There is a country in Europe, Ande says it is the most beautiful, Nietzsche thinks it is mysterious, Mozart wrote Don Juan there, deShawok played the Slavic Dance there, that is, the Czech Republic (Bohemia among the Roman population).
When Czech, do not want to do bohemian
Today's Czech Republic is surrounded by basins of the Karkonoše Mountains, the Shumava Mountains, and the Carpathian Mountains, which are not tall and rugged enough to become the meeting point for the "resting feet" of the various ethnic groups.
The historical indigenous people were The Bochs, who were of the same barbarian Celtic origin as the Gauls. The Celts to the north, likewise the barbarian Nordic Germanics. In the 2nd century BC, the Roman Empire expanded northwards and the Celts were forced to flee the continent westward into the British Isles. The Romans named the area "Boihaemum", which means the home of the Bohes, which is where "Bohemia" comes from.
The cold climate and the tenacity of the Germanic peoples made the Romans fruitless. The Germans occupied Bohemia in the 1st century BC. Under the onslaught of the Germanics, the Roman Empire was shaken by the wind and rain. The Romans were even weak enough to hire Germanic people to defend the frontier. Germanic mercenaries were also rude and anti-guest, destroying the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.
At the same time, the Slavs, who originated in the plains of Eastern Europe, migrated south and west to escape being nomadic peoples from Asia. A part of the Slavs, who occupied most of the Balkan Peninsula except Greece, accepted the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire and converted to Byzantine Church-controlled Christianity, namely Yugoslavia.
A Slavic tribe entered Bohemia in the 6th-7th centuries, filling in the gaps left by the Germanic people, and the tribal name was "Čechy", which is transliterated as "Czech". Slowly, they embraced the culture of their neighbors, the Germanic people, and converted to Christianity in the Holy See, the West Slavic.
With no danger to defend, bohemian regions are often invaded by nomadic peoples. The Germanic merchant Satsuma united the scattered Czechs and Slovaks to establish the first state, the Principality of Satsuma, in 623. The Duchy of Great Moravian was established in 830. The Great Moravian Principality did not last many years when it encountered the Magyars.
The Magyars originally lived in the Ural Mountains and had to migrate west due to the climate. Coming in the face of the Great Partition of Europe, the Magyars sacked Italy, swept Bavaria, punched Byzantium, and conquered Great Moravia along the way. Slovakia was cut off and a country called Hungary was established.
Without Slovakia, the Czech Republic had to form a Prague Principality on its own, also known as the Czech Principality. In 962, the third King of East Francia, Otto I, was crowned "Roman Emperor" by the Pope for his defeat of the Magyars (Frederick I later added the word "holy" in front of it, which became "Holy Roman Emperor"), the First German Empire. The Czech Republic also later submitted to the Holy Roman Empire and became part of it.
In the mid-11th century, after the Holy See and the Byzantine Church split into Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the Czech Republic firmly sided with Catholicism and parted ways with the Yugoslavs and East Slavs. The Catholic Church deliberately elevated the Diocese of Prague to the direct subordination of the Holy See, elevating the religious status of Bohemia.
The power and strength of the German "emperor" is limited, and he cannot be regarded as the "king of the princes", but can only be called "the head of the princes". The emperor was still crowned by the pope, and was in a weak position in the struggle for royal power and ecclesiastical power (in 1077, the pope humiliated Henry IV. The triumph of ecclesiastical power over royal power is an important reason for Europe's march toward partition rather than unification.) In 1086, Henry IV conferred on the Czech prince Vladiv II, king of Bohemia. In 1356 Charles IV compromised with the princes and legally recognized the right of the seven electors (Archbishop of Cologne, Archbishop Mainz, Archbishop trier, Duke of Saxony, Elector of Palatinate, Elector of Brandenburg, King of Bohemia) to choose the next emperor. Despite its conquest by the Holy Roman Empire, the Czech Republic maintained its independence.
During this period, the Habsburgs of Austria rose to power through marriages and succession to the throne. In 1437, Albrecht V of the Habsburgs succeeded to the thrones of Germany, Hungary and Bohemia. Thereafter, the Habsburgs held the throne of the Holy Roman Empire for a long time until the fall of the empire.
In order to expand his influence on north Germany, the emperor once moved the capital from Vienna to Prague, closer to north Germany, making Bohemia the center of the empire. Prague has become the most prosperous city in Europe, with a thriving scene of people and traffic.
The Holy Roman Empire and the Germanic peoples of Central and Western Europe despised the Orthodox Slavs, who had been ruled by the Mongols and Ottomans, while admiring the Bohemian culture with Slavic overtones. The high status of the Kingdom of Bohemia does not equal the high status of the Czechs.
At the beginning of the 15th century, Hus, who had been president of the University of Prague, opposed the pope's peddling of indulgences, opposed the church's occupation of land, advocated worship in the Czech language, and blatantly criticized the church. Huss was burned at the stake in 1415, leading to the outbreak of the Hussite War. Secular princes and nobles joined the Catholic Church in suppressing the Hussites, while Czech commoners and lords fought side by side against the Church and lords, which were dominated by the German nation, and the will of the Czech nation began to awaken, and most of the Czechs converted to Protestantism.
In 1526, Ferdinand I of The Habsburg succeeded him as Emperor and King of Bohemia, ordering that all people must be Catholic, that German was the only official language, and that czechs should be completely deprived of their freedom religiously and culturally. In May 1618, 30 Czechs led by Tulum refused to accept Archduke Ferdinand as king in order to resist the persecution of Protestants by the Habsburgs, and the rebels rushed into the palace and threw two members of the ten-member group acting as kings out of the window, resulting in the famous "Throw out of the Window Incident", which triggered the "Thirty Years' War" between Catholics and Protestants in Europe, which lasted until 1648.
