The Protestant victory in 1712 – which ended Catholic hegemony in confederal affairs – also ended two centuries of religious conflict, and resulted in a social and economic shift in favour of the largely Protestant cities. Catholic regions of the country, which had remained free from the dour influence of Calvin, enjoyed relative freedom in personal conduct but were industrially backward, while Protestant areas benefited from a better-educated populace and the presence of Protestant artisans from around Europe. French Huguenots in particular, their name a corruption of Eidgenosse, were the motive force behind a growth in urban manufacturing industries such as watchmaking in the northwest and textiles in the east (cotton, calico, silk and embroidery). During the Swiss industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, commercial farming also began to take hold in the rural cantons.

The second half of the century saw the liberal Enlightenment replacing the rigours of Calvinism country-wide, with writers and thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Heinrich Pestalozzi feeding a new spirit of Helvetic nationalism which brought Catholics and Protestants together in their patriotic concern for the nation.

However, political life became increasingly ossified, with the swing away from the tumultuous religious conflict of the recent past demonstrating itself in profound conservatism. Fearful of a repetition of the peasants’ uprising, urban patrician dynasties asserted their traditional prerogatives in a series of measures designed to concentrate power in their own hands. Increasing prosperity and the influence of liberal Enlightenment philosophies in towns and countryside alike led to growing intolerance of patrician rule on the part of ordinary people: in Lausanne in 1723, in Geneva in 1737, in Bern in 1749, in Ticino in 1755, and in Geneva again throughout the 1760s, popular insurrections against entrenched systemic injustice demonstrated a grass-roots desire for change.