When Switzerland was created in 1848, one of its founding fathers went by the name of ‘Borneo Louis’. Before becoming a Swiss state builder, he had served as a mercenary in the Dutch East Indies. There he had founded a family with his native ‘housekeeper’, Silla. In Switzerland, he continued to benefit from Silla’s exploited labour. Stories such as these seem unusual today, not for historical but for historiographical reasons. Borneo Louis was only one of c.70,000 mercenaries from all over Europe in Dutch imperial services. Silla was one of the countless ‘native concubines’ who were forced to support these men and thereby help the Dutch build their nineteenth-century empire in South East Asia. Other empires, too, depended on auxiliary services from Europeans hailing from regions with intra-European or short-lived empires, or none at all. Recent new imperial histories, however, have remained conceptually limited to the study of interconnections within national empires (mostly the British Empire). Pan-European dimensions of colonial histories have continued to lie outside their focus. Explaining how Switzerland became part of the Dutch imperial project, this article therefore calls for a renewed new imperial history: a history that explains how Europe emerged out of continuous connections across the boundaries of national empires.

中文翻译：

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瑞士、婆罗洲和荷属印度群岛：迈向新的欧洲帝国历史，c.1770–1850

当瑞士于 1848 年成立时，它的一位开国元勋被称为“婆罗洲路易斯”。在成为瑞士国家建设者之前，他曾在荷属东印度群岛担任雇佣兵。在那里，他与他的家乡“管家”新罗建立了一个家庭。在瑞士，他继续从新罗的剥削劳动中受益。像这样的故事在今天看来不寻常，不是出于历史原因，而是出于史学原因。婆罗洲路易斯只是来自欧洲各地为荷兰帝国服务的约 70,000 名雇佣兵之一。新罗是无数“土著妃子”之一，他们被迫支持这些人，从而帮助荷兰人在东南亚建立了他们的 19 世纪帝国。其他帝国也依赖于来自欧洲内部或短命帝国地区的欧洲人的辅助服务，或者根本没有。然而，最近的新帝国史在概念上仍然局限于研究民族帝国（主要是大英帝国）内部的相互联系。殖民历史的泛欧维度一直不在他们的关注范围之内。本文解释了瑞士如何成为荷兰帝国计划的一部分，因此呼吁重新建立新的帝国历史：一段解释欧洲如何从跨越民族帝国边界的连续联系中出现的历史。