This war ignited Europe, and all the great powers had to choose, in favor of the Catholic or Protestant side. The protracted war greatly weakened Habsburg rule, and finally had to recognize the legitimacy of Protestantism in Bohemia. But the Czechs also suffered heavy losses, millions of people lost their lives, more than 70% of the income from labor had to be given to the German nobility and the Catholic Church, and the name "Bohemia" became more and more harsh to the Czechs.
Brutal religious wars and foreign domination made the Czech philosophy of survival prudent and realistic, as karel Hawlicek, the leader of the Czech "revival movement" in the 19th century, summed it up, "Others die for the rejuvenation and prosperity of the motherland, while we live for the existence of the motherland.". The Czechs' view of religion has also changed, and today the Czech Republic remains a country with atheistic majority population.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia are divided and merged
The Habsburgs were particularly adept at expanding their territories by marriage, and in 1526 they incorporated Hungary into the Holy Roman Empire, and the Slovaks who submitted to Hungary had a closer relationship with the Czechs. When the Habsburgs suffered a crushing defeat at The Iron Heel of Napoleon in the early 19th century, they were forced to declare the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and the scope of rule was reduced to southern Germany such as Austria, as well as vassal states such as Hungary and Bohemia, becoming the Austrian Empire. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Czechs formed their own intellectual class and bourgeois forces to further raise the demands of Czech national liberation and independence.
In 1866, the Austrian Empire lost the Austro-Prussian War, and in order to prevent the Hungarians, the second largest nation, from taking advantage of the opportunity to gain independence, it was declared to form a dual Austro-Hungarian Empire with Hungary. The Habsburgs also referred to Czechs and Slovaks as "Czechoslovakia" and increased the weight of the Slavs to balance the power of the Hungarians. At the end of the war in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire completely collapsed, the Habsburg exiles lost all their right to rule abroad, the German majority of Austria established a republic, and the Czechs, Hungarians and other nationalities became independent.
Do they set up their own countries, or do they live together? The Czechs feared that Germany would annex it because the Sudetenland was inhabited by about three million Germans. The Czechs, with a population of 6.8 million, were more numerous than the Germans, but they did not yet have an absolute advantage; Slovakia feared Hungary because there were more than 700,000 Hungarians in its territory. So the Czechs rallied the brotherly Slovaks and united to form the "Czechoslovak Republic".
"Don't be afraid of thieves, you are afraid of thieves." The Nazis made excuses and demanded the Sudetenland from the Czech Republic. Britain and France, in order to move east, betrayed the Czech Republic and ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in the Munich Agreement. After the victory in World War II, Czechoslovakia was restored to the Sudetenland region, fearing that the local Germans would not cooperate with the relocation, they would leave the country indiscriminately (which also became a knot in the hearts of the peoples of The Czechs and Germans). The Czech Republic also later exchanged nationalities with countries such as Hungary, which greatly simplified the ethnic composition. Eventually, the Czech Republic became a purely Czech country.
The Czech Republic is an industrial region with many commodities, Slovakia is an agricultural region, there is no industry, Slovakia has become a dumping ground for Czech industrial products. With the help of the Soviet Union, Slovakia, which was originally a backward region, also began to become rich. Hungary will not think of annexing Slovakia, Slovakia will want to go it alone. In 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully separated. Because the process was too smooth, it was called the Velvet Revolution. The process of "separation" is as smooth and silky as velvety.
How did the Czech Republic industrialize?
In the mid-19th century, with the independence of Italy and the unification of Germany, the influence of the Austrian Empire continued to decline. However, bohemia recovered from previous wars and natural disasters. Because of the coal and iron resources in the territory, coupled with the resource tilt of the Empire, the Czech region gradually became an important industrial production area, and Prague once became the richest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It was during this period (1859) that the ŠKODA Company, as we know it, was founded. In 1866, however, the Skoda Company did not produce automobiles, but machinery, steel, and arms. On the eve of World War I, Skoda was the largest arsenal in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and one of the largest industrial groups in the world at that time.
At the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated, and the Czech Republic inherited 70-80% of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's industry, including the Skoda Company. Before World War II, the Czech Republic was one of the few countries capable of producing cars, trains and even airplanes. The level of industrialization even surpassed that of Italy, known as the "heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire".
However, Czechoslovakia did not have time to use these industrial bases to develop, and in March 1939, it was annexed by Nazi Germany. The German occupation of the Czech Republic also received a full range of weapons that could equip 35 divisions. At the beginning of World War II, the main force of German Blitzkrieg was the Czech 38T light tank.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia were separated in 1993, but this did not affect the Czech modernization process in the slightest: the Czech Republic joined the European Union in 2004 and became one of the developed countries in 2006; in 2015, it was still able to maintain a GDP growth rate of 4.4%, and the national poverty rate was only 5.6%, the most developed country among the Slavic nation-states.
The Czech Economy prospered not only because of "resource endowments", but because of "good shade under the big tree". The Czech Republic is very accurate in its positioning of the country, with low labor costs and a large number of highly educated young people, with its excellent industrial base, to be a processing plant in a big country. This big country is Germany.
Germany, the largest trading partner of the Czech Republic, accounts for more than 40% of Czech foreign direct investment, and automobile and metal processing are the key areas of German investment. Germany cut out most of the cake, while the Czechs kept a small part. As long as the total amount of cake is large enough, the Czech days can be very moist. Since the 2008 economic crisis, the European Union has languished, and the Czech economy has also been shaken.
This is the Czech Republic, freed from the name "Bohemia", a recognized developed country, a member of NATO and the European Union, regarded as a member of the Western world.
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