De l'Helvetie Romaine a la Suisse Romande * Une residence en Suisse

The concept of the creation or evolution of a Swiss or Helvetic national identity has long exercised historians of central Europe because of the very improbability of ‘Switzerland’ as a geopolitical unit. The multiplicity of languages and confessions and the striking differences in cultural values between cities and countryside seem a direct challenge to the notion of a unified nation-state. Jean-Pierre Felber's deeply erudite and highly provocative book provides an illuminating analysis of regional identity in one section of the Helvetic Confederation, the Suisse Romande, those cantons which are French-speaking, based on the Vaud and its capital, Lausanne, and including the cantons of Geneva, Neuchâtel and sections of Basel, Fribourg and the Valais. Although Felber's chronological brief is from Antiquity to the present, the heart of the book is his discussion of the politics and visual culture of the high medieval and early modern periods. The political distinction between the

Art · Ethnology · Face (sociological concept · Geopolitics · Humanities · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Residence · Social science · Sociology · Central European national history · Demography · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Law