Note 16 — Chapter I · —The Operation Of Geographic Factors In History

The two antagonistic geographic forces may be both of the land, one born of a country's topography, the other of its location. Switzerland's history has for centuries shown the conflict of two political policies, one a policy of cantonal and communal independence, which has sprung from the division of that mountainous country into segregated districts, and the other one of political centralization, dictated by the necessity for coöperation to meet the dangers of Switzerland's central location mid a circle of larger and stronger neighbors. Local geographic conditions within the Swiss territory fixed the national ideal as a league of "sovereign cantons," to use the term of their constitution, enjoying a maximum of individual rights and privileges, and tolerating a minimum of interference from the central authority. Here was physical dismemberment coupled with mutual political repulsion. But a location at the meeting place of French, German, Austrian and Italian frontiers laid upon them the distasteful necessity of union within to withstand aggressions crowding upon them from without. Hence the growth of the Swiss constitution since 1798 has meant a fight of the Confederation against the canton in behalf of general rights, expanding the functions of the central government, contracting those of canton and commune.16