Czech Republic in map
Central Europe’s Czech Republic, sometimes referred to as Czechia, is a landlocked nation. Known as Bohemia in the past, it has borders with Slovakia to the southeast, Austria to the south, Germany to the west, and Poland to the northeast. Covering an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi), the Czech Republic boasts a hilly topography and a largely temperate continental and oceanic climate. Prague is the nation’s capital and largest city; other significant cities and metropolitan areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň, and Liberec.The Czech Republic holds memberships in the European Union, the OECD, the Council of Europe, NATO, and the United Nations.
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Under Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia was established in the late ninth century. In 1002, it received official recognition as an Imperial State under the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1198, it attained kingdom status. The entirety of the Crown of Bohemia was progressively incorporated into the Habsburg empire after the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The Thirty Years’ War was sparked by the Protestant Bohemian Revolt. Following White Mountain, the Habsburgs united their kingdom. The Crown lands joined the Austrian Empire after the Holy Empire was dissolved in 1806.
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The Czech lands became increasingly industrialized in the 19th century, and after Austria-Hungary collapsed in the aftermath of World War I, the majority of them joined the newly formed First Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.Throughout the entire interwar era, only one nation in Central and Eastern Europe—Czechoslovakia—maintained parliamentary democracy. Following the 1938 Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany methodically seized control of the Czech territories. After being regained in 1945, Czechoslovakia underwent a coup d’état in 1948 and became a communist state part of the Eastern Bloc three years later. A Soviet-led invasion of the nation during the Prague Spring in 1968 stifled attempts to liberalize the government and economy.
The Velvet Revolution brought democracy back to the nation and put an end to communist rule in November 1989. Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved on December 31, 1992, and the independent republics of the Czech Republic and Slovakia were formed from its constituent parts. The Czech Republic is a developed nation with a highly developed, unitary parliamentary republican social market economy. It is a welfare state featuring free public university education, universal health care, and a European social model. It is ranked 32nd in the Human Development Index, 24th in the World Bank Human Capital Index, and 16th in the UN inequality-adjusted human development index. In terms of democratic governance, it is ranked 25th as of 2022 and eighth in terms of safety and peace.
The Latin term Boiohaemum, which translates to “home of the Boii” (a Gallic tribe), is where the traditional English name “Bohemia” originates. The Polish ethnonym connected to the region, which ultimately derives from the Czech term Čech, is the source of the current English name. The Slavic tribe and, supposedly, its commander Čech are credited with bringing them to Bohemia and helping them settle on Říp Mountain, hence the name. The term Čech is cognate with the Czech word člověk (a person) since its derivation may be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning “member of the people; kinsman”.
Bohemia is in the west, Moravia (also known as Morava) is in the east, and Czech Silesia (also known as Slezsko, the smaller, southeast portion of historical Silesia, the majority of which is in modern-day Poland) is in the northeast. These are the traditional divisions of the country. Throughout history, the nation has gone by a variety of titles, including Czech/Bohemian lands, Bohemian Crown, Czechia, and the lands of the Crown of Saint Wenceslaus. It has been referred to as the lands of the Bohemian Crown since the fourteenth century. Following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, the nation regained its independence, and the name Czechoslovakia was adopted to symbolize the unification of the Czech and Slovak peoples under one nation.
