Origins: From Rural Commonwealth to Industrial Canton — a part of the book Zug: The Making of a Global Hub by Dr Alexander Ressos.
The international business location that Zug has become rests on older foundations than its tax laws. Before the canton could compete for companies, it had to exist as a polity, with its own institutions, its own habits of government and its own relationship with foreign money. Part A follows that formation from the medieval town to the eve of the tax turn of the interwar years. Chapter I describes the town and its rural communes before 1798, the institutions of communal property, the confessional choice of the Reformation era and the economy of mercenary service and foreign pensions. Chapter II follows the canton through the revolutionary upheavals, the Sonderbund and the creation of the federal state, which fixed the constitutional framework within which cantonal tax competition later became possible. Chapter III describes the first industrial age, from the spinning mills of the 1830s to the crisis of the 1920s and 1930s, together with the first foreign entrepreneurs who made Zug the seat of an enterprise with a global market.
This part belongs to Zug: The Making of a Global Hub by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
Town, Amt and Commons: Zug before 1798 — conclusion
On the eve of the revolution of 1798, the canton of Zug was a small, Catholic, agrarian polity of about 12,700 inhabitants. Read more Zug · OriginsA small country between two lakes
The territory of the canton of Zug is small, compact and varied. It covers 238.8 square kilometres, of which, according to the land-use statistics of 2006, some 107 square kilometres were… Read more Zug · OriginsFrom Kyburg to Habsburg
The name of Zug appears for the first time in 1092, in the form "Ziuge". The town was founded around or after 1200. Read more Zug · OriginsMorgarten and the entry into the Confederation
On 15 November 1315, on the shore of Lake Ägeri near Sattel, the forces of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden ambushed an Austrian army under Duke Leopold I of Habsburg. Read more Zug · OriginsStadt und Amt: a federal constitution in miniature
The constitution of the old canton of Zug was itself a federation. The canton consisted of the town of Zug and the "Äusseres Amt", the outer district, which comprised the three rural communes of… Read more Zug · OriginsThe commons and the corporations
Beside the political institutions of town and communes stood the institutions of communal property. Read more Zug · OriginsThe lake takes the town: 4 March 1435
On 4 March 1435, the lowest of the three streets of the old town of Zug, the one nearest the lake, slid into Lake Zug. Two rows of houses disappeared into the water. Read more Zug · OriginsWalls, markets and guilds
Between 1478 and 1528 the town built a new ring of walls, in several stages, with six round towers and three gate towers. The walls enlarged the town considerably and enclosed space for later growth. Read more Zug · OriginsThe old faith and the confessional border
When the Reformation reached Switzerland in the 1520s, Zug had to choose. Its powerful neighbour Zurich, under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli, adopted the new faith. Read more Zug · OriginsWar as an export: mercenary service and foreign pensions
For three centuries, the most important export of the canton of Zug was military service. Read more Zug · OriginsHarten and Linden: a quarrel over rents
The tensions built into the system of pensions erupted in the eighteenth century in two conflicts known as the Harten- und Lindenhandel, the quarrel between the "hard" and the "soft" parties. Read more Zug · OriginsCattle, cheese and cherries
Beside mercenary service, the economy of the old canton rested on agriculture. The upland communes of Menzingen and Ägeri specialised in cattle and dairy farming. Read more Zug · OriginsRevolution, Sonderbund and the Federal State (1798–1894) — conclusion
Between 1798 and 1894, the canton of Zug passed from the old order of town and Amt, subject territories and foreign pensions, to a modern representative democracy within a federal state. Read more Zug · OriginsThe end of the old order
The old canton of Zug ended in the spring of 1798. On 11 February 1798, under the pressure of the revolutionary movement that was sweeping through the Confederation and of the French armies advancing… Read more Zug · OriginsThe Helvetic experiment in taxation
The Helvetic Republic attempted to create a modern state. It abolished the subject territories and the feudal relations. Read more Zug · OriginsMediation and restoration
The Helvetic Republic collapsed under its internal divisions between unitarists and federalists and under the weight of the war. Read more Zug · OriginsRegeneration and the confessional struggle
The 1830s brought the movement known as the Regeneration, in which liberal forces in many cantons replaced the Restoration constitutions with liberal and democratic ones. Read more Zug · OriginsThe Sonderbund
On 11 December 1845, seven Catholic-conservative cantons, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg and Valais, concluded in Lucerne a protective alliance, the Sonderbund, with a war council… Read more Zug · OriginsThe cantonal constitution of 1848
The defeat in the Sonderbund war brought a liberal revolution to the canton. On 16 January 1848, the canton adopted a new constitution, which abolished the Landsgemeinde and the division of the… Read more Zug · OriginsThe federal state of 1848 and the division of taxing powers
The Federal Constitution of 12 September 1848 transformed the Confederation from an alliance of sovereign states into a federal state. Read more Zug · OriginsThe mobile taxpayer: a practitioner's note
The constitutional architecture of 1848 still governs the questions that practitioners face when a client considers a move to Zug. Read more Zug · OriginsDirect democracy and the constitution of 1894
The decades after 1848 saw the progressive democratisation of the cantonal constitution. Read more Zug · OriginsThe infrastructure of a modern canton
The decades after 1848 transformed the physical infrastructure of the canton. In 1852, a steamship service began to operate on Lake Zug. In 1857, the first hospital of the canton opened in the town. Read more Zug · OriginsThe First Industrial Age (1834–1939) — conclusion
Part A has followed the canton of Zug from its medieval origins to the eve of the Second World War. The picture that emerges differs sharply from that of Geneva. Read more Zug · OriginsWater, cotton and the Henggeler family
Industry came to Zug by way of its water. The river Lorze, falling steeply from Lake Ägeri through its gorge towards Baar, offered a source of power that the early spinning mills needed. Read more Zug · OriginsThe Spinnerei an der Lorze
The largest industrial enterprise of the nineteenth-century canton was the cotton spinning mill on the Lorze at Baar. Read more Zug · OriginsPaper from Cham
The second pillar of the early industrial economy was paper. In 1825, Johann Jakob Vogel-Nötzli bought the property of a hammer forge in Cham. Read more Zug · OriginsAn American in Cham: the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company
The first enterprise in Zug with a genuinely global market was founded by foreigners. Read more Zug · OriginsFailure and credit: the Email- und Metallwarenfabrik and the cantonal bank
The industrial history of Zug also has its failures. In 1881, an enamel and metal goods factory, the Email- und Metallwarenfabrik, was founded in the town of Zug. Read more Zug · OriginsThe Vorstadt catastrophe of 1887
On 5 July 1887, the lake claimed part of the town of Zug for the second time. Work on a new quay along the lakeshore, undertaken by a railway company, had destabilised the ground of the Vorstadt… Read more Zug · OriginsThe second industrialisation: electricity, meters and light
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, the town of Zug experienced a second wave of industrialisation. Read more Zug · OriginsWomen, foreigners and the factory law
The industrial workforce of Zug was, to a large extent, female and foreign. In the spinning mills, women formed the majority of the workers: across the Swiss cotton industry in 1888, women made up 46… Read more Zug · OriginsGrowth and prosperity before 1914
The industrialisation of the canton translated into population growth and rising incomes. The town of Zug grew from 5,120 inhabitants in 1888 to 6,508 in 1900 and 8,096 in 1910. Read more Zug · OriginsCrisis and the turn: 1918 to 1939
The interwar years brought crisis to the industrial economy of Zug. The Social Democrats won their first seat in the town council in 1918, the year of the national general strike. Read more