History of Slovakia
Encyclopedia
This article discusses the history of the territory of Slovakia
.
puts the oldest surviving archaeological artifacts from Slovakia - found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom
- at 270,000 BCE, in the Early Paleolithic
era. These ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique
, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia.
Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era (200,000 - 80,000 BCE) come from the Prepost cave (Prepoštská jaskyňa) near Bojnice
and from other nearby sites. The most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal
cranium (c. 200,000 BCE), discovered near Gánovce
, a village in northern Slovakia.
Archaeologists have found prehistoric Homo sapiens skeletons in the region, as well as numerous objects and vestiges of the Gravettian
culture, principally in the river valleys of Nitra
, Hron
, Ipeľ
, Váh
and as far as the city of Žilina
, and near the foot of the Vihorlat, Inovec, and Tribeč
mountains, as well as in the Myjava
Mountains. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth
-bone (22 800 BCE), the famous Venus of Moravany
. The figurine was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom
near Piešťany
. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods
of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Moravany-Žákovská
, Podkovice, Hubina
and Radošina
. These findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe
.
in several archaeological digs and burial places scattered across Slovakia, surprisingly including northern regions at relatively high altitudes, gives evidence of human habitation in the Neolithic
period. The pottery found in Želiezovce, Gemer
, and the Bukové hory massif is characterized by remarkable modeling and delicate linear decoration. It also reveals the first attempts at coloring. This deliberate adornment shows a developed aesthetic sense of the Neolithic craftsmen.
Important archaeological discoveries have been made in several formerly-inhabited caves. For example, humans inhabited the famous Domica
cave, almost 6000 meters long, to a depth of 700 meters. This cave offers one of the biggest Neolithic deposits in Europe. The tribes who created the pottery from the Massif Bukové hory inhabited Domica continuously for more than 800 years.
The transition to the Neolithic era in Central Europe featured the development of agriculture and the clearing of pastures, the first smelting of metals at the local level, the "Retz" style pottery and also fluted pottery. During the "fluted-pottery" era, people built several fortified sites. Some vestiges of these remain today, especially in high-altitude areas. Pits surround the most well-known of these sites at Nitriansky Hrádok
. Starting in the Neolithic era, the geographic location of present-day Slovakia hosted a dense trade-network for goods such as shells, amber
, jewels and weapons. As a result, it became an important hub in the system of European trade routes.
on the territory of Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BCE. Major cultural, economic, and political development can be attributed to the significant growth in production of copper
, especially in central Slovakia (for example in Špania Dolina
) and north-west Slovakia. Copper became a stable source of prosperity for the local population. After the disappearance of the Čakany and Velatice
cultures, the Lusatian
people expanded building of strong and complex fortifications, with the large permanent buildings and administrative centers. Excavations of Lusatian hill fort
s document the substantial development of trade and agriculture at that period.
The richness and the diversity of tombs increased considerably. The inhabitants of the area manufactured arms, shields, jewelry, dishes, and statues. The arrival of tribes from Thrace
disrupted the people of the Calenderberg culture, who lived in the hamlets located on the plain (Sereď
), and also in the hill forts located on the summits (Smolenice
, Molpí). The local power of the "Princes" of the Hallstatt culture
disappeared in Slovakia during the last period of the Iron Age
after strife between the Scytho-Thracian people and the Celt
ic tribes, who advanced from the south towards the north, following the Slovak rivers.
The victory of the Celts marked the beginning of the late Iron Age
in the region. Two major Celtic tribes living in Slovakia were Cotini
and Boii
. Cotini were probably identical or made significant part of so-called Púchov culture
. The Celts built large oppida
in Bratislava
and Liptov
(the Havránok
shrine). Silver coins with the names of Celtic kings, the so-called Biatec
s, represent the first known use of writing in Slovakia. Celtic dominance disappeared with the Germanic
incursions, the victory of Dacia
over the Boii near the Neusiedler See
, and the expansion of the Roman Empire
.
s on this territory that led to a war against the Marcomanni
and Quadi
tribes. The Kingdom of Vannius
, a barbarian
kingdom founded by the Quadi, existed in western and central Slovakia from 20 to 50 AD. The Romans and their armies occupied only a thin strip of the right bank of the Danube and a very small part of south-western Slovakia (Celemantia
, Gerulata
, Devín Castle
).
Only in 174 CE did the emperor Marcus Aurelius penetrate deeper into the river valleys of Váh, Nitra and Hron. On the banks of the Hron he wrote his philosophical work Meditations
. In 179 CE, a Roman legion engraved on the rock of the Trenčín Castle
the ancient name of Trenčín
(Laugaritio), marking the furthest northern point of their presence in this part of Europe.
began to leave the Central Asia
n steppes. They crossed the Danube in 377 CE and occupied Pannonia, which they used for 75 years as their base for launching looting-raids into Western Europe.
In 451, under the command of Attila, they crossed the Rhine and laid Gaul
to waste; then crossed even the Pyrenees
, devastating the countryside of Catalonia
. However, Attila's death in 453 brought about the disappearance of the Hun tribe.
After the Huns in the 5-6th century German tribes began to settle in the Pannonian Basin Ostrogoths, Lombards
, Gepids, Heruli
. Their reign and rivalry determined the events during the first two-thirds of the 6th century. In the 6th century, an early Lombard state was centered in the territory of present-day Slovakia. Subsequently, the Lombards left from this area and moved first to Pannonia
and then to Italy
, where their statehood was continued until the 11th century.
In 568 a nomadic tribe, the Avars
, conducted their own invasion into the Middle Danube region. The Avars occupied the lowlands of the Pannonian Plain, established an empire dominating the Pannonian Basin
and they made several raids against the Byzantine Empire
whose emperors sent gifts regularly to them in order to avoid their attacks. In 623, the Slavic population living in the western parts of Pannonia
seceded from their empire. In 626, the Avars and the Persians
jointly besieged but failed to capture Constantinople
; following this failure, the Avars' prestige and power declined and they lost the control over their former territories outside the Pannonian Basin but their reign has lasted to 804.
, the Dniestr and the Danube
, including present-day Slovakia, Pannonia
and Carantania.
