➔ Forging the New Nation: How Switzerland Built Itself After 1848
| 5 minute read
So Switzerland won the Sonderbund War, wrote a constitution, and became a proper federal state. Now what? Now the hard part. Building an actual nation from a bunch of cantons that speak different languages, follow different religions, and mostly just want to be left alone.
Chapter 6 covers 1848 to 1914. Sixty-six years of figuring things out. Honestly, it reads like a really long infrastructure project. Starts with arguments about architecture, moves to budget fights, somebody builds a tunnel, and by the end everyone is tired but the thing works.