Jenseits der Exzentrik : Aussereuropäische Geschichte in der Schweiz ; Einleitung zum Themenschwerpunkt

Abstract

The various accounts on non-European history published by Swiss scholars are barely mentioned in overviews on Swiss historiography. Swiss national history limits itself generally to the examination of influences of European politics and economic processes on the country and does not take into account the entanglements of Switzerland with the non-European world. This is no coincidence, as the establishment of the discipline of history in the 19th century was characterized by a dissociation of general, i.e. European, history from the non-Western ‘peoples without history’. The article discusses the strengths and limits of recent attempts to apply postcolonial and global historical approaches to Swiss history and calls upon a more intense exchange between Swiss historians and scholars specialized on Asian, African, or Latin American history. This special issue of the Swiss Journal of History aims at making a first move toward such a cooperative endeavour. It is an invitation to Swiss historians to overcome Euro-centric boundaries and to reflect on the potential of a multi-sited historiography.