Based on their interpretation of recent archeological and literal sources, a minority of historians and linguists has developed an alternative theory holding that Slav tribes emerged on this territory thousands of years BCE, evolving from sedentary indigenous peoples in the midst of Celtic and Germanic tribal movements. The best known proponent has been the Russian Slavic and Hungarian linguist Oleg Nikolayevitch Trubatchov, the main editor of the monumental Ethymological Dictionary of Slavic languages, who wrote a detailed book on this theory. Also, Greek and Roman texts provide possible evidence of an older Slavic presence in the area. For example they contend that the first reference to the Slavs — Vénèdes — appears in a work by Herodotus
of Halicarnassus
dated 400 BCE.
Mention of the Slav presence also comes in the writings of Pliny the Elder
(79 CE) and of Tacitus Cornelius (55-116 CE). The first designation of the Slavs in the Latin form Souveni appears in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus
in 160 CE. The Slavs of the middle Danube before the 8th century, who lived on the present-day territories of Slovakia, of north and west Hungary, Moravia, Pannonia, Austria and Slovenia, used this name in the form Sloveni (*Slověne).
Recent research has discovered evidence of the co-existence of the Slavs and the Celtic tribes in the region of Liptov in northern Slovakia, near the area of Liptovská Mara. Investigators discovered six Celto-Slav colonies and the site of a castle with a sanctuary in its center, used for Celtic and Slav rites. Slav tribes also coexisted with the Germanic Quadi
, according to the latest findings of the Czech
archeologist J. Poulík.
The two competing theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Contemporary scholarship in general has moved away from the idea of monolithic nations and the Urheimat debates of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and its focus of interest is that of a process of ethnogenesis, regarding competing Urheimat scenarios as false dichotomies.
, after a successful Slavic insurrection against the Avar Khaganate
in 623. In 631, Samo defeated the Frankish
army of King Dagobert I
at the Battle of Wogastisburg
. Samo's Empire, the first known political formation of Slavs, disappeared after the death of its founder in 665 and its territory was again included into Avar Khaganate.
appeared in the Pannonian Basin (identified as Onogurs
), and shortly afterwards the Avars could expand their territories even also over the Vienna Basin
. However, archaeological findings from the same period (such as an exquisite noble tomb in Blatnica
) also indicate formation of a Slavic
upper class on the territory that later became the nucleus of Great Moravia.
The Avar supremacy over southern Slovakia lasted until 803 - the year when Charlemagne
, helped by the Slavs living north of the Danube (in the nucleus of the future Principality of Nitra
), defeated the Avars, who eventually became assimilated into the local Slavic populations.
All information, based on written sources, on the "Principality of Nitra" was recorded in two entries in Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum
(The Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians) around 870. Nevertheless, during the first decades of the 9th century, the Slavic people living in the north-western parts of the Pannonian Basin
were under the rule of a tribal leader (styled prince by later historians) whose seat was in Nitra
. An extensive network of settlements developed around the town in the 9th century. In the early 9th century, the polity was situated on the north-western territories of present-day Slovakia
.
Around 828, Archbishop Adalram of Salzburg consecrated a church for Prince Pribina in Nitrava. In 833, Mojmír I, Duke of the Moravians expelled Pribina. Pribina went to count Ratbod, who administered the Eastern March of the Carolingian Empire, where Pribina became the head of a Principality of Lower Pannonia under the suzerainty of East Francia, with his capital of Blatnograd near where the Zala River
flows into the Lake Balaton. Excavations revealed that at least three Nitra castles (Pobedim
, Čingov, and Ostrá skala) were destroyed around the time Pribina was expelled.
Great Moravia arose around 830 when Mojmír I
unified the Slavic tribes settled north of the Danube and extended the Moravian supremacy over them. When Mojmír I endeavoured to secede from the supremacy of the king of East Francia in 846, King Louis the German
deposed him and assisted Mojmír's nephew, Rastislav
(846–870) in acquiring the throne. The new monarch pursued an independent policy: after stopping a Frankish attack in 855, he also sought to weaken influence of Frankish priests preaching in his realm. Rastislav asked the Byzantine Emperor
Michael III
to send teachers who would interpret Christianity in the Slavic vernacular. Upon Rastislav's request, two brothers, Byzantine officials and missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius
came in 863. Cyril
developed the first Slavic alphabet
and translated the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic
language. Rastislav was also preoccupied with the security and administration of his state. Numerous fortified castles built throughout the country are dated to his reign and some of them (e.g., Dowina, sometimes identified with Devín Castle
) are also mentioned in connection with Rastislav by Frankish chronicles.
During Rastislav's reign, the Principality of Nitra was given to his nephew Svatopluk as an appanage. The rebellious prince allied himself with the Franks and overthrew his uncle in 870. Similarly to his predecessor, Svatopluk I (871–894) assumed the title of the king (rex). During his reign, the Great Moravian Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, when not only present-day Moravia and Slovakia but also present-day northern and central Hungary, Lower Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, southern Poland and northern Serbia belonged to the empire, but the exact borders of his domains are still disputed by modern authors. Svatopluk also withstood attacks of the seminomadic Hungarian tribes and the Bulgarian Empire
, although sometimes it was he who hired the Hungarians when waging war against East Francia.
In 880, Pope John VIII
set up an independent ecclesiastical province in Great Moravia with Archbishop Methodius as its head. He also named the German cleric Wiching the Bishop of Nitra
.
After the death of King Svatopluk in 894, his sons Mojmír II
(894-906?) and Svatopluk II
succeeded him as the King of Great Moravia and the Prince of Nitra respectively. However, they started to quarrel for domination of the whole empire. Weakened by an internal conflict as well as by constant warfare with Eastern Francia, Great Moravia lost most of its peripheral territories.
In the meantime, the Hungarian tribes, having suffered a defeat from the nomadic Pechenegs, left their territories east of the Carpathian Mountains, invaded the Pannonian Basin and started to occupy the territory gradually around 896. Their armies' advance may have been promoted by continuous wars among the countries of the region whose rulers still hired them occasionally to intervene in their struggles.
Both Mojmír II and Svatopluk II probably died in battles with the Hungarians between 904 and 907 because their names are not mentioned in written sources after 906. In three battles (4–5 July and 9 August 907) near Brezalauspurc
(now Bratislava), the Hungarians routed Bavaria
n armies. Historians traditionally put this year as the date of the breakup of the Great Moravian Empire.
