Republic of Geneva

The Republic of Geneva was the independent city-state in what is now Switzerland that emerged in the early sixteenth century when it broke with the Catholic Church, with the political authority of the Bishop of Geneva, and with the influence of the House of Savoy. The Protestant Reformation shaped it, above all the work of Guillaume Farel and then of John Calvin, and the city became the leading centre of Calvinism and a refuge for Protestants from all over Europe. Politically it built republican institutions on the model of the Swiss cities, holding its sovereignty against the Duchy of Savoy and steering between France and the cantons. From the declaration of independence in 1534 to the annexation by revolutionary France in 1798, Geneva grew into a prosperous centre of trade, finance, watchmaking and publishing, a fortified Protestant Rome and a cosmopolitan republic at once. Restored in 1813, it lived briefly again before entering the Swiss Confederation as a canton in 1815.