The Old Swiss Confederacy already had extensive networks across Europe and beyond in the early modern period. Less well known are the cultural relationships between early Switzerland and England, which this exhibition explores.
A central theme is travel, understood both as the mobility and migration of people and as the movement of letters, books, and ideas. On the one hand, the exhibition addresses the concrete conditions and challenges of travel in the early modern period.
On the other hand, it highlights that travellers took their homeland and culture with them: they maintained or reactivated contacts, encouraged others to follow, experienced numerous encounters, brought experiences back home, and often returned transformed.
Map of Switzerland showing the routes taken by William Coxe in 1805. Collection: Universitätsbibliothek VB A2:1:70
In this context, “London Calling” signifies that English visitors came to collaborate—often with Reformed theologians—and, conversely, that Swiss clergy and scholars followed the call of the great city of London, a centre of science and culture with wide-reaching influence.
Basel and London form the two poles of the exhibition, between which the travellers and objects move. The exhibition offers the public a fascinating insight into the themes and forms of intercultural exchange at the dawn of the early modern era, drawing on the rich holdings of the University Library of Basel.
Impressions from the exhibition