Great Moravia left behind a lasting legacy in Central and Eastern Europe. The Glagolitic script and its successor Cyrillic were disseminated to other Slavic countries, charting a new path in their cultural development. The administrative system of Great Moravia may have influenced the development of the administration of the Kingdom of Hungary
.
. Although some contemporary sources mention that Great Moravia disappeared without trace and its inhabitants left for the Bulgars, Croats and Hungarians following the latters' victories, but archaeological researches and toponyms
suggest the continuity of Slavic population in the valleys of the rivers of the Inner Western Carpathians
. Toponyms may prove that the seminomadic Hungarians occupied the Western Pannonian Plain in present-day Slovakia, while the hills were inhabited by a mixed (Slav and Hungarian) population and people living in the valleys of the mountains spoke Slavic language
.
Some references even were made to Moravia in the course of the 10th century, and archaeological findings may also refer to the survival of some noble families of Great Moravia. On the other hand, the chroniclers of the early history of the Kingdom of Hungary, recorded that the prominent noble families of the kingdom descended either from leaders of the Hungarian tribes or from immigrants, and they did not connect any of them to Great Moravia. For example, the ancestors of the clan Hunt-Pázmán
(Hont-Pázmány), whose Great Moravian origin has been advanced by modern scholars, were mentioned by Simon of Kéza to have arrived from the Duchy of Swabia
(in the Holy Roman Empire
) to the kingdom in the late 10th century.
The territory of the present-day Slovakia became progressively integrated into the developing state ( the future Kingdom of Hungary
) in the early 10th century. The Gesta Hungarorum
("Deeds of the Hungarians") mentions that Huba, head of one of the seven Hungarian tribes, received possessions around Nyitra / Nitra and the Zsitva / Žitava River
; while according to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum
("Deeds of the Huns and Hungarians") another tribal leader, Lél
settled down around Galgóc / Hlohovec and following the Hungarians' victory over the Moravians', he usually stayed around Nyitra / Nitra. Modern authors also claim that the north-western parts of the Pannonian Basin were occupied by one of the Hungarian tribes.
Between 899 and 970, the Hungarians frequently conducted raids to the territories of present-day Italy
, Germany, France and Spain
and also to the lands of the Byzantine Empire
. Such activities continued westwards until the Battle of Augsburg
on the Lech River in 955, when Otto, King of the Germans
destroyed their troops; their raids against the Byzantine Empire finished only in 970.
From 917, the Hungarians made raids to several territories at the same time which may prove the decay of the uniform direction within their tribal federation. The sources prove the existence of at least three and maximum five groups of tribes within the federation, and only one of them was lead directly by the Árpáds
(the dynasty of the future kings of Hungary) who ruled over the western parts of the Pannonian Basin.
(before 972-997) who expanded his rule over the territories of present-day Slovakia west of the River Garam / Hron
. Although, he was baptised in or after 972, he never became a convinced Christian
– in contrast to his son, Stephen who followed him in 997. Some authors claim that following his marriage with Giselle of Bavaria
, Stephen received the "Duchy of Nitra" in appanage from his father. When Géza died, a member of the Árpád dynasty, the pagan Koppány
claimed the succession, but Stephen defeated him with the assistance of his wife's German retinue. A Slovak folk song mentions that Štefan kral (i.e., King Stephen) could only overcome his pagan opponent with the assistance of Slovak warriors around Bény
/ Bíňa. Following his victory, Stephen received a crown from Pope Silvester II
and he was crowned as the first King of Hungary
in 1000 or 1001.
The Kingdom of Hungary integrated elements of the former Great Moravian state organization. On the other hand, historians has not reached a consensus on this subject; e.g., it is still being debated whether the formation of the basic unit of the administration (vármegye) in the kingdom followed foreign (Bulgarian, Moravian or German) patterns or it was an internal innovation.
Stephen (1000/1001-1038) established at least eight counties ("vármegye") on the territories of present-day Slovakia: Abaúj
/ Abov
, Borsod
/ Boršod, Esztergom
/ Ostrihom, Hont, Komárom
/ Komárno
, Nyitra / Nitra
, Bars
/ Tekov
and Zemplén / Zemplín
were probably founded by him. The scarcely populated northern and north-eastern territories of today Slovakia became the kings' private forests. King Stephen also set up several dioceses in his kingdom; in the 11th century, present-day Slovakia's territories were divided between the Archdiocese of Esztergom (established around 1000) and its suffragan, the Diocese of Eger (founded between 1006–1009).
Around 1003 or 1015, Duke Boleslaw I of Poland
took some territories of present-day Slovakia east of the River Morava, but Hungarian King Stephen recaptured these territories in 1018.
Following King Stephen's death, his kingdom got involved in internal conflicts among the claimants for his crown and Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor
also intervened in the struggles. In 1042, the Emperor Henry captured some parts of today Slovakia east of the River Hron and granted them to King Stephen's cousin, Béla, but following the withdrawal of the Emperor's armies, King Samuel Aba
's troops recaptured the territories.
In 1048, King Andrew I of Hungary conceded one-third of his kingdom
(Tercia pars regni) in appanage to his brother, Duke Béla. The duke's domains were centered around Nyitra / Nitra and Bihar
(in Romanian: Biharea in present-day Romania
). During the following 60 years, the Tercia pars regni were governed separately by members of the Árpád dynasty (i.e., by the Dukes Géza
, Ladislaus, Lampert
and Álmos
). The dukes accepted the kings' supremacy, but some of them (Béla, Géza and Álmos) rebelled against the king in order to acquire the crown and allied themselves with the rulers of the neighbouring countries (e.g., the Holy Roman Empire
, Bohemia
).
The history of the Tercia pars regni ended in 1107, when King Coloman of Hungary occupied its territories taking advantage of the pilgrimage of Duke Álmos (his brother) to the Holy Land. Although, Duke Álmos, when returned to the kingdom, tried to reoccupy his former duchy with the military assistance of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
, but he failed and was obliged to accept the status quo
.
/ Novohrad, while the kings' private forests were organised into "forest counties" around Zólyom / Zvolen and Sáros
/ Šariš Castle.
