Bohemia

Bohemia (/boʊˈhiːmiə/ boh-HEE-mee-ə; Czech: Čechy [ˈtʃɛxɪ] ^ⓘ; German: Böhmen [ˈbøːmən] ^ⓘ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.

Bohemia became a part of Great Moravia, and then an independent principality, which became a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire. This subsequently became a part of the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian Empire. After World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, the whole of Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia, defying claims of the German-speaking inhabitants that regions with German-speaking majority should be included in the Republic of German-Austria. Between 1938 and 1945, these border regions were annexed to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland.

The remainder of Czech territory became the Second Czechoslovak Republic and was subsequently occupied as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia until the end of World War II, after which Bohemia became part of the restored Czechoslovakia. In 1968, the Czech lands (including Bohemia) were invaded by Warsaw Pact troops sent by the Soviet Union and stayed under occupation as the Czech Socialist Republic until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which became a separate state in 1993 with the breakup of Czechoslovakia.

Until 1948, Bohemia was an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its "lands" (země). Since then, administrative reforms have replaced self-governing lands with a modified system of "regions" (kraje), which do not follow the borders of the historical Czech lands (or the regions from the 1960 and 2000 reforms). However, the three lands are mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution of the Czech Republic: "We, citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia..."

Bohemia had an area of 52,065 km² (20,102 sq mi), and today is home to about 6.9 million of the Czech Republic's 10.9 million inhabitants. Bohemia was bordered in the south by Upper and Lower Austria (both in Austria), in the west by Bavaria (in Germany), and in the north by Saxony and Lusatia (in Germany and Poland, respectively), in the northeast by Silesia (in Poland), and in the east by Moravia (also part of the Czech Republic). Bohemia's borders were mostly marked by mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Giant Mountains; the Bohemian-Moravian border roughly follows the Elbe-Danube watershed.

In the second century BC, the Romans competed for dominance in northern Italy with various peoples, including the Gauls-Celtic tribe Boii. The Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia (194 BC) and the Battle of Mutina (193 BC). Afterward, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps. Much later Roman authors refer to the area they had once occupied (the "desert of the Boii", as Pliny and Strabo called it) as Boiohaemum. The earliest mention is in Tacitus' Germania 28 (written at the end of the first century AD), and later mentions of the same name are in Strabo and Velleius Paterculus. The name appears to consist of the tribal name Boio- plus the Proto-Germanic noun *haimaz "home" (whence Gothic haims, German Heim, Heimat, English home), indicating a Proto-Germanic *Bajahaimaz.

Boiohaemum was apparently isolated to the area where King Marobod's kingdom was centered, within the Hercynian forest. Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII in his 10th-century work De Administrando Imperio also mentioned the region as Boiki (see White Serbia).

The Czech name "Čechy" is derived from the name of the Slavic ethnic group, the Czechs, who settled in the area during the sixth or seventh century AD.