ABSTRACT
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe, just like Hungary and Slovakia. It has approximately 10 million inhabitants and borders Poland, Germany, Austria and Slovakia.
The Czech Republic’s history can be traced back to the fifth century ad when Slavic tribes settled in the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. The Czechs founded the kingdom of Bohemia and the Premyslide dynasty ruled Bohemia and Moravia from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, made Prague the capital and a centre of Latin scholarship. The area was dominated by Germany until the Hussite movement in the fourteenth century, which revived Czech nationalism. From the middle of the sixteenth century until the end of World War I, Bohemia was ruled by the Austrian empire. Between 1618 and 1648 the Czech people fought for their freedom in the Thirty Years War against the Habsburgs, but were defeated.