The colonisation of the northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary continued during the period; Slavic, Hungarian, German and Walloon
"guests" (hospes) arrived to the scarcely populated lands and settled down there. The contemporary documents mention that settlers from Moravia
and Bohemia
arrived to the western parts of present-day Slovakia, while on the northern and eastern parts, Polish
and Ruthenian
"guests" settled down. Royal privileges prove that several families of the developing local nobility (e.g., the Zathureczky, Pominorszky and Viszocsányi families) were of Slavic origin. German "guests" settled down in several future towns (e.g., in Korpona / Krupina
, Óbars / Starý Tekov and Selmecbánya / Banská Štiavnica
already by the first half of the 13th century. The settlers in the Szepes / Spiš
region were originally of Hungarian and Slavic (e.g., Polish) origin; from the 1240s, Walloon "guests" arrived to the region and German settlers joined them.
The territory of present-day Slovakia was rich in raw materials like gold, silver, copper, iron and salt and therefore the mining industry developed gradually in the region. The development of the mining industry and commerce enstrengthened the position of some settlements and they received privileges from the kings: the first town privileges
were granted to Nagyszombat / Trnava
(1238), Óbars / Starý Tekov (1240) and Selmecbánya / Banská Štiavnica
(1241 or 1242) in present-day Slovakia. The inhabitants of the privileged towns were mainly of German origin, but Hungarian and Slavic citizens were also present in the towns. The presence of Jews in several towns of today Slovakia (e.g., in Pozsony / Bratislava, Bazin / Pezinok
) is also documented at least from the 13th century; the Jew's special status was confirmed by a charter of King Béla IV of Hungary
in 1251, but decisions of local synods limited their activities (i.e., they could not hold offices and they could not own lands). The Muslims
, living in the region of Nyitra / Nitra
, also had to face similar limitations and they disappeared (probably became Christian) by the end of the 13th century.
In 1241, the Mongols
invaded and devastated
the north-western parts of the kingdom, only some fortresses (e.g., Trencsén / Trenčín
, Nyitra / Nitra
, Fülek / Fiľakovo
) could resist their attacks. Following the withdrawal of the Mongol troops (1242), several castles were built or enstrengthened (e.g., Komárom
/ Komárno
, Beckó / Beckov
and Zólyom / Zvolen
) on the order of King Béla IV. He also continued his policy of granting town privileges to several settlements, e.g., to Korpona / Krupina
(1244), Nyitra / Nitra
(1248), Besztercebánya / Banská Bystrica
(1255) and Gölnicbánya / Gelnica
(1270). During his reign, new German
immigrants settled down in Szepesvár / Spiš whose privileges were granted in 1271 by King Stephen V of Hungary
.
The last decades of the 13th century were characterized by discords within the royal family and among the several groups of the aristocracy. The decay of the royal power and the rise of some powerful aristocrats gave rise to the transformation of the administrative system: the counties that had been the basic units of the royal administration ("royal counties") transformed gradually into autonomous administrative units of the local nobility ("noble counties"); however, the local nobility was not able to stop the rise of oligarchs.
In present-day Slovakia, most of the castles were owned by two powerful aristocrats (Amade Aba
and Matthew Csák) or their followers. Following the extinction of the Árpád dynasty (1301), both of them pretended to follow one of the claimants for the throne, but, in practice, they governed their territories independently. Amade Aba governed the eastern parts of present-day Slovakia from his seat in Gönc
. He was killed by Charles Robert of Anjou's assassins at the south gate in Kassa / Košice
in 1311.
Matthew Csák was the de facto ruler of the western territories of present-day Slovakia, from his seat at Trencsén / Trenčín
. He allied himself with the murdered Amade Aba's sons against Kassa / Košice, but King Charles I of Hungary
, who had managed to acquire the throne against his opponents, gave military assistance to the town and the royal armies defeated him at the Battle of Rozgony / Rozhanovce
in 1312. However, the north-western counties remained in his power until his death in 1321 when the royal armies occupied his former castles without resistance.
Pozsony / Požoň county was de facto ruled by the Dukes of Austria from 1301 to 1328 when King Charles I of Hungary
reoccupied it.
with Kings John of Bohemia and Casimir III of Poland
in 1335 which increased the trade on the commercial routes leading from Kassa / Košice to Kraków
and from Zsolna / Žilina
to Brno
.
The king confirmed the privileges of the 24 "Saxon
" towns in Szepes / Spiš, strengthened the special rights of Eperjes
/ Prešov
and granted town privileges to Szomolnok / Smolník
. The towns of present-day Slovakia were still dominated by its German citizens. However, the Privilegium pro Slavis
, dated to 1381, attests notably to nation-building
in the wealthy towns: King Louis I gave the Slavs half of the seats in the municipal council of Zsolna / Žilina. Many of the towns (e.g., Besztercebánya / Banská Bystrica, Pozsony / Bratislava, Kassa / Košice, Körmöcbánya / Kremnica and Nagyszombat / Trnava) received the status of "free royal cities" (liberæ regiæ civitates) and they were entitled to send deputies to the assemblies of the Estates of the Kingdom
from 1441.
In the first half of the 14th century, the population of the regions of the former "forest counties" increased and their territories formed new counties such as Árva
/ Orava, Liptó / Liptov, Turóc / Turiec
, Zólyom / Zvolen
in the northern parts of present-day Slovakia. In the region of Szepes / Spiš, some elements of the population received special privileges: the 24 "Saxon" towns formed an autonomous community, independent of Szepes county / Spiš county, and the "nobles with ten lances" were organised into a special autonomous administrative unit ("seat"). In 1412, King Sigismund
mortgaged 13 of the "Saxon" towns to King Władysław II of Poland
so they de facto belonged to Poland until 1769.
From the 1320s, most of the lands of present-day Slovakia were owned by the kings, but prelate
s and aristocratic families (e.g., the Drugeth
, Szentgyörgyi
and Szécsényi
families) also hold properties on the territory. In December 1385, the future King Sigismund, who was Queen Mary of Hungary's prince consort
at that time, mortgaged the territories of present-day Slovakia west of the Vág / Váh River to his cousins, the Margraves Jobst
and Prokop of Moravia; and the former held his territories until 1389, while the latter could maintain his rule over some of the territories until 1405. King Sigismund (1387–1437) granted vast territories to his followers (e.g., to the members of the Cillei, Rozgonyi and Perényi families) during his reign; one of his principal advisers, the Polish Stibor of Stiboricz
styled himself "Lord of the whole Váh" referring to his 10 castles around the river.
