The Swiss Family Treehouse: Shipwreck, Swisskapolka, and European Expansion

By Sarah Fling

Tucked into the boughs of one of Adventureland’s tallest trees rests the Swiss Family Treehouse. Disney’s classic walkthrough attraction is based on the live-action Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson (1960). This tale of survival and adventure features an innocent family from Switzerland shipwrecked on a deserted island in the early 1800s. Unprepared for their new life, the two parents and their children must learn to hunt, build, scavenge, and avoid island threats, including disease, inclement weather, and wild animals. This is a popular attraction--the line is short, and the buoyant “Swisskapolka” music that plays from the family’s organ is iconic. Now, let’s take a trip into the darker history that underpins this beloved story.

Did you know that Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson film is based on Johann David Wyss’s 1812 novel of the same name? Wyss published his novel during the Napoleonic Wars between France, the United Kingdom, and other European nations. French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was an imperialist. In other words, he tried to use military force to expand into new lands and generate political and economic power for France. That actually explains why the Swiss family in Wyss’s book ends up shipwrecked. They fled war-torn Europe but did not reach their destination. Wyss also wrote and published his novel at a time when European nations expanded into Africa and the West Indies. As a result, colonialism became a popular theme for cultural products, including literature, music, theater, and novels like Swiss Family Robinson (1812).

While the Robinson family seems to be occupying “uninhabited” land in both the book and the Disney film, the islands of the West Indies (the location where the story takes place) were not uninhabited in the nineteenth century. The Arawak people, including the Caribbean Taino tribe, called these islands home. Europeans began to explore and colonize Arawak lands in the fifteenth century. Rich natural resources, including sugar and molasses, made this territory particularly desirable. Europeans imported and enslaved Africans to cultivate crops, which they then exported to France, Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands, to name a few. Switzerland, the homeland of the fictional Swiss family, did not “own” any colonies abroad, but the nation invested in and benefitted from the transatlantic slave trade. The Robinson family’s story of adventure, exploration, and resettlement in the West Indies served to soften the brutal process of colonialism for young readers. 

As you climb the stairs of Adventureland’s Swiss Family Treehouse and wander the living quarters, notice the way that they have reconstructed European civilization on their “uninhabited” island. If you didn’t know that the Swiss family was stranded after a shipwreck, would you even know that their living quarters were out of the ordinary for a European family? Western furniture, porcelain dishes, and musical instruments, including the famous working organ that provides the background music for your walk, decorate each room. Books like the Christian Bible are scattered throughout the treehouse. In this way, the Swiss family castaways reflect the larger phenomenon of Western colonization and occupation of indigenous lands in the nineteenth century. The fate of the Swiss family at the end of the Disney movie reiterates this idea. Given the option to return home, the parents choose to instead establish a colony on the island, calling it “New Switzerland.” Meanwhile, their children return to Europe to enjoy the comforts of home.

Though the novel and film may both be fiction, the underlying themes of exploration and occupation in the Swiss Family Robinson are rooted in historical fact. So is much of the imagery woven throughout Disney’s Adventureland. As you exit the treehouse, you will see a slew of colonial-style buildings meant to mimic exotic locales like the Caribbean, the “Orient,” and Africa. Our next tour stop, the Jungle Cruise ride, will take us on a journey through all three.

Sources

Johann David Wyss, Swiss Family Robinson (Salt Lake City, UT: Pink Tree Press, 2000).

Patricia Purtschert, Francesca Falk & Barbara Lüthi, “Switzerland and ‘Colonialism Without Colonies’,” Interventions Vol. 18 (2016), 286-302.

Tim Youngs, “Echoes of Empire,” The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/echoes-of-empire.