Swiss language politics replaced religious segmentation after 1848

Evidence

It is instructive that as late as 1848, almost two generations after the Swiss state came into being, ancient religious cleavages were much more politically salient than linguistic ones. Remarkably enough, in territories unalterably-denoted Catholic Protestantism was unlawful, and in those so-denoted Protestant Catholicism was illegal; and these laws were strictly enforced. (Language was a matter of personal choice and convenience). Only after 1848, in the backwash of Europe-wide revolutionary upheavals and the general spread of vernacularizing national movements, did language take religion’s place, and the country become segmented into unalterably-denoted linguistic zones. (Religion now became a matter of personal choice). — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 483

Categorization

• XREF: The swap of religious for linguistic cleavage parallels how Islamophobia scholars analyze the substitution of cultural/religious markers for older ethnic ones. — connects to: Multilingual Switzerland is a product of the early nineteenth century — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 481; Late print-capitalism made Swiss multilingualism persist through a bilingual ruling class — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 484; Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 345 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The structural parallel — religio-linguistic marker inversion where one becomes ‘unalterably-denoted’ and the other ‘a matter of personal choice’ — is a genuinely transferable model for thinking about how categories get locked into territory.

Related

• Multilingual Switzerland is a product of the early nineteenth century (similarity 0.86)
• Late print-capitalism made Swiss multilingualism persist through a bilingual ruling class (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Multilingual Switzerland is a product of the early nineteenth century #corroborates (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 481
• Late print-capitalism made Swiss multilingualism persist through a bilingual ruling class #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 484
• Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 345
• Popular nationalism reproduced exclusion by demanding linguistic uniformity #expands (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 386
• Modern classification of cultures secularized earlier religious structures #expands (0.70)