Following the death of King Albert
(1439), civil war broke out among the followers of the claimants for the throne. The Dowager Queen Elisabeth hired Czech mercenaries
led by Jan Jiskra who captured several towns on the territory of present-day Slovakia (e.g., Körmöcbánya / Kremnica, Lőcse / Levoča
and Bártfa / Bardejov
) and maintained most of them until 1462 when he surrendered to King Matthias Corvinus
.
conquered the central part of the former Kingdom of Hungary, and set up a Ottoman provinces there (see Budin Eyalet, Eğri Eyalet, Uyvar Eyalet
).
Transylvania became a Ottoman protectorate vassal and a base which gave birth to all the anti-Habsburg revolts led by the nobility of the Kingdom of Hungary during the period 1604 to 1711.
The remaining part of the former Kingdom of Hungary, which included much of present-day territory of Slovakia (except for the southern central regions), northwestern present-day Hungary, northern Croatia and present-day Burgenland, resisted Ottoman conquest and subsequently became a province of the Habsburg Monarchy
. It remained to be known as the Kingdom of Hungary, but it is referred to by some modern historians as the "Royal Hungary
".
Ferdinand I, prince of Austria was elected king of Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. After the conquest of Buda in 1541 by the Ottomans, Pressburg (the modern-day capital of Slovakia, Bratislava
) became, for the period between 1536 to 1784/1848 the capital and the coronation city of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.
From 1526 to 1830, nineteen Habsburg sovereigns went through coronation ceremonies as Kings and Queens of the Kingdom of Hungary in St. Martin's Cathedral
.
Due to the Ottoman invasion, the territories that formerly were administered by the Kingdom of Hungary became, for almost two centuries, the principal battleground of the Turkish wars, and the region paid dearly for the defense of the Habsburg Monarchy (and, moreover, of the rest of Europe) against Ottoman expansion. The territory paid not only with the blood and the goods of its population, but also by losing practically all of its natural riches, especially gold and silver, which went to pay for the costly and difficult combats of an endemic war. In addition, the double taxation
of some areas was a common practice, which further worsened the living standards of the declining population of local settlements.
During Ottoman administration, parts of the territory of present-day Slovakia were included into Ottoman provinces known as the Budin Eyalet, Eğri Eyalet and Uyvar Eyalet
. Uyvar Eyalet had its administrative center in the territory of present-day Slovakia, in the town of Uyvar
(Slovak: Nové Zámky). In the second half of the 17th century, Ottoman authority was expanded to eastern part of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary, where an vassal Ottoman principality led by prince Imre Thököly
was established.
After the ousting of the Ottomans from Budin (which later became Budapest
) in 1686, it became the capital of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. Despite living under Hungarian, Habsburg and Ottoman administration for several centuries, the Slovak people succeeded in keeping their language and their culture. The survival of the Slovaks was aided by the fact that the greatest loss of life were in the areas populated more heavily by Hungarians.
with the aim of fostering a sense of national identity among the Slovak people. Advanced mainly by Slovak religious leaders, the movement grew during the 19th century. At the same time, the movement was divided along the confessional lines and various groups had different views on everything from quotidian strategy to linguistics. Moreover, the Hungarian control remained strict after 1867 and the movement was constrained by the official policy of magyarization
.
The first codification of a Slovak literary language
by Anton Bernolák
in the 1780s was based on the dialect from western Slovakia. It was supported by mainly Roman Catholic intellectuals, with the center in Trnava
. The Lutheran intellectuals continued to use a Slovakized form of the Czech language. Especially Ján Kollár
and Pavel Jozef Šafárik
were adherents of Pan-Slavic concepts that stressed the unity of all Slavic peoples. They considered Czechs and Slovaks
members of a single nation and they attempted to draw the languages closer together.
In the 1840s, the Protestants split as Ľudovít Štúr
developed a literal language based on the dialect from central Slovakia. His followers stressed the separate identity of the Slovak nation and uniqueness of its language. Štúr's version was finally approved by both the Catholics and the Lutherans in 1847 and, after several reforms, it remains the official Slovak language
.
In the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
the Slovak nationalist leaders took the side of the Austrians in order to promote their separation from the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austrian monarchy. The Slovak National Council
even took part in the Austrian military campaign as setting up auxiliary troops against the rebel government of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
. In September, 1848, it managed to organize a short living administration on the captured territories. However, the Slovak troops were later disbanded by the Vienna Imperial Court. On the other hand, tens of thousands of volunteers from the current territory of Slovakia, among them a great number of Slovaks, fought in the Hungarian Army. After the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution, the Hungarian political elite was oppressed by the Austrian authorities, many participant of the Revolution being executed, imprisoned or forced to emigrate. In 1850, with the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into five military districts or provinces, two of them had administrative centers in the territory of present day Slovakia: the Military District of Pressburg ( Bratislava / Pozsony ) and the Military District of Kaschau ( Košice
/ Kassa ).
The Austrian authorities abolished both provinces in 1860. The Slovak political elite made use of the period of neo-absolutism of the Vienna court and the weakness of the traditional Hungarian elite to promote their national goals. Turz-Sankt Martin (Martin
/ Túrócszentmárton) became the foremost center of the Slovak National Movement with foundation of the nationwide cultural association Matica slovenská
(1863), the Slovak National Museum
, and the Slovak National Party
(1871).
The heyday of the movement came to the sudden end after 1867, when the Habsburg
domains in central Europe underwent a constitutional transformation
into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary
as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The territory of present-day Slovakia was included into the Hungarian part of dual Monarchy dominated by the Hungarian political elite which distrusted the Slovak elite due to its Pan-Slavism, separatism and its recent stand against the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
. Matica was accused of Pan-Slavic separatism and was dissolved by the authorities in 1875 and other Slovak institutions (including schools) shared the same fate.
