Liechtenstein

The territory of present-day Liechtenstein was inhabited from the Neolithic period and entered the historical record under Roman rule, when it formed part of the province of Raetia after the Alpine campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius around 15 BCE. Roman roads through the upper Rhine valley linked Italy to the Danube frontier, and small settlements grew at sites such as Schaan. After the collapse of Roman authority in the fifth century, the area was settled by Alemannic peoples, whose language displaced the earlier Romance speech, and it passed in turn under Frankish overlordship during the expansions of the Merovingians and Carolingians. By the high medieval period the region was organised into two small lordships, the County of Vaduz and the Lordship of Schellenberg, both held as immediate fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire.

The modern state took shape through the patient land purchases of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, an Austrian noble family that had long served the Habsburgs but lacked territory held directly from the Emperor, a status required for a seat in the Imperial Diet. Prince Hans Adam I bought Schellenberg in 1699 and Vaduz in 1712, and on 23 January 1719 the Emperor Charles VI united the two parcels and elevated them to an Imperial Principality named Liechtenstein. For most of the eighteenth century the princes ruled their new state in absentia from Vienna, and the country was governed by appointed officials.

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 made Liechtenstein a sovereign state, and it joined Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine before entering the German Confederation in 1815. A constitution granted in 1862 established a Diet, and full sovereignty was confirmed when the German Confederation dissolved in 1866. Liechtenstein abolished its small army in 1868 and pursued a policy of neutrality. Until 1919 its external affairs and customs were tied to Austria-Hungary, but the collapse of that empire after the First World War prompted a reorientation toward Switzerland, formalised by the customs and currency union of 1923 and the adoption of the Swiss franc in 1924.

A new constitution in 1921 established Liechtenstein as a constitutional, hereditary monarchy on a democratic and parliamentary basis, with sovereignty shared between the prince and the people. The country remained neutral during the Second World War, although wartime years brought controversies over property and refugees that were later examined by an independent historical commission. Prince Franz Joseph II, who reigned from 1938 to 1989, was the first sovereign to take up permanent residence at Vaduz Castle. Women received the vote in national elections only in 1984, after a closely contested referendum.

In the post-Cold War era Liechtenstein joined the United Nations in 1990, the European Free Trade Association in 1991, and the European Economic Area in 1995, while declining membership in the European Union. A revised constitution approved by referendum in 2003, championed by Prince Hans-Adam II, expanded the monarch's formal powers but also entrenched a citizen right to call a referendum to abolish the monarchy. Day-to-day affairs have since 2004 been delegated to the heir apparent, Prince Alois, as regent. Liechtenstein today is a constitutional, hereditary monarchy operating on parliamentary lines, with a unicameral Landtag, a prime minister at the head of government, and a long-standing customs and monetary union with Switzerland.