Intermixing
Once strongly segregated, now well mixed
The Reformation led to a sharp division between Catholic and Protestant regions in Switzerland. There were Catholic cantons, towns and villages, there were Protestant cantons, towns and villages.
There was a strong political dimension to the division between the confessions: the cultural battle. As part of this cultural battle, the Catholic cantons even united in an alliance against the others, and there was civil war – the Sonderbund War – between Catholic and Protestant Switzerland. It ended with the defeat of the Catholics and led in 1848 to a new federal state: present-day Switzerland.