New signs of national and political life appeared only at the very end of the 19th century. Slovaks became aware that they needed to ally themselves with others in their struggle. One result of this awareness, the Congress of Oppressed Peoples of the Kingdom of Hungary, held in Budapest in 1895, alarmed the government. In their struggle Slovaks received a great deal of help from the Czechs. In 1896, the concept of Czecho-Slovak Mutuality was established in Prague to strengthen Czecho-Slovak cooperation and support the secession of Slovaks from the Kingdom of Hungary. At the beginning of the 20th century, growing democratization of political and social life threatened to overwhelm the monarchy. The call for universal suffrage
became the main rallying cry. In the Kingdom of Hungary, only 5 percent of inhabitants could vote. Slovaks saw in the trend towards representative democracy a possibility of easing ethnic oppression and a break-through into renewed political activity.
The Slovak political camp, at the beginning of the century, split into different factions. The leaders of the Slovak National Party based in Martin, expected the international situation to change in the Slovaks' favor, and they put great store by Russia. The Roman Catholic faction of Slovak politicians led by Father Andrej Hlinka
focused on small undertakings among the Slovak public and, shortly before the war, established a political party named the Slovak People's Party
. The liberal intelligentsia
rallying around the journal Hlas ("Voice"), followed a similar political path, but attached more importance to Czecho-Slovak cooperation. An independent Social Democratic Party
emerged in 1905.
The Slovaks achieved some results. One of the greatest of these occurred with the election success in 1906, when, despite continued oppression, seven Slovaks managed to get seats in the Assembly. This success alarmed the government, and increased what was regarded by Slovaks as its oppressive measures. Magyarization achieved its climax with a new education act known as the Apponyi Act, named after education minister Count Albert Apponyi
. The new act stipulated that the teaching of the Hungarian language, as one of the subjects, must be included in the curriculum of non-state owned four years elementary schools in the frame-work of the compulsory schooling, as a condition for the non-state owned schools to receive state-financing. Ethnic tension intensified when 15 Slovaks were killed during a riot on occasion of the consecration of a new church at Černová / Csernova near Rózsahegy / Ružomberok
(see Černová tragedy
). The local inhabitants wanted the popular priest and nationalist politician Andrej Hlinka to consecrate their new church. But bishop Párvy according to the canon law
refused to consent and appointed ethnic Slovak canon Anton Kurimsky, former parish priest of Rózsahegy / Ružomberok
for the task. Local gendarmes, all of them ethnic Slovaks, shot dead 15 Slovak protesters among a crowd of app. 400 rioters who attacked on the priests' convoy escorted by the gendarems. All this added to Slovak estrangement from and resistance to Hungarian rule, and the incident became the topic of a propaganda campaign against Austria-Hungary.
Before the outbreak of World War I, the idea of Slovak autonomy became part of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
's plan of federalization of the monarchy, developed with help of the Slovak journalist and politician Milan Hodža
. This last realistic attempt to tie Slovakia to Austria-Hungary was abandoned because of the Archduke's assassination, which in turn triggered World War I.
After the outbreak of World War I
the Slovak cause took firmer shape in resistance and in determination to leave the Dual Monarchy and to form an independent republic with the Czechs. The decision originated amongst people of Slovak descent in foreign countries. Slovaks in the United States of America, an especially numerous group, formed a sizable organization. These, and other organizations in Russia and in neutral countries, backed the idea of a Czecho-Slovak republic. Slovaks strongly supported this move.
The most important Slovak representative at this time, Milan Rastislav Štefánik
, a French citizen of Slovak origin, served as a French general and as leading representative of the Czecho-Slovak National Council based in Paris. He made a decisive contribution to the success of the Czecho-Slovak cause. Political representatives at home, including representatives of all political persuasions, after some hesitation, gave their support to the activities of Masaryk
, Beneš
and Štefánik.
During the war the Hungarian authorities increased harassment of Slovaks, which hindered the nationalist campaign among the inhabitants of the Slovak lands. Despite stringent censorship, news of moves abroad towards the establishment of a Czech-Slovak state got through to Slovakia and met with much satisfaction.
During World War I
(1914–1918) Czechs, Slovaks, and other national groups of Austria-Hungary gained much support from Czechs and Slovaks living abroad in campaigning for an independent state. In the turbulent final year of the war, sporadic protest actions took place in Slovakia - politicians held a secret meeting at Liptószentmiklós / Liptovský Mikuláš
on 1 May 1918.
At the end of the war Austria-Hungary dissolved. The Prague National Committee proclaimed an independent republic of Czechoslovakia
on 28 October, and, two days later, the Slovak National Council at Martin
acceded to the Prague proclamation. The new republic was to include the Czech lands (Bohemia
and Moravia
), a small part of Silesia
, Slovakia, and Carpatho-Ukraine. The new state set up a parliamentary democratic government and established a capital in the Czech city of Prague
.
As a result of the counter-attack of the Hungarian Red Army in May–June, 1919, Czech troops were ousted out from central and eastern parts of present Slovakia, where an puppet short-lived Slovak Soviet Republic
with capital in Prešov
was established. However, the Hungarian army stopped its offensive, later the troops were withdrawn on the Entente's diplomatic intervention. In the Treaty of Trianon
signed in 1920, the Paris Peace Conference set the southern border of Czechoslovakia further south from the Slovak-Hungarian language border due to strategic and economic reasons. Consequently, some fully or mostly Hungarian-populated areas were also included into Czechoslovakia. According to the 1910 census, which had been manipulated by the ruling Hungarian bureaucracy, population of the present territory of Slovakia numbered 2,914,143 people, including 1,688,413 (57.9%) speakers of Slovak language
, 881,320 (30.2%) speakers of Hungarian language
, 198,405 (6.8%) speakers of German language
, 103,387 (3.5%) speakers of Ruthenian
/Ukrainian language
and 42,618 (1.6%) speakers of other languages. In addition, in Carpatho-Ukraine
, which was also included into Czechoslovakia in this time period, 1910 manipulated Hungarian census recorded 605,942 people, including 330,010 (54.5%) speakers of Ruthenian
/Ukrainian language
, 185,433 (30.6%) speakers of Hungarian language
, 64,257 (10.6%) speakers of German language
, 11,668 (1.9%) speakers of Romanian language
, 6,346 (1%) speakers of Slovak
/Czech language
, and 8,228 (1.4%) speakers of other languages. Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded in Slovakia 3,254,189 people, including 2,224,983 (68.4%) Slovaks
, 585,434 (17.6%) Hungarians, 154,821 (4.5%) Germans
, 120,926 (3.7%) Czechs, 95,359 (2.8%) Ruthenians
/Ukrainians
and 72,666 (3%) others.
