How Switzerland, the Land of Watches, Was Born — The Craftsmen Carried by the Storms of Faith

Simply because ‘Swiss made’ is engraved on the dial, a watch begins to look somehow special. Precise, reliable, and just a little noble — that impression is now shared the world over. But why was it Switzerland, of all places, that became the land of watches? That a small, mountainous nation with no sea, surrounded by great powers, came to stand at the center of the world’s watchmaking is by no means a coincidence. Behind it, the movement of people driven by the storms of faith and the wisdom of peasants striving to survive in snowbound valleys are deeply intertwined. This time, we trace the story of how Switzerland, the land of watches, was born.

The Storms of Faith Turned Jewelers Into Watchmakers

The story of Switzerland becoming the land of watches begins, surprisingly, with the Reformation. In the sixteenth century, the French-born reformer John Calvin built a strict, religion-based rule in the lakeside city of Geneva. Under his thought, which prized simplicity and diligence, wearing glittering ornaments is said to have been admonished. Once jewelry such as rings and necklaces fell out of favor, the goldsmiths and gem craftsmen who until then had made such pieces for princes and nobles found their skills going to waste.

Here, the craftsmen’s outstanding handiwork found a new destination. That was watchmaking. Assembling minute gears, adjusting springs, finishing small parts without the slightest deviation — the precise techniques honed in the world of jewelry could be put directly to use in watchmaking. The very prohibition of ornament instead pushed people toward the making of precision machines. This turn of events, hard to call either irony or fortune, is said to have been the first step in transforming Geneva into the city of watches. In time, in 1601, a guild of watchmakers was formed in Geneva, and the city’s watchmaking began to take on the shape of an organized industry.

The Huguenot Exile — Technique Carried Across the Border

What pushed the Swiss watch industry upward all at once was a great wave of immigrants from neighboring France. The French Protestants, the so-called Huguenots, had long been exposed to religious persecution. Above all, in 1685, when the Edict of Nantes — which had granted them a measure of religious freedom — was revoked, there was no end to the people fleeing the country to escape persecution. One destination was Geneva, the stronghold of the Calvinist faith and a place that shared the same belief.

Among the exiled Huguenots were many skilled craftsmen who had worked in watchmaking and precision craft in France. Crossing the border with only the clothes on their backs, they carried in their heads and hands the advanced techniques they had acquired over many years. Into Geneva and its surroundings, which took them in, flowed first-rate craftsmen and the latest expertise. As a result of France driving away its own excellent craftsmen through oppression, that wealth passed wholesale to Switzerland — the quiet shift of watchmaking’s center from France to Switzerland was brought about precisely by this flow of people. The storms of faith, ironically, carried an entire nation’s industry along with them.

When the old town of Geneva alone could no longer hold the ever-growing number of craftsmen, watchmaking spread into the valleys of the nearby Jura mountains. In towns and villages straddling the French border — Le Locle, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel — a new world of watches, woven together by exiled craftsmen and local people, began to take root. From the city workshop to the mountain village — the stage of watchmaking thus spread into two.

In Snowbound Valleys, Peasants Assembled Watches

The valleys of the Jura mountains were a harsh land. The altitude was high, the winters long, and shut in by snow, all comings and goings with the outside world were cut off. During the long winter when farm work was impossible, the villagers had idle time on their hands. In this empty season, people began making watch parts as handwork that could be done indoors. A house that cut gears, a house that made springs, a house that finished dials — each house took charge of the process it was good at, and bringing the finished parts together, they assembled them into a single watch.

This division-of-labor system of watchmaking came later to be called établissage and became the backbone of the Swiss watch industry. Rather than a single master craftsman making everything alone, many houses divided the roles among themselves to mass-produce parts, and then gathered them to assemble. Born from the winter piecework of a snowbound farming village, this method made it possible to produce in numbers while maintaining quality. The figure known for rooting this division-of-labor production in the Jura region is Daniel JeanRichard. Having spread the system in Le Locle, he later came to be called the father of the Swiss watch industry.

Three Strokes of Fortune Made the Land of Watches

Looking back this way, it becomes clear that Switzerland’s becoming the land of watches was the result of three turns of fate overlapping. First, the atmosphere admonishing against luxury under the Reformation turned jewelers toward precise watchmaking. Second, the exiled Huguenot craftsmen who fled persecution carried France’s advanced techniques across the border. And third, in the snowbound valleys of the Jura, peasants devised division-of-labor watchmaking as winter piecework. The storms of faith, the harshness of the land, and the wisdom of people striving to survive melted together into one.

Yet this starting point is no more than the entrance to the story. The Swiss watch of this age did not yet stand at the summit of the world; it remained at a stage valued for the beauty of its ornament and the skill of its handiwork. In time the Swiss watchmakers would come to face harsher demands that beauty and prestige alone could never satisfy. They were demands for a life-and-death accuracy, thrust upon them at sea and upon the rails. Next time, we will trace that turning point at which the watch shed its skin from work of art to precision instrument.