A Brief History of Switzerland

Stone Age hunters have been living in Switzerland already before the last Ice Age (approximately 350'000 B.C.). Switzerland's official latin name "Confoederatio Helvetica" goes back to a Celtic tribe called the Helvetians. Various parts of Europe came together over the centuries and loosely formed the whole that we today know as Switzerland. Switzerland was officially accepted as an independent nation by its neighbours in the 1648 European peace treaty but it was only as late as 1848 that Switzerland became a centralised federal state.

As a neutral state, Switzerland managed to keep a stance of armed neutrality during WW I and II and was not involved in any military capacity. The major powers respected its neutrality.