Slovaks, whom the Czechs outnumbered in Czechoslovak state, differed in many important ways from their Czech neighbors. Slovakia had a more agrarian and less developed economy than the Czech lands, and the majority of Slovaks practised Catholicism while the Czechs had less likelihood of adhering to established religions. The Slovak people had generally less education and less experience with self-government than the Czechs. These disparities, compounded by centralized governmental control from Prague, produced discontent among Slovaks with the structure of the new state.
Although Czechoslovakia, alone among the only east-central European countries, remained a parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1938, it continued to face minority problems, the most important of which concerned the country's large German population. A significant part of the new Slovak political establishment sought autonomy for Slovakia. The movement toward autonomy built up gradually from the 1920s until it culminated in independence in 1939.
In the period between the two world wars, the Czechoslovak government attempted to industrialize Slovakia. These efforts did not meet with success, partially due to the Great Depression
, the worldwide economic slump of the 1930s. Slovak resentment over perceived economic and political domination by the Czechs led to increasing dissatisfaction with the republic and growing support for ideas of independence. Many Slovaks joined with Father Andrej Hlinka
and Jozef Tiso
in calls for equality between Czechs and Slovaks and for greater autonomy for Slovakia.
In September 1938, France, Italy, United Kingdom and Nazi Germany
concluded the Munich Agreement
, which forced Czechoslovakia to cede the predominantly German region known as the Sudetenland
to Germany. In November, by the First Vienna Award
, Italy and Germany compelled Czechoslovakia (later Slovakia) to cede primarily Hungarian-inhabited Southern Slovakia to Hungary. They did this in spite of pro-German official declarations of Czech and Slovak leaders made in October.
On 14 March 1939, the Slovak Republic
(Slovenská republika) declared its independence and became a nominally independent state in Central Europe under Nazi German
control of foreign policy and, increasingly, also some aspects of domestic policy. Jozef Tiso
became Prime Minister and later President of the new state.
On 15 March, Nazi Germany invaded what remained of Bohemia
, Moravia
, and Silesia
after the Munich agreement. The Germans established a protectorate over them which was known as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
. On the same day, the Carpatho-Ukraine
declared its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. But Hungary immediately invaded and annexed the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. On 23 March, Hungary then occupied some additional disputed parts of territory of the present-day Eastern-Slovakia. This caused the brief Slovak-Hungarian War
.
The nominally-independent Slovak Republic
went through the early years of the war in relative peace. As an Axis
ally, the country took part in the wars against Poland
and the Soviet Union. Although its contribution was symbolic in the German war efforts, the number of troops involved (approx. 45,000 in the Soviet campaign) was rather significant in proportion to the population (2.6 million in 1940).
Soon after independence, under the authoritarian government of Jozef Tiso, a series of measures aimed against the 90,000 Jews in the country were initiated. The Hlinka's Guard began to attack Jews, and the "Jewish Code" was passed in September 1941. Resembling the Nuremberg Laws, the Code required that Jews wear a yellow armband, and were banned from intermarriage and many jobs. The Slovak Parliament accepted a bill (May 1942) unanimously deciding the deportation of the Jews. It may be interesting to note that the only voice (vote) disagreeing came from the representative of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia János Esterházy
. Between March and October 1942, the state deported approximately 57,000 Jews to the German-occupied part of Poland, where almost all of them were killed. The deportation of the remaining 24,000 was stopped after the Papal Nuncio informed the Slovak president that the German authorities were killing the Jews deported from Slovakia. However, 12,600 more Jews were deported by the German forces occupying Slovakia after the Slovak National Uprising
in 1944. Around a half of them were killed in concentration camps. Some 10,000 Slovak Jews survived hidden by local people and 6,000–7,000 got official protection from the Slovak authorities.
On 29 August 1944, 60,000 Slovak troops and 18,000 partisans, organized by various underground groups and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, rose up against the Nazis. The insurrection later became known as the Slovak National Uprising
. Slovakia was devastated by the fierce German counter-offensive and occupation, but the guerrilla warfare continued even after the end of organized resistance. Although ultimately quelled by the German forces, the uprising was an important historical reference point for the Slovak people. It allowed them to end the war as a nation which had contributed to the Allied victory.
Later in 1944 the Soviet attacks intensified. Hence the Red Army
, helped by Romanian troops, gradually routed out the German army from Slovak territory. On 4 April 1945, Soviet troops marched into the capital city of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava.
, albeit without the province of Ruthenia
, which Prague ceded to the Soviet Union
. The Beneš decrees
, adopted as a result of the events of the war, led to disenfranchisement and persecution of the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia. (The affected Hungarians regained Czechoslovak citizenship in 1948.)
The Czechs and Slovaks held elections in 1946. In Slovakia, the Democratic Party won the elections (62%), but the Czechoslovak Communist Party won in the Czech part of the republic, thus winning 38% of the total vote in Czechoslovakia, and eventually seized power in February 1948, making the country effectively a satellite state
of the Soviet Union.
Strict Communist control characterized the next four decades, interrupted only briefly in the so-called Prague Spring
of 1968 after Alexander Dubček
(a Slovak) became First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
. Dubček proposed political, social, and economic reforms in his effort to make "socialism with a human face" a reality. Concern among other Warsaw Pact
governments that Dubček had gone too far led to the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968, by Soviet, Hungarian, Bulgarian, East German, and Polish troops. Another Slovak, Gustáv Husák
, replaced Dubček as Communist Party leader in April 1969.
The 1970s and 1980s became known as the period of "normalization
", in which the apologists for the 1968 Soviet invasion prevented as best they could any opposition to their conservative régime. Political, social, and economic life stagnated. Because the reform movement had had its center in Prague, Slovakia experienced "normalization" less harshly than the Czech lands. In fact, the Slovak Republic saw comparatively high economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s relative to the Czech Republic (and mostly from 1994 till ).
