Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Marc H. Lerner -- Introduction / Marc H. Lerner -- The End of the Old Regime in Europe and in the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft On the Ideological Origins of the Revolution in Switzerland / Marc H. Lerner -- Ambivalent Revolutionaries: The Helvetic Republic in Revolutionary Europe / Marc H. Lerner -- Regeneration of A Constructed Past: Continuities and Discontinuities in The Struggle Between old and New Visions of Switzerland and Europe The Right to Self-Rule: The Debate over Legitimacy and the Vaud-Bern Relationship / Marc H. Lerner -- Two Visions of Political Society in Inner Switzerland, 1829–33 / Marc H. Lerner -- Popular Sovereignty in the Züriputsch / Marc H. Lerner -- National Accommodation Radical Conceptions of the Confederation: Popular Sovereignty and the 1845 Revolution in Vaud / Marc H. Lerner -- War, Accommodation and the Making of the Modern Constitutional State / Marc H. Lerner -- Conclusion / Marc H. Lerner -- Bibliography / Marc H. Lerner -- Index / Marc H. Lerner.

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Looking at a series of Swiss political debates, this book offers a case study of a revolutionary transformation to a rights-based society and political culture. Based on a tradition of political innovation and experimentation, Swiss citizens recalibrated their understanding of liberty and republicanism from 1750 to 1848. The resulting hybrid political culture centered around republican ideas, changing understandings of liberty and self-rule. Drawing from the public political debates in three characteristic cantons, A Laboratory of Liberty places the Swiss transformation into a European context. Current trends in Revolutionary studies focus on the revolution in its global context and this book demonstrates that the Swiss case enhances our understanding of the debates over the nature of liberty in the transatlantic world during the Age of Revolution.

Description based on print version record.