    35 81.40%
  • Other (Please explain)

    1 2.33%
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Thread: Swiss - an ethnicity?

  1. #1
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    Default Swiss - an ethnicity?

    Are the Swiss an ethnicity or simply a group of the ethnicities of surrounding nations (French, German, Italian, with Romanch only in Switzerland)?

    So are the French-speaking Swiss of Romandie French or Swiss, and what is the denonym? Romandians?
    What of the Swiss Germans? Just Germans or Allemanics?

    A ethnicity speaking many different native languages seems quite strange in the traditional sense, usually an ethnicity speaks one native language and usually some foreign ones too, like the Welsh speak Welsh as natives and English which was imposed somewhat.

    Switzerland's terrain could have made it quite isolated for large scale movements of people in the past which probably accounts for how French survived in Romandie, Romanch in the high mountains, Italian in the South and Allemanic German amongst the Swiss Germans.

    So who are the Swiss? Who do they see themselves as? The same as the surrounding nations, just a different country or as a unique, mutlilingual ethnicity.
    Ethnicity or a group of ethnicities?

    (If there's any Swiss on here, their opinion obviously counts for a lot)

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    Veteran Member The Lawspeaker's Avatar
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    The Swiss have a very complicated history but they are no Germans, no Italians, no French (and they would probably take offense if they were called that). They are Swiss. The thing is that eventhough they speak the languages they are the decendants of the Alamanni (in the North), the Burgundians (the "French"- speaking area), Helvetised/ Romans and other tribes. They are no Italians, French, Germans or anything else but Swiss.

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    Progressive Collectivist Agrippa's Avatar
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    The Swiss are ethnic groups on their own insofar, as those are special groups inside of the mentioned larger ethnic groups.

    For example the Swiss Germans in particular are a special branche of the South Western German, Alemannic ethnolinguistic group. Swabians are therefore closer to the German Swiss, than to Bavarians-Austrians (exception is Vorarlberg) even, yet alone other, for example Northern Germans.

    So obviously, they are Germans, but in a specific ethnolinguistic branch of Germans with a development on their own.

    Then there are Raetoromans, which exist in Italy and Austria too. Those are a group on their own as well.

    Politically, that is a different question, but a "Swiss ethnicity" is impossible. All the three main components are BY ALL reasonable definitions, based on ethnicity, ethnolinguistic affinities, closer to the neighbouring main groups, than to each other - even genetically-racially, linguistically and historically anyway, should be clear.

    Also, some parts of Switzerland came under the Swiss-German control, those who really made up the country, just rather recently if looking at the historical developments.

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    Agrippa, is it true that most German-speaking Swiss are Protestants, as opposed to the Tyrolese and Bavarians?

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    Progressive Collectivist Agrippa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by memobekes View Post
    Agrippa, is it true that most German-speaking Swiss are Protestants, as opposed to the Tyrolese and Bavarians?
    Well, a large portion of the Swiss is protestant, but so are many South Western Germans, to which they are related.

    But not all. Actually they fought each other for quite some time...

    Religious map:


    Ethnolinguistic map:


    Germans expanded and Germanicised many Raetoroman areas by the way.

    But as you can see, there are German Catholics and Protestants in Switzerland.

    The areas are quite mixed often.

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    Interesting maps, thanks for uploading those

    It's funny because I once read that Geneva was also historically a Protestant stronghold but has since evened out between the before-mentioned and Catholics. I wonder why this demographic shift occurred? Internal immigration?

    Also the religious map shows us that the Italian-speaking Swiss are overwhelmingly Catholic in sect. But the French who are also Catholics in France and Belgium are rather not so homogeneous in Western Switzerland. Perhaps atheism has taken over, as the map has a lot of regions, specially in the border areas, that are mixed with no denomination in the clear majority.

    It seems as though most pious Swiss (barring the Italian area) are found in the internal/central parts. Some interesting facts to look at, indeed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by memobekes View Post
    Agrippa, is it true that most German-speaking Swiss are Protestants, as opposed to the Tyrolese and Bavarians?
    Switzerland is majority Catholic by about 40% vs 1/3 of Protestants, but the backbone of the country is clearly Protestant (Calvinist of the French speaking side, Zwingli Evangelist on the German speaking side). Catholics are proportionally more in the German part, and Italian Switzerland is entirely Catholic.

    Modern Switzerland is the product of a short civil war, the so-called Sonderbund War, that took place in 1847 and opposed a federation of French and German Protestant cantons to a confederation of conservative Catholic cantons (German, or bilingual like Fribourg or Wallis). The Protestant side rapidly won under leading of general Guillaume-Henri Dufour (from Geneva).

    Note that the "Urkantone", the historical core of Switzerland (Uri, Schwyz and Unterwald cantons), were on the losing (Catholic) side. Therefore, this Sonderbund Secession War was really the craddle of modern Switzerland.

    Canton Ticino (Italian) wasn't involved in that struggle. Actually, Ticino really entered Swiss life later in the 20th century.

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    The Italian part could be called a colony of the Swiss core actually - the Swiss core was, for a certain period of time, not that peaceful and expanded over regions, which didn't wanted to become part of it...

    Many regions and "citizens", or better inhabitants, had no rights for quite some time and were under the rule of the privileged parts and social strata of the Swiss.
    Last edited by Agrippa; 09-08-2011 at 08:30 PM.

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    Was Geneva a part of this Protestant "backbone"? I believe the Catholics have more numbers there now. Can someone confirm?

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    I do consider the romansh as italians because their language is basically a cisalpine dialect with some different features like sygmatic plural and palatalization of occlusive consonants (chaval for caval, ciasa for casa etc.).

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