Global History of Europe and Switzerland
Faculty of History
PhD Student
Michael Schmitz is a doctoral researcher in the research group Global History of Europe and Switzerland, headed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schär
Michael Schmitz is a doctoral researcher in the research group Global History of Europe and Switzerland, headed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schär.
His doctoral project, begun in February 2024, focuses on Swiss cocoa traders and plantation owners in Bahia in the first half of the 20th century. In 2024, he spent an extended research stay in Salvador da Bahia and at the State University of Santa Cruz in Ilhéus (Brazil). The stay was supported by an Early Career Grant from the Leading House for Latin America. He has presented his doctoral project, among other venues, at the Swiss History Days 2025 in Lucerne and at the conference Slavery, Democracy and Resistance at the University of Lausanne (November 2025).
After completing his Licentiate degree in General History at the University of Zurich in 2008, Michael Schmitz worked as a history and German teacher at various educational levels, including in a correctional facility. In 2024, he was co-editor of a book on the history of the housing cooperative Baugenossenschaft Wiedikon in Zurich. From 2009 to 2022, he was involved in the anti-racist projects Autonome Schule Zürich and Papierlose Zeitung. As a long-standing practioner of Capoeira, he organizes events dedicated to preserving and disseminating Afro-Brazilian history and culture.
Research focus
Michael Schmitz’s research focuses on Switzerland’s global entanglements, with a particular emphasis on Brazil and the history of global commodity trade. He adopts an approach that combines economic history with social and cultural history.
PhD project: Swiss Cacao Traders in Bahia, 1910-1945
Abstract
This Phd project investigates the role of the Brazilian state of Bahia in the global system of cacao production and trade in the first half of the 20th century through the lens of a Swiss-Brazilian company, Wildberger & Cia. For most of this period, Bahia was the world’s second largest producer of cacao behind present-day Ghana. Wildberger & Cia. was the region’s largest exporter of the crop, later one of the biggest landowners, had excellent connections to Bahia's political elite and acted as a representative of European banks and shipping companies in the region. In this manner, it played a dominant role in the cacao business, impacting deeply the realities of plantation owners and workers. The company was part of a network that chronologically spans the early Brazilian empire’s slave-based economy to modern-day transnational capitalism. By using an actor-centred approach, I will analyse how Wildberger & Cia. structurally integrated Bahia into the capitalist world market of cacao: What kind of networks and connections were necessary for this? How were they shaped by relations of power and inequality? And how did the company survive the political turmoils of the 20th century without state-led imperial support? With the Wildberger Archives, the private archives of a Bahian cacao trading company are opened up to historical research for the first time for this project. This rare opportunity to study global intermediary trade fills an important gap in historiographies of global cacao trade and contributes to a better understanding of the history of global commodity markets in the 20th century. Furthermore, it presents an important chapter of elite formation in a shared Swiss-Brazilian history.
This thesis is being co-supervised by Professor Bernhard Schär (UniDistance Suisse) and Senior Lecturer Pierre Eichenberger (University of Lausanne)
Research projects
Research projects
Approved amount: -
Funding scheme:
-
Status:
Completed
Start:
05.11.2025
End:
07.11.2025
Approved amount:-
Funding scheme:
-
Status:
Completed
Start:
05.11.2025
End:
07.11.2025
Research groups
