1 - Communalism and other political models in Europe and in Graubünden

Summary

Social condition is commonly the result of circumstances, sometimes of laws, oftener still of these two causes united; but when once established, it may justly be considered as itself the source of almost all the laws, the usages, and the ideas which regulate the conduct of nations: whatever it does not produce, it modifies.

Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America

The source of the Rhine, as custom has it, is a small lake above Disentis known as the Oberalpsee. On reflection, though, this designation may seem arbitrary: why this particular valley and pond among the dozens of valleys and ponds around it? And why down at the lake, rather than high above in some snow-filled col? The historical origins of the Rhaetian Freestate, a polity that took shape amid the Alps near the end of the Middle Ages, and which is the subject of this book, are equally problematical. The traditional beginning, the first identifiable point beyond the scattered and enigmatic finds of archeologists, was identified – or invented – in the sixteenth century by the geographer and historian Aegidius Tschudi. In 588 BC, he wrote, a Tuscan leader called Rhetus fled his Italian homeland to escape the invading Gauls and brought his people into the mountains to live in liberty and peace. This myth explains the Roman name for the region, “Rhaetia”, and marks the “beginning” of its history. Tschudi's collection of footnotes from Roman texts thus set the first firm mark in the stream of Rhaetian history.