Though medieval Switzerland does not give modem activists an exact agenda, the Swiss example is hardly meaningless. The study of Swiss origins is vital for understanding modem Swiss cooperation and decentralization. For those interested in a future of decentralized communities, the Swiss rebellion highlights large scale change in the medieval world of small scale politics. The Confederation succeeded in seceding from the Holy Roman Empire, and in holding onto independence for centuries. And Switzerland's successis not solely due to its unique geography. Many mountainous areas in the world do not have confederations in them. Switzerland does not stretch beyond the Alps and the Jura, but this is only because of the wealth and power entrenched in the surrounding fertile lowlands. · Today's Swiss Confederation operates in a way that dimly reflects its very odd birth in 1291. Whatever the usefulness of the Swiss model to modem times, there is little doubting what Switzerland stood for to the people of late medieval Europe. By the time Swiss secession was officially accepted, the Confederation was an example to revolutionaries throughout the continent. Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, the three founding members of the Swiss Confederation. These were the three Cantons most sympathetic to the peasants' war, which broke out four years after these woodcuts were made byUrs Graf. Winter/Spring 1991 RAIN Page 23 The Swiss Example The peasants tried to learn Evil tricks from the Swiss And become their own lords... These lines are from a German song of 1525, written in the middle of a social upheaval among the peasants of eastern France, Germany, Bohemia and Austria. Fighting the abuses of nobility, early capitalism and church hierarchy these rebel armies, and the communities supporting them, constituted the greatest popular uprising on the European continent before the French Revolution. · The German revolution of 1525 came with the fever for church reform rising in the early 16th century. Many of the underprivileged demanded freedom from Roman doctrine and called for the election of village preachers by the congregations they would serve. But they also sought to rule themselves politically, and as former serfs they knew this was possible only with economic independence. They wanted rights and ownership to be defined by the village, not by the empire and its princes.
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