2. Where is the Czech Republic

2.2. Political/administrative location

The traditional delimitation of the territory is a political delimitation using the state borders. The course of the Czech state borders is mostly historically substantiated. In fact, the modern Czech state borders are stable from 1918 (independent republic of Czechoslovakia) but there are some historical milestones which changed the course of the borders.

1. First Czechoslovak Republic

The existence of the independent state (Czechoslovak Republic) started in 1918. There was delimitated a new borderline which was based on then existing state borders (borders of Bohemian Crown which used to be a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire), reflected nationality displacement (Slovakian-Hungarian borders were not historically substantiated) and the fact that new Czechoslovakia joined the winning Allied powers and then it could claim areas which were strategically important even if they were inhabited with people with non-Czech or Slovak origin (Germans, Polish, Hungarian and Ruthenian). This new country incorporated the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) and parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (Slovakia and the Carpathian Ruthenia).

The 27 % of the population of former Austria-Hungary was now part of a new state.


2. Second World War

The period of the Second War War hit very hard the territorial integrity of the Czechoslovakia. Poland annexed the Zaolží area around town Český Těšín (nowadays splited between Czechia and Poland) in 1938. Hungary gained parts of Slovakia and the Subcarpathian Rus. The remainders of Slovakia seceded from Czecho-Slovakia in 1939, and allyied with Hitler's Germany.

The border regions of Bohemia, Silesia and Moravia with the German nation majority - so called Sudetenland was attached to the Third Reich. The remaining Czech territory was occupied by Germany and transformed into the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

After the Second World War the borders were returned to the prewar extent.

3. Czech-Slovak"divorce" in 1993

After the dozens of years without any extensive borderline changes and after the Velvet Revolution (change of the political regime) a new territorial change came in 1993. On 1 January 1993, the Czechoslovak Federal Republic (from 1989 successor state of socialistic Czechoslovakia) peacefully split into two independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. New borderlines between both countries were set.