ABSTRACT
In discussing the history of the Czech Lands after 1848–1849 it is possible to distinguish a number of periods, the first of them running down to 1878. However, fundamental to their history throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was their growth in population and its rapidly changing distribution. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, therefore, mounting population pressure in the Czech Lands demanded change for survival’s sake, if for nothing else. The growth in numbers was not steady; and so neither was the demand. Thereafter, in a period of overall population growth throughout the Czech Lands, the Czechs multiplied faster than the Germans. Demographic change in the Czech Lands was interlaced with steady economic and social development. The thirty years after 1848–1849 were characterised in particular by the first real momentum in industrialisation.
