Bernhard C. Schär

https://ethz.academia.edu/bernhardschaer · https://ethz.academia.edu/bernhardschaer

When Switzerland was created in 1848, one of its founding fathers went by the name of ‘Borneo Louis’. Before becoming a Swiss state builder, he had served as a mercenary in the Dutch East Indies. There he had founded a family with his native ‘housekeeper’, Silla. In Switzerland, he continued to benefit from Silla’s exploited labour. Stories such as...

Recent historiographies of ‘Science and Empire’ have successfully critiqued older euro-centric narratives. They highlighted how science was ‘co-produced’ through interactions between knowledgeable European and non-European actors in colonial ‘contact zones’, and how this ‘pidginised knowledge’ circulated through networks across various sites within...

This contribution serves to launch a discussion among historians interested in a transnational history of Switzerland. With the purpose of sharing information and fostering research in the field, we initiated an informal network (www.transnationalhistory.ch) and organized two workshops - one held in Zurich (March 2016) and one in Lausanne (October...

This case study of Swiss scientists in the Dutch East Indies offers a new approach to Dutch imperialism in Southeast Asia around 1900. It argues that one of the reasons for the Dutch to ‘round off’ their Empire was a fear of embarrassment in front of ‘foreign’ European countries. Adopting a Bourdieuean view on the role of emotions for collective ac...

"Erdwissenschafter als Zeitreisende und Akteure des Kolonialismus. Schweizer Naturforschende in Niederlandisch-Ostindien". This case study on two Swiss naturalists illustrates some of the ways scientific exploration of planet earth was connected to imperial conquest in the Dutch East Indies at around 1900. Looking for answers for zoogeographical pr...

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A remarkable colonial encounter took place on 26 February 1896 on the south-eastern peninsula of Celebes — one of the many so-called outer islands in the far-flung Dutch Asian Empire. Two wealthy Swiss naturalists, Paul and Fritz Sarasin, the first Europeans to explore this large hitherto ‘unknown’ island, reached the summit of one of the mountains...

In den neueren Diskussionen über den Kolonialismus wird vermehrt dem »Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien« Beachtung geschenkt: Auf welche Weise waren auch solche europäischen Länder involviert, die selbst nicht als Kolonialmacht aufgetreten sind? Und wie wirken sich diese Verstrickungen auf die postkoloniale Gegenwart aus? Der Band geht diesen Fragen am B...