Could Czech and Slovak have been united under one state (regardless if kingdom or republic)?
Would have been possible a medieval or pre-World War Czechoslovakia?
- Thread starter roderickgibsono
- Start date
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
It had it. The thing was around for fifty something years. The trick is bringing it for a comeback after the dark ages to the high medieval period or modern pre-twentieth century period for a longer, multi-century timeframe. I'm sure it could be engineered. Czechoslovakia is highly unlikely to have been its name.
Would it go like this : Bohemo-Nytra?
Or probably just Bohemia?
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
Yuck- any name relying on hyphenation sounds too modernistic
far more likely
Well arguably Great Moravia was "medieval Czechoslovakia" so you'd need it not to collapse, probably if Hungarians went somewhere else that would be doable.
I think for Moravia it'd be the best if they didn't cross the Carpathians at all.
I don't think they'd be able to do so, it needs serious Hungary-screw to do that and also, Hussite movement never had any significant following in Slovakia, it had more followers even in Poland when some major magnates were sympathetic and any state established by succesful Hussites would probably also include Poland.
Veeery unlikely without the two countries having some sort of a shared state centuries earlier.
This gets even more unlikely when you factor in that Slovakia was never independent within the Kingdom of Hungary (i.e. with some special political status of its own since the Middle Ages). It would be like if the south of England broke off from northern England in medieval times and joined medieval Wales, with Wales calling the shots. Super-unlikely, to outright ASB levels.
Also, this gets even more anachronistic when you consider a Czech national movement and a Slovak national movement fully arose only in the late 18th and early 19th century. The Slovak movement was inconvenienced since its early days by factors such as one particular faction or branch of Slovak patriots even refusing to regard Slovak as a language distinct from Czech, and lobbying for Slovaks adopting Czech instead of a standardized Slovak language, and leaving Slovak dialects as curios. To no one's surprise, that particular branch of the national movement died out pretty quickly, already before the 1840s. The branch of the national movement that clearly articulated there should be a standardized language for formal use, literature and culture became the mainstream and dominant faction. Even 170 years later, the reason Slovakia exists at all as a distinct nation was thanks to that stubborn faction.
Not a recipe to win over the populace, especially when the thing Hussites were doing the most in various regions was looting, burning down people's homes and fighting soldiers from local garrisons and town militias.
This gets even more unlikely when you factor in that Slovakia was never independent within the Kingdom of Hungary (i.e. with some special political status of its own since the Middle Ages). It would be like if the south of England broke off from northern England in medieval times and joined medieval Wales, with Wales calling the shots. Super-unlikely, to outright ASB levels.
Also, this gets even more anachronistic when you consider a Czech national movement and a Slovak national movement fully arose only in the late 18th and early 19th century. The Slovak movement was inconvenienced since its early days by factors such as one particular faction or branch of Slovak patriots even refusing to regard Slovak as a language distinct from Czech, and lobbying for Slovaks adopting Czech instead of a standardized Slovak language, and leaving Slovak dialects as curios. To no one's surprise, that particular branch of the national movement died out pretty quickly, already before the 1840s. The branch of the national movement that clearly articulated there should be a standardized language for formal use, literature and culture became the mainstream and dominant faction. Even 170 years later, the reason Slovakia exists at all as a distinct nation was thanks to that stubborn faction.
The talk of Hussites is pretty rich, given that Slovakia suffered pretty badly from Hussite raid campaigns and later the bratrík raid campaigns.
Not a recipe to win over the populace, especially when the thing Hussites were doing the most in various regions was looting, burning down people's homes and fighting soldiers from local garrisons and town militias.
Precisely. Which is why I'm emphasizing that transposing 18th and 19th century Czech and Slovak cultural and political alliances of convenience onto 15th century medieval attitudes is a fool's errand.
Anachronistic. The Czech lands became referred to as Bohemia on a regular only much later in the Middle Ages. And that was as part of the HRE.
Whatever ATL outcome to Great Moravia continuing or getting wanked, the end result would be a butterflying away of Slovakia and what makes it Slovakia and a butterlfying away of the Czech lands and what made them the Czech lands.
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Give who an independent house ?
The Czech lands, Bohemia and Moravia included, had a variety of local and foreign rulers between 1000 and 1918.
It wasn't a "post-Napoleon creation". There was no legally recognized Slovakia, in the sense of a country part of a larger state, until 1918.
Neither the Habsburg monarchy as a whole, nor Austria-Hungary (post-1867) had any sort of recognized self-governing Slovakia set up.
My assessment is that Czechoslovakia is a somewhat artificial national entity - after all, Czechs and Slovaks were never under a single unitary state, even factoring in the times when Bohemia and Hungary were under a single ruler (so basically from Matthias Corvinus onward). Combining them into a single state was a result of 19th century historical events as well as the fact that a single Czechoslovak state was more useful to the Entente geopolitically than separate Czech and Slovak states.
@Petike, correct me if I'm wrong though.
@Petike, correct me if I'm wrong though.
Well, it had to be an artificial national entity, due to several pragmatic reasons.
Me and many other people have written about at length about why Czechoslovakia made more strategic sense after WWI, rather than an independent Czechia and an independent Slovakia right from the outset. By the early 1990s, most of those original reasons had become obsolete, since a lot had changed infrastructurally and socially in just over eighty years.
You've actually summed it up very, very accurately.
The closest OTL equivalent or precedent would be the short-lived personal union in the late Middle Ages that you've mentioned.
Make it happen earlier in the 15th century, last into the 16th and keep "Hungaro-Bohemia" separate from the Habsburgs, but their ally in opposing the Ottomans (and don't leave the Hungarian aristocracy to lose their mojo and get badly burned at Mohács as a result) and you could see something like a longer-lived version of the Hungarian-Polish personal union under Louis I during the latter half of the 14th century, or some sort of Bohemian and Hungarian equivalent to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (though hopefully better run).
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Well the name of the state might sould similar to OTL Slovakia (after all, Rastislav was called in "Pannonian legend" - "Rastislav, knez slovensk" and Svatopluk was called "Rex Sclavorum" in Papal correspondence with him), but it'd be rather "pan-Western Slavic state" than anything known from OTL considering it's core were lands of Moravia proper and they probably conquered half of Poland and the rest would probably become their vassal down the road.
What about the Kingdom of Hungary never reuniting after the chaos followind the extintion of the Árpád Dynasty? The oligarch's Máté Csák's territory corresponded more or less with western Slovakia and he was maybe the strongest of the oligarch's. If the Kingdom fails to reunite the territories of the various oligarchs would become independent realms after a while. Have the one ruled by the Csák's be united with the Kingdom of Bohemia and you have your solution.
That still won't be Czechoslovakia as Luxembourgs would rule Poland without Angevins reuniting Hungary and sincerely I don't know what would happen with rest of the country if it fails to reunite, Croatia would probably go independent under Subić dynasty and also wars between various oligarchs would bleed the country as much as it was bled during the Turkish wars IOTL, maybe ITTL main centre of Hungarian culture would be east of Tisza (as Kan domains were the stablest during civil war period), while lands west of it would be more connected to "Luxembourg-Slavic" culture, since I imagine if Luxembourgs take Csak domain and Lokietek loses the throne in Poland, what's really stopping them from taking lands further south, which would be I assume depopulated from various struggles and the main vawe of settlement would be from "Slovakia", Bohemia and Poland.
In that case the Luxembourgs can revive the Polabians if they still get Brandenburg.
I don't think they needed reviving, they were still there as peasants and probably nobility would just blend in "Luxembourg-Slavic culture"