Bohemia

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This article is about the historical region in central Europe; for other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation).

Bohemia (Czech: Čechy; German: Böhmen, Russian: Bogemiya) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western and middle thirds of the Czech Republic. With an area of 52,750 sq. km. and 6.25 million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants, Bohemia is bounded by Germany to the north-west, west and south-west, Poland to the north-east, the Czech province of Moravia to the east and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Šumava, the Ore Mountains or Giant Mountains as part of the Sudeten mountains.

Note: In the Czech language there is no distinction between adjectives referring to Bohemia and Czechia, i.e. český means both Bohemian and Czech.

History of Bohemia

Roman authors provide the first clear reference to this area as Boiohaemum, which is Germanic for "the home of the Boii", who were a Celtic people. As part of the territory often crossed during the major Germanic and Slavic migrations, the area was settled from the 1st century BC by Germanic (probably Suebic) peoples including the Marcomanni. After their migration to the south-west, they were replaced around the 6th century by the Slavic precursors of today's Czechs.

After freeing themselves from the rule of the Avars in the 7th century, Bohemia's Slavic inhabitants came (in the 9th century) under the rule of the Přemyslid dynasty, which continued until 1306. With Bohemia's conversion to Christianity in the 9th century, close relations were forged with the East Frankish kingdom, then part of the so-called Carolingian empire, later the nucleus of the Holy Roman Empire of which Bohemia was an autonomous part from the 10th century.

The first to use the title of "King of Bohemia" was Boleslav I after 940, but his heirs again used the title of Duke. The title of King was granted to the Premyslid dukes Vratislav II (1085) and Vladislav II (1158), and became hereditary (1198) under Ottokar I, whose grandson Ottokar II (king 1253-1278) founded a short-lived empire also covering modern Austria. The mid-13th century saw the beginning of substantial German immigration as the court sought to make good the losses resulting from the brief Mongol invasion of 1241. In 1346, Charles IV became King of Bohemia. In 1348 he founded central Europe's first university in Prague. His reign brought Bohemia to its peak both politically and in total area, resulting in his being the first King of Bohemia to be elected as Holy Roman Emperor.

A national Czech movement against (mainly German) foreign immigrants was promoted by the religious movement of Hussites under the leadership of Jan Hus, a precursor of Martin Luther, who was eventually burned at the stake. When the crusade against heresy was declared by the Pope, it created a period of turmoil in Bohemia called the Hussite Wars. An unlikely half-blind squire by the name of Jan Zizka took the chalice as his symbol and led a peasant Hussite army against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. As the leader of the Hussite armies, Zizka would not lose a battle (but he did lose his other eye) due in part to his innovative tactics and weapons. His use of howitzers, fortified wagons and moving artillery were revolutionaly in his time and give him a rare place among the greatest generals of all time. After Zizka's death and crippling internal struggles, Bohemia was still able to negotiate freedom of religion in 1436 the so-called Basel Compacts (Peace and Freedom between Catholics and Utraquists (today: Bohemian Church)) but this lasted for only a short time, as in 1462, Pope Pius II declared Basel Compacts invalid. In 1609, Bohemian king Rudolph II, who was titularly a Catholic, was coerced by Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575. It can be said that there was relative freedom of religion in Bohemia between 1436 and 1620 and in this Bohemia was one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world.

In 1618, opposition to Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor as King of Bohemia led to the Thirty Years' War and the selection of an alternative Protestant king, Frederick V, Elector Palatine.The Protestant nobility were largely expelled after their defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Until the so-called "Renewed Constitution" of 1627 (by which German was introduced as the second official language), Czech language was the official language of the Kingdom, although both German and Latin were widely known among the ruling classes, too. The German language became increasingly dominant. Also the formal independence of Bohemia further eroded when the Bohemian Diet approved the so-called Pragmatic Sanction (indivisibility of the Habsburg empire, also female succession approved) in 1720, and also during centralisation reforms in 1749, when the Royal Bohemian Chancellery was unified with the Austrian Chancellery.

At the end of the 18th century, the Czech national revivalist movement, in cooperation with a part of the Bohemian aristocracy, started a campaign for restoration of the Kingdom's historic rights, and for a better status of the Czech language. Coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1792 and minor language concessions were the first modest results of the movement. The movement became stronger and more influential, and Czech politicians fully and actively participated in the 1848 revolution. However, the revolution was defeated. The old Bohemian Diet, one of the last remnants of the independence, was dissolved.

In 1861, a new, elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia and Duchy of Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralistic Constitution (so-called "Verfassungstreue"). In 1867, a parallel movement in Hungary achieved an establishment of a dual Habsburg monarchy ("Austria-Hungary"), while an attempt to establish a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) in 1871 failed. However, the "state rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.

After World War I, Bohemia became the cornerstone of the newly-formed country of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia became a rich and liberal democratic republic, and Tomáš Masaryk was elected as its first president.

Following the infamous Munich conference in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans, were annexed to Germany - it was the first and only time in the whole history of Bohemia that it was divided. Between 1939-1945, the remaining part of Bohemia together with Moravia formed the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren) under the Occupation.

Agnes of Bohemia (Sv. Anezka Ceska, 1211-1282) was the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by Pope John Paul II before the 1989 "Velvet Revolution".

After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Bohemia became part of the new Czech Republic.

The Czech constitution from 1992 refers to the "citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia" and proclaims continuity with the statehood of the Bohemian Crown. Bohemia is not currently an administrative unit of the Czech Republic. Instead, it is divided into Prague, the Central Bohemian Region, the Pilsen Region, the Carlsbad Region, the Usti nad Labem Region, the Liberec Region, the Hradec Kralove Region, and parts of the Pardubice, Vysocina and South Bohemian regions.

See also

• Bohemia (for other definitions)
• Bohemian
• History of the Czechs
• List of rulers of Bohemia