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Today

10:00 - 17:00

Opening times

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  • openinghours.days.long.tuesday Open till openinghours.days.long.wednesday openinghours.openfromto.long

  • openinghours.days.long.thursday openinghours.openfromto.long

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  • openinghours.days.long.monday closed

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  • openinghours.days.long.thursday openinghours.openfromto.long

  • openinghours.days.long.saturday Open till openinghours.days.long.monday closed

Closed on public holidays.

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  • Family Day 20.10.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • Christmas Eve 24.12.2024 10:00 - 14:00

  • Christmas 25.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • St. Stephen´s Day 26.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • 27.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • 28.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • 29.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • 30.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • New Year´s Eve 31.12.2024 10:00 - 17:00

  • New Year´s Day 01.01.2025 10:00 - 17:00

  • Saint Berchtold 02.01.2025 10:00 - 19:00

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colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements

National Museum Zurich | 13.9.2024 - 19.1.2025
published on 11.9.2024

The National Museum Zurich is presenting its first ever comprehensive and multi-perspectival overview of Switzerland’s colonial past. It takes the form of an exhibition based on the latest research, and draws on biographies as well as using objects, artworks, photographs and written documents for illustration.

The exhibition comprises two parts. The first part defines eleven themes, with many examples of how Swiss people, businesses and communities were involved in colonialism from the 16th century. The geographical scope covers North and South America through Africa to Asia. A number of Swiss companies and private individuals participated in the transatlantic slave trade and amassed a fortune from trading in colonial products and exploiting enslaved people. Swiss missionaries travelled the world and left Switzerland to found settlement colonies and cultivate supposedly unpopulated land. Others, driven by poverty or a thirst for adventure, served as mercenaries in European armies, undertook colonial conquests and crushed uprisings by indigenous populations. Back home, science played its part in shaping the perception of people in the colonies, in addition to the letters and reports sent from colonial lands. Scientists at the universities of Zurich and Geneva formulated race theories that gained international credence and helped legitimise the colonial system.

The second part of the exhibition addresses the legacy of colonialism and its impact on present-day Switzerland. It reveals the effects of colonialism that still persist – such as global wealth inequality and environmental issues. The main emphasis, however, is on debates of direct relevance to the Swiss people: for example, should street names or monuments to people who were involved in colonialism be altered or knocked down or is that erasing history? Visitors are invited to join the discussion and leave their thoughts at the exhibition.

Researchers from different disciplines have released publications on Switzerland’s colonial entanglements in recent years. Museums have also recognised the significance of the issue, as shown in the exhibitions on display this autumn, for example.

The exhibition at the National Museum Zurich is the first to offer featuring a multi-thematic overview of Switzerland’s history of colonial entanglement. It features numerous voices and considers the issue from the perspective of different regions, action areas and positions. Contributions from artists including Denise Bertschi, Sasha Huber, Chris Pappan, Mathias C. Pfund, Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige and Dom Smaz add valuable insights. The exhibition also incorporates extracts from exchanges with the public and with various experts and actors. An international scientific advisory board oversaw the conceptualisation.

Besides a comprehensive educational programme for schools created with historian Ashkira Darman, the exhibition offers an extensive supporting programme with interactive tours, meetings, panel discussions and focus events in cooperation with ETH Zurich and the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.

Images

Chintz

Printed cotton fabrics were among the most important trade goods in exchange for enslaved people. This fragment is probably the only preserved piece that was produced specifically for this kind of exchange. Le lion et la chèvre, Manufactory Petitpierre & Cie, Nantes, around 1790, woodblock print on cotton

Swiss National Museum

Human trafficking

The group of figures shows the sale of an enslaved person. The figures’ dress style leaves open room for interpretation: it is not clear whether the work is to be interpreted as pro or anti-slavery. What we do know is that the owners and artisans of the porcelain manufactory had connections to abolitionist groups as well as to people who were involved in the slave trade, thus making a clear interpretation impossible. Menschenhandel, manufactory Kilchberg-Schooren, around 1775, porcelain, painted

Swiss National Museum

Maryland

Karl Krüsi (1855–1925) worked on Swiss plantations in the Dutch East Indies. In 1881 he bought his own estate and named it after his wife Mary. He sold up in 1893, and with his fortune he had Villa Sumatra built in what is now Zurich’s Sumatrastrasse. Manager House in Deli, Karl Krüsi, Sumatra, 1885

Swiss National Museum

‘The wee planter’

In the plantation economy on Sumatra, then part of the Dutch colonial territory, Swiss as white Europeans benefit from colonial arrangements such as access to land or cheap labour. Swiss tobacco plantation administrator from Stäfa with his son, Kotari, 1921

Private property

Symbol of imperial power

The sun helmet identified its wearer as a colonial ruler. It was worn for protection against the heat and other dangers. The colonial dress code also served to set the colonizers apart from the colonized. Pith helmet, probably Congo, late 19th c.

Musée d'ethnographie de Genève

Arnold Heim

This Swiss geologist (1882–1965) conducted research on every continent. Many of his trips were funded by oil companies. Over the course of his career, he became an environmentalist and advocate of decolonization. Virunga Expedition, Lake Mutanda (Uganda), 1954

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

Colonial science

At the end of the 19th century, Fritz and Paul Sarasin undertook research in British-controlled Ceylon and Celebes in the Dutch East Indies; they also went big-game hunting, however. The calf of this slain elephant was delivered to Basel Zoo. The Sarasins in Sri Lanka, 1883–1907

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

New authority for Swiss ‘racial research’

Marc-Rodolphe Sauter (1914–1983) kept racial research going in Geneva. In his research, he tried to prove that the European population was divided into separate ‘races’, not least in an attempt to lend Swiss racial research new authority after WWII. Marc Roldolphe Sauter, before 1952

Bibliothèque de Genève

Toppling monuments

In 2021 the Geneva-based artist Mathias C. Pfund placed his upended and reduced-scale copy of the statue of David de Pury (1709–1786), who was involved in the ‘triangular trade’ and who therefore had a hand in the trade with enslaved people alongside the original that was raised in Neuchatel in 1855. Mathias C. Pfund, Great in the concrete, 2022, Bronze

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

National Museum Zurich press contact

+41 44 218 65 64 medien@nationalmuseum.ch