Bohemia
Lands of the Bohemian Crown Země Koruny české | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
 Location of Bohemia in Europe. | |
| Capital and largest city | Prague |
| Official languages | Bohemian |
| Ethnic groups (1980) |
|
| Religion | Neo-Hussitism, Catholicism, Judaism, and others |
| Government | Constitutional monarchy |
| Establishment | |
• Establishment | 1348 |
• Habsburg acquisition of Bohemia | 1526 |
• Sternberg rule under Augustine dominion | 1803–1814 |
• Independence & restoration of Sternberg monarchy | 1939 |
Bohemia, sometimes Chequy ([ˈt͡ʃɛcʰi]; Bohemian: Čechij) and officially the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Země Koruny české), is a country situated in central Europe. A landlocked nation, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Saxony to the north, Poland in the northeast, and Slovakia in the southeast. In modern-day Europe, it is recognized as one of two extant non-IRC Slavic states alongside Illyria. The contemporary Bohemian state comprises of two historical and de jure equal Crown lands, Bohemia and Moravia.
History
In 1526, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Margraviate of Moravia, and the Silesian duchies were collectively acquired by the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I. A century later, the Habsburg administration enacted numerous political reforms in Bohemia following the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, from which they emerged victorious. The Renewed Land Ordinance of 1627 (Verneuerte Landesordnung) asserted their possession of the Crown, the proliferation of German language and Catholic orthodoxy, and the gradual decline of historic Bohemian nobility in favor of nobles professing loyalty to Vienna.
The Thirty Years' War, lasting from 1618–48, reaffirmed the dominance of Habsburg absolutism. Depopulation of 10–40% and the destruction of peasant agriculture allowed for the partial and short-lived re-establishment of serfdom. The latter half of the 17th century saw Bohemia became an epicenter of Baroque art, mining, ironworking, and glassmaking, gradually recovering its socioeconomic health. By 1700, a balance of power between the Bohemian nobility and the Viennese administrators had prevailed.
The Great Silesian War of the 1750s reaffirmed Austrian ownership of Silesia, a land which was administratively under the Bohemian Crown. During the Prussian invasions, several Bohemian aristocrats actively betrayed the Habsburg monarchy, facing exile and dispossession. By the middle of the 18th century, the Slavic Bohemian language and culture greatly faded in use among the upper class, relegating native traditions to the peasantry and a small subsection of the aristocracy.
Augustine Spiga's invasion of the Austrian Empire in the early 19th century saw the sudden proliferation of a constructed Bohemian nationalism across the Crown lands. In 1803, the Sternberg clan, a Bohemian noble family with ancient Slavic roots, were installed as the new Kings of Bohemia as a 'native' alternative to the Habsburg emperors which had ruled the country for the past three centuries. The Treaty of Vienna in 1814 brought an end to this independent Bohemian experiment, bringing the Crown again under Austrian control.
From 1814–1929, Bohemian identity and nationalism would be heavily suppressed by proponents of both Neostabilism and Faramundism, the two most popular geopolitical ideologies in Austria at the turn of the century. 1894 saw the formation of the Royalist Association of the Bohemian Countryside (RSČV; Roajalistickíj spolek českého venkova), a monarchist political organization established in exile in the Illyrian city of Belgrade. King Toma I officially endorsed the RSČV in 1930, nearly a year after the formal establishment of the Tripartite Coalition. Three years later, Toma I met with Bohemian aristocrat Adam Philipp von Sternberg, solidifying Illyria as the primary international supporter of the Bohemian independence movement. In 1939, the Congress of Amsterdam concluded the Great War and granted Bohemia full political sovereignty.
Government and Politics
Notes
- 1.^ Běženci (borrowed from Russian; 'refugee') refers to post-1935 Austrian immigrants who fled the turmoil of the Great War and the Civil War.
