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Hans Werner Debrunner, Schweizer Im Kolonialen Afrika, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Themes connected with Switzerland are often judged to be of only marginal significance. The Swiss nation as such certainly was no player in the European penetration and partition of the African continent. The involvement of Swiss people, furthermore, was numerically small and cannot compare with that of the Dutch or the Danes. Yet Hans Werner Debrunner's study of Swiss in colonial Africa is nevertheless of great value, especially since it is part of a set of other works he has devoted to African issues. It adds, first, much to our knowledge of Swiss migrations, understood not primarily as settlements overseas, …