History of Czechia: a timeline

34 moments in the history of Czechia, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Before the Czech state (400 BC–880)
  2. The Přemyslids (880–1306)
  3. The Luxembourgs (1310–1419)
  4. The Hussite and Jagiellonian age (1419–1526)
  5. The early Habsburgs (1526–1620)
  6. Temno and the Baroque (1620–1780)
  7. Reform and revival (1780–1914)
  8. War and the First Republic (1914–1938)
  9. Munich, the war and after (1938–1948)
  10. Communism (1948–1989)
  11. Free again (1989–)

Before the Czech state (400 BC–880)

  1. c. 400 BC: The Boii give Bohemia its name — Long before any Slavs, a Celtic people called the Boii lived in the land.
  2. c. 550: The Slavs arrive — In the sixth century Slavic tribes settled Bohemia and Moravia.
  3. 863: Cyril and Methodius come to Great Moravia — Prince Rastislav of Great Moravia, the first large Slavic state in the region, asked the Byzantine emperor for teachers who could preach in the Slavs' own…

The Přemyslids (880–1306)

  1. c. 880: Prague Castle is founded — Around 880 Prince Bořivoj, the first Přemyslid whose existence historians can confirm, traditionally moved his seat to a ridge above the Vltava and built a…
  2. 28 September 935: Prince Wenceslas is murdered — Prince Wenceslas (Václav), a Christian ruler, was killed by his brother Boleslav at Stará Boleslav on 28 September — in 935, according to most historians,…
  3. 26 September 1212: The Golden Bull of Sicily — In 1212 the future emperor Frederick II confirmed, in a charter sealed with gold, the royal title Přemysl Otakar I had held since 1198 — for him and his…
  4. 4 August 1306: The last Přemyslid dies — The sixteen-year-old King Wenceslas III was murdered in Olomouc in 1306, and the Přemyslid male line ended with him.

The Luxembourgs (1310–1419)

  1. 7 April 1348: Charles IV founds a university — Charles IV, son of John of Luxembourg and Elizabeth Přemyslovna, was King of Bohemia from 1346 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1355, and he made Prague his…
  2. 1357: Work begins on Charles Bridge — The foundation stone of the stone bridge over the Vltava was laid in 1357.
  3. 6 July 1415: Jan Hus is burned at Constance — Jan Hus, a priest and master of Prague University, preached in Czech at the Bethlehem Chapel against the wealth and corruption of the Church.

The Hussite and Jagiellonian age (1419–1526)

  1. 30 July 1419–1434: The first defenestration and the Hussite wars — On 30 July 1419 a procession of Hus's followers led by the preacher Jan Želivský stormed the New Town Hall in Prague and threw the councillors from its…

The early Habsburgs (1526–1620)

  1. 1526: The Habsburgs take the Czech throne — When King Louis Jagiellon died at Mohács in 1526, drowning as he fled the Ottomans, the Czech estates elected Ferdinand I of Habsburg as their king that…
  2. 1583–1612: Rudolf II's Prague — Emperor Rudolf II moved his court from Vienna to Prague in 1583 and filled the castle with painters, astronomers and alchemists.
  3. 23 May 1618: The defenestration of 1618 — Protestant nobles, angry that their religious freedoms were being broken, threw two royal governors, Martinic and Slavata, and their secretary out of a window…

Temno and the Baroque (1620–1780)

  1. 8 November 1620: The Battle of White Mountain — The army of the Czech estates was defeated in about two hours on White Mountain, just outside Prague, on 8 November 1620.
  2. 1628: Comenius goes into exile — After White Mountain the Habsburgs made Catholicism the only permitted religion (1627), and German gained equal standing with Czech.

Reform and revival (1780–1914)

  1. 1781: Toleration, and the end of serfdom — In 1781 Emperor Joseph II allowed Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Christians to worship again with the Patent of Toleration, and abolished serfdom in the…
  2. 1834–1839: The National Revival and Jungmann's dictionary — By 1800 Czech was spoken mostly in villages; the educated wrote in German.
  3. 1855: Božena Němcová's The Grandmother — Božena Němcová published Babička, The Grandmother, in 1855: a year in the life of a country grandmother and the children she brings up, in a valley in east…
  4. 18 November 1883: The National Theatre reopens — The National Theatre on the Vltava was paid for largely by public collections.

War and the First Republic (1914–1938)

  1. 1914–1918: The First World War — Czech men fought in the Austro-Hungarian army, many of them on the Italian and Eastern fronts, without much wish to die for the Habsburgs.
  2. 28 October 1918: Czechoslovakia is born — On 28 October 1918, as Austria-Hungary collapsed, the independent Czechoslovak state was declared in Prague.
  3. 1920: The word robot — Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., published in 1920 and first staged in 1921, is about artificial workers who rise against the people who made them.

Munich, the war and after (1938–1948)

  1. 29–30 September 1938: The Munich Agreement — In the night of 29–30 September 1938, Germany, Italy, Britain and France agreed in Munich that Czechoslovakia must hand its border regions, the Sudetenland, to…
  2. 15 March 1939: The occupation begins — On 15 March 1939 German troops occupied what remained of Bohemia and Moravia, which Hitler declared the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Slovakia became a…
  3. 27 May 1942: Operation Anthropoid and Lidice — On 27 May 1942 two Czechoslovak soldiers who had parachuted in from Britain months before, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, attacked Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi…
  4. 5–9 May 1945: The Prague Uprising and liberation — Prague rose against the German garrison on 5 May 1945, and the Red Army reached the city on 9 May; the west of the country, with Plzeň, had been liberated by…

Communism (1948–1989)

  1. 25 February 1948: The communists take power — In February 1948 the Communist Party, already the largest party in government, used a government crisis, the police and workers' militias to take full power.
  2. 21 August 1968: The Prague Spring, and the invasion — In 1968 the party leader Alexander Dubček loosened censorship and promised socialism with a human face.
  3. 16 January 1969: Jan Palach's protest — On 16 January 1969 Jan Palach, a twenty-year-old student, set himself on fire at the top of Wenceslas Square in protest at the country's surrender after the…
  4. January 1977: Charter 77 — In January 1977 a group of citizens published Charter 77, a document asking the state simply to keep the human-rights agreements it had itself signed.

Free again (1989–)

  1. 17 November 1989: The Velvet Revolution — On 17 November 1989 riot police beat a peaceful student march on Národní třída in Prague.
  2. 1 January 1993: Czechoslovakia divides — On 1 January 1993 Czechoslovakia split peacefully into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, after the two governments agreed on it and the federal…
  3. 1 May 2004: Czechia joins the European Union — The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004, and the Schengen area at the end of 2007, which took the checks off its borders.