Czech Republic

The larger half of the Velvet Divorce, and one of the oldest continuous political units in central Europe. Bohemia was a kingdom from the twelfth century and an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, and Prague under Charles IV in the fourteenth was the imperial capital, with the first university north of the Alps and east of Paris. Jan Hus was burned in 1415 and the Hussite wars that followed anticipated the Reformation by a century. Defeat at the White Mountain in 1620 began three hundred years of Habsburg rule, re-Catholicisation and the near-eclipse of Czech as a written language, which the nineteenth-century national revival deliberately rebuilt. The country's twentieth century ran through Munich, occupation, the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, Stalinist show trials, 1968, and 1989. It separated from Slovakia in 1993 and joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004, keeping its own currency. Industry remains unusually large as a share of the economy, and the country is among the world's biggest car producers per head. Prague was spared wartime destruction and its centre is a World Heritage site. Czechia was adopted as the short name in 2016. Beer consumption per person is the highest anywhere. Prague is the capital and Brno the second city. The country has about 10.9 million people. Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia are its historic lands. Pilsner lager was first brewed at Plzen in 1842. The country is landlocked and surrounded by four neighbours. Charles University in Prague was founded in 1348.

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