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Comment by Telemakhos | Hacker News Reader

The first time I was in Switzerland was 1985, and even then, I would not call it "homogenous." The people at the time spoke French, German, Italian, and Romanisch. Switzerland is an excellent example of the "harmonious" rather than "homogenous": it manages to integrate people from four linguistic groups into a well-ordered society.

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China has 8-10 major dialects that are not mutually intelligible, but many would say that China is pretty homogenous. 90% of the population is classified as "Han Chinese," even though the subgroups are quite visibly different from each other.

Pray tell why do the Chinese indulge in eradication of culture in Xinjiang if diversity is so awesome?

Homogeneous in the modern use of the word.

> Homogeneous in the modern use

What does it mean if it includes heterogenous populations from linguistic, historic, religious and even cultural backgrounds?

While it's terribly fascinating for linguists it's generally understood that the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture.

> the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture

Switzerland speaks languages from the Italic and Germanic clades of PIE [1]. That makes them about as dissimilar as Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages are from each of them.

Helvetia is a confederacy specifically because Switzerland has never been particularly homogenous. Homogeneity explains, in part, Nordic and Japanese success, though less and less the former in the modern era. It does not explain Switzerland’s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

Due to geography Swiss city states were able to maintain their independence and resist incorporation into larger principalities and subsequent empires. The Swiss militia that defended this was the basis for the American 2nd ammendment. Arguably it was the Swiss greater class homogeneity that explains their success.

> Due to geography Swiss city states were able to maintain their independence and resist incorporation into larger principalities and subsequent empires

Swiss territory has been part of, variously, the Roman Empire, various Germanic kingdoms, the Carolingian Empire, the HRE and Napoleonic France. Swiss independence was really only enshrined at the Congress of Vienna, I believe at the courtesy of Metternich. Of Austria-Hungary.

> Swiss militia that defended this was the basis for the American 2nd ammendment

Source?

> the Swiss greater class homogeneity

Yes, Switzerland was universally poor and started becoming wealthy with less inequality than other nations in the 1920s. (Note that in the 1910s like 15% of Switzerland was foreign born.)

The homogeneity pitch just doesn’t work for Switzerland.

>source

Arguably common knowledge but if you must. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

Thank you. If the source is correct, and I have no reason to doubt it, the Founders were operating on bad information. Napoleon wasn't the "first successful foreign invasion" of the Confederation, unless we're being cute about how the HRE was organised.

As the joke goes the HRE was none of the 3.

As for a source on the history of the confederation: https://youtu.be/OpA_ET9bYGY

…why is a lawyer my old firm used a Swiss historian!

Which one is the lawyer?

I think they mean racial/ethnic.

> they mean racial/ethnic

"In early modern Switzerland, the Swiss Confederacy was a pact between independent states within the Holy Roman Empire. The populations of the states of Central Switzerland considered themselves ethnically or even racially separate: Martin Zeiller in Topographia Germaniae (1642) reports a racial division even within the canton of Unterwalden, the population of Obwalden being identified as 'Romans', and that of Nidwalden as 'Cimbri' (viz. Germanic), while the people of Schwyz were identified as of Swedish ancestry, and the people of Uri were identified as 'Huns or Goths.'

Modern Switzerland is atypical in its successful political integration of a multiethnic and multilingual populace" [1].

I know plenty of Swiss-for-generations Swiss whose complexions would not have passed as white a hundred years ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_people#Cultural_history_...

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