“This document is very favourable to the Nation, and entirely confirms the Patente of Henry 4 from 1602. There are some printed and verified copies in the chest box of the papers of the Nation”. These words were used to define a judgment (arrêt) of the Conseil d’Etat obtained in 1710 by Swiss nationals residing in the town of Nevers confirming their privileges. This document and the commentary appear in a register of the Swiss merchant nation in Lyon.
Swiss merchants were active in France starting from the late Middle Ages. In Lyon, they were naturally part of the German nation. During 17th century, after the Thirty Years War in particular, they began to distinguish themselves and formed a specific Swiss nation. In spite of the existence of the alliance treaty which linked the king of France to the cantons since 1515 and granted the Swiss a number of important privileges, the rights of Swiss merchants were often threatened, especially by local officials and tax farmers. Swiss merchants were therefore obliged to continuously prove their rights. This was possible only through the collection of written documents which enabled them to find strategic information, increase their knowledge and diversify legal arguments to use in litigation procedures. Over the centuries, the Swiss nation created a vast archive consisting of thousands of loose documents and dozen of registers. In the first part of this paper I will dwell on the concrete use of documents and archives; in the second part, I will highlight one of the consequences of this centuries-old work with documents.
First, I will question the problems of materiality, accessibility, location, search and production of documents. It is apparent that the archive of the Swiss nation was a repository of different typologies of records ready to be used for various purposes and in a constant dialogue between past and present situations.
The collection and compilation of documents was necessary during litigation, but it can be also argued that this work with documents had an impact on the Swiss community in France in terms of collective identity and memory. In fact, this work became also an opportunity to define, or redefine, the identity of ‘true’ Swiss nationals among the migrants – merchants, artisans and soldiers – who appealed to the Swiss nation of Lyon for aid. The question of identity in the Swiss context is of particular interest. At this time the Swiss Confederation (or Helvetic Body) was a polycentric and complex entity formed of three membership categories (sovereign cantons, associate members, and subject territories), with two denominations (Catholic and Protestant) and four spoken languages (German, French, Italian and Rumantsch).
This case study seeks to historicise the early modern practices of document collection and production; it also proposes to consider the question of proto-national identity from the perspective of an expatriate community. In this sense, this paper hosts a dialogue between two main historiographical fields: the history of archives and the study of migration, proto-nationality and identities.