Switzerland

A confederation of small communities that made staying out of other people's wars into a system. The founding pact of 1291 between three forest cantons grew by accession and conquest into a confederation whose infantry defeated Burgundian and Habsburg armies and became Europe's most sought-after mercenaries - the Vatican's Swiss Guard is what remains of that trade. Defeat at Marignano in 1515 ended the expansion and began the neutrality. The Reformation split the cantons between Zwingli's Zurich, Calvin's Geneva and the Catholic interior, and the country fought several confessional wars, the last in 1847, before the 1848 constitution created a federal state on an American model adapted for four languages and cantonal veto. Direct democracy is unusually strong: any federal law can be challenged by referendum and citizens can force votes by petition, which is also why women received the federal vote only in 1971 and in one canton not until 1990. Banking secrecy built a financial centre and was largely dismantled after 2009. The Red Cross was founded at Geneva in 1863. Switzerland joined the United Nations in 2002 and is not in the EU. The country has about nine million people. German, French, Italian and Romansh are all official. Around a quarter of residents are foreign nationals. The Alps cover some sixty per cent of the territory. Its formal name is still the Confoederatio Helvetica, which is why its code is CH. Zurich and Geneva are the largest cities and Bern is the seat of government. The country has twenty-six cantons, several of them tiny.

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