1721 Senex Map of Switzerland

A beautiful, original color example of John Senex's 1721 map of Switzerland, which appeared in his book A New General Atlas containing a Geographical and Historical account of All the Empires, Kingdoms, and other Dominions of the World. It captures the Swiss Confederation at a moment of internal strife due to confessional differences, which resulted in a change in the balance of power within the Confederation.

A Closer Look

The coat of arms of the contemporary thirteen cantons of Switzerland are displayed at left, while additional shields of subject and allied territories (later made cantons of the Swiss Confederation) appear at right and bottom, the most prominent being Grisons, a sort on confederation of multiple linguistically and culturally diverse territories. At bottom-left, above the scale, is a list of the thirteen cantons and their date of joining the (Old) Swiss Confederacy. The often-convoluted boundaries of these polities are marked with hand-colored borders. Rivers, lakes, cities, towns, castles, abbeys, and more are noted in detail.

Confessional Strife

From the early days of the Reformation, Catholics were politically dominant within the Confederation, a problematic point for the large concentrations of zealous Protestants in Zurich and Bern. Although the Swiss Cantons had avoided taking sides in the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648), confessional divisions remained and resulted in two civil wars, the First War of Villmergen (1656) and the Toggenburg War (1721, also known as the Second War of Villmergen). The latter occurred in the year this map was published and resulted in greater influence of Protestant cities over Catholic cantons.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn by John Senex and appeared in his A New General Atlas, published in 1721. Despite being listed seven times in the OCLC, the map is only independently cataloged by eight institutions worldwide, with the Library of Congress, the University of Alabama, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Newberry Library holding it in North America, while the entire A New General Atlas is somewhat more widely distributed.