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Zurich exhibition uncovers Switzerland's colonial past

It explains that Swiss citizens and companies were heavily involved in the colonial system from the 16th century onwards

Switzerland was never a colonial power, yet through its traders, mercenaries, anthropologists and missionaries, it contributed to colonial expansion, sparking debates about how to confront this lesser-known aspect of the country's past.

A new exhibition at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich is shedding light on this chapter in the Alpine nation's history, in a bid to understand how Switzerland benefited from the colonial era.

"Swiss citizens and companies were heavily involved in the colonial system from the 16th century onwards," the exhibition explains.

Entitled "Colonial: Switzerland's Global Entanglements", the exhibition presents objects and artefacts that bear witness to the landlocked country's participation alongside the seafaring major European colonial powers.

It includes 18th-century cotton cloth used by Swiss traders as currency to buy enslaved people, sacks for loading goods such as cotton and cocoa onto ships, and a uniform jacket from a Swiss mercenary regiment which served the Dutch East India Company before switching to the British crown.

The regiment fought with the British alongside the future Duke of Wellington in the 1799 Siege of Seringapatam in India that overthrew Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

The exhibition also includes a collection of butterflies assembled by a wealthy merchant involved in a coffee plantation in Cuba cultivated by slaves, and the cap and whip of a Swiss national recruited as a civil servant in the Congo Free State in the early 20th century.

"It's a difficult subject," said the Swiss National Museum's director Denise Tonella.

"It's not easy to tackle an unflattering topic," but "it's an important issue for today's society," she added.

"Since the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a lot of debate about colonialism and Switzerland," Tonella said, with the exhibition aimed at providing the means to understand the issues.

In the wake of protests in the United States in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, and the tearing down of a statue of a slave trader in the British city of Bristol, the Swiss city of Neuchatel was shaken by a controversy surrounding its statue of David de Pury, an 18th-century banker and merchant.

A major benefactor of his hometown in northwestern Switzerland, his statue was sprayed with red paint in 2020 and a group questioning his connections to the slave trade launched a petition to have it removed.

A compromise was reached, with the local authorities opting for an explanatory plaque and the installation alongside it of a critical artwork representing the statue upside down, with its head buried in the base.

"Different periods elicit different perspectives on history," professor Georg Kreis wrote in the exhibition catalogue, explaining that these issues had long "been repressed" at the academic level.

Since it had no colonies, Switzerland perceived itself "outside the wider European history, occupying a special status" as an "innocent country", the historian recalled.

"After the turn of the millennium, however, Switzerland's focus on its colonial past took a different turn," with academic study increasing over the past 20 years.

Drawing on this research, the museum set out to reflect on all facets of Swiss involvement, starting with the trade in raw materials and the transatlantic slave trade that saw merchants and plantation owners rack up immense fortunes in the 18th century.

The exhibition also shows how Swiss mercenaries were recruited to suppress uprisings in colonial possessions, and later how geologists took part in oil exploration.

It also sheds light on the Swiss naturalists and anthropologists behind racial theories used to justify colonialism.

The exhibition recalls how in the early 20th century, the universities of Geneva and Zurich were renowned for their work in racial anthropology, where researchers measured skulls to hierarchise populations.

The exhibition, which opened on Friday, runs until January 9.