"This history of an alpine village illuminates the history of Switzerland from a rural perspective. It begins with the colonization of the Alps by Romanized Celtic peoples who came up from the plain to clear the wilderness, establish a tiny isolated monastic house and create a cattle economy which became famous for its cheeses.

Over ten centuries the village, like the rest of Switzerland, has gone through the traumas of reformation and revolution as the society was transformed from the fief of a Catholic principality to the borough of a Protestant republic. In the nineteenth century poverty drove many highlanders to emigrate, but politics created the Swiss union government of 1848 whose single currency, unified postal service and integrated army slowly brought improved stability and prosperity. The twentieth century became an era of wealthy foreign tourism punctuated by the austerities imposed by European wars.

By the end of the millennium alpine peasants had been socially integrated into a unified Switzerland and at last shared the prosperity which had emanated from the urban bankers and industrialists at the very independent geographical heart of Europe."--BOOK JACKET.