Origins of Czechoslovakia

The creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 was the culmination of the long struggle of the Czechs against their Austrian rulers and of the Slovaks against Hungarisation and their Hungarian rulers.

The ancestors of the Czechs and Slovaks were united in the so-called "Samo Empire" for some thirty years in the seventh century. The ancestors of the Slovaks and Moravians were later united in Great Moravia between 833 and 907. The Czechs were only part of Great Moravia for some seven years before splitting from it in 895. Furthermore, in the second half of the tenth century, the Czechs conquered and controlled western Slovakia for around thirty years. This was the last time the two nations were united; the Hungarians had conquered Slovakia by the eleventh century, while the Czechs maintained their own principality (a kingdom since 1198) of Bohemia, from around 900 to 1919.

Both Czechs and Slovaks struggled against a powerful neighbouring people; Germans in the case of the Czechs, Hungarians in the case of the Slovaks (see History of the Czech Republic and History of Slovakia). Contacts between the Czechs and Slovaks arose in the late fourteenth century, when Slovaks started to study at the University of Prague; in the fifteenth century, with the campaigns of the Czech Hussite armies to Slovakia; and in the seventeenth century, when Czech Protestants fled to Slovakia. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, some educated Slovaks used written Czech as well as Slovak and Latin (see History of the Slovak language). The Czechs and Slovaks were also formally united in 1436–1439, 1453–1457, and 1490–1918, when Hungary (which included Slovakia), Bohemia and other Central European states were ruled by the same kings.

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