The 1970s also saw the development of a dissident movement, especially in the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1977, more than 250 human-rights
activists signed a manifesto called Charter 77
, which criticized the Czechoslovak government for failing to meet its human-rights obligations.
On 17 November 1989, a series of public protests known as the "Velvet Revolution
" began and led to the downfall of Communist Party rule in Czechoslovakia. A transition government formed in December 1989, and the first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1948 took place in June 1990. In 1992, negotiations on the new federal constitution deadlocked over the issue of Slovak autonomy. In the latter half of 1992, agreement emerged to dissolve Czechoslovakia peacefully. On 1 January 1993, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic each simultaneously and peacefully proclaimed their existence. Both states attained immediate recognition from the United States of America and from their European neighbors.
In the days following the "Velvet Revolution," Charter 77 and other groups united to become the Civic Forum
, an umbrella-group championing bureaucratic reform and civil liberties
. Its leader, the playwright and former dissident Václav Havel
won election as President of Czechoslovakia in December 1989. The Slovak counterpart of the Civic Forum, Public Against Violence
, expressed the same ideals.
In the June 1990 elections, Civic Forum and Public Against Violence won landslide victories. Civic Forum and Public Against Violence found, however, that although they had successfully completed their primary objective — the overthrow of the communist régime — they proved less effective as governing parties. In the 1992 elections, a spectrum of new parties replaced both Civic Forum and Public Against Violence.
In elections held in June 1992, Václav Klaus
's Civic Democratic Party won in the Czech lands on a platform of economic reform, and Vladimír Mečiar
's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) emerged as the leading party in Slovakia, basing its appeal on the fairness of Slovak demands for autonomy. Mečiar and Klaus negotiated the agreement to divide Czechoslovakia, and Mečiar's party — HZDS — ruled Slovakia for most of its first five years as an independent state, except for a 9-month period in 1994 after a vote of no-confidence, during which a reformist government under Prime Minister Jozef Moravčík
operated.
The first president of newly-independent Slovakia, Michal Kováč
, promised to make Slovakia "the Switzerland of Eastern Europe". The first prime minister, Vladimír Mečiar, had served as the prime minister of the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia since 1992.
Rudolf Schuster
won election as president in 1999. Vladimír Mečiar's semi-authoritarian government allegedly breached democratic norms and the rule of law
before its replacement after the parliamentary elections of 1998 by a coalition led by Mikuláš Dzurinda
.
The first Dzurinda government made numerous political and economic reforms that enabled Slovakia to enter the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), close virtually all chapters in European Union
(EU) negotiations, and make itself a strong candidate for accession to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, the popularity of the governing parties declined sharply, and several new parties that earned relatively high levels of support in public opinion-polls appeared on the political scene. Mečiar remained the leader (in opposition) of the HZDS, which continued to receive the support of 20% or more of the population during the first Dzurinda government.
In the September 2002 parliamentary election, a last-minute surge in support for Prime Minister Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) gave him a mandate for a second term. He formed a government with three other center-right parties: the Party of the Hungarian Coalition
(SMK), the Christian Democrats
(KDH) and the Alliance of the New Citizen
(ANO). The coalition won a narrow (three-seat) majority in the parliament. The government strongly supports NATO and EU integration and has stated that it will continue the democratic and free market-oriented reforms begun by the first Dzurinda government. The new coalition has as its main priorities - gaining of NATO and EU invitations, attracting foreign investment, and reforming social services such as the health-care system. Vladimír Mečiar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, which received about 27% of the vote in 1998 (almost 900,000 votes) received only 19.5% (about 560,000 votes) in 2002 and again went into opposition, unable to find coalition partners. The opposition comprises the HZDS, Smer
(led by Róbert Fico), and the Communists
, who obtained about 6% of the popular vote.
Initially, Slovakia experienced more difficulty than the Czech Republic in developing a modern market economy
. Slovakia joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the EU on 1 May 2004. Slovakia was, on 10 October 2005, for the first time elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council (for 2006–2007).
The latest elections took place on 17 June 2006, where leftist Smer won elections with 29.14% (around 670 000 votes) of the popular vote and formed coalition with Slota's Slovak National Party and Mečiar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Their opposition comprises the former ruling parties: the SDKÚ, the SMK and the KDH.
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
.
Palaeolithic
Radiocarbon datingRadiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
puts the oldest surviving archaeological artifacts from Slovakia - found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom
Nové Mesto nad Váhom
Nové Mesto nad Váhom is a town in the Trenčín Region of Slovakia.- Geography :District town located at the northern edge of the Danubian Hills at the foothills of the northern end of the White Carpathians, on the Váh river. Other mountains nearby are the White Carpathians and the Považský Inovec...
- at 270,000 BCE, in the Early Paleolithic
Lower Paleolithic
The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the...
era. These ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique
Clactonian
The Clactonian is the name given by archaeologists to an industry of European flint tool manufacture that dates to the early part of the interglacial period known as the Hoxnian, the Mindel-Riss or the Holstein stages . Clactonian tools were made by Homo erectus rather than modern humans...
, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia.
Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era (200,000 - 80,000 BCE) come from the Prepost cave (Prepoštská jaskyňa) near Bojnice
Bojnice
Bojnice is a small town in central Slovakia at the upper Nitra river, near the city of Prievidza. It has population of 4,983 . Bojnice is best known for its tourist attractions: the oldest zoo in Slovakia, the most visited castle, and one of the oldest spa towns in Slovakia. The town is situated...
and from other nearby sites. The most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
cranium (c. 200,000 BCE), discovered near Gánovce
Gánovce
Gánovce is a village in the Poprad District of the Prešov Region in northern Slovakia, situated 3 km south-east from the town of Poprad.-History:Gánovce was mentioned for the first time in written records in 1317 as "villa Ganau"...
, a village in northern Slovakia.
Archaeologists have found prehistoric Homo sapiens skeletons in the region, as well as numerous objects and vestiges of the Gravettian
Gravettian
thumb|right|Burins to the Gravettian culture.The Gravettian toolmaking culture was a specific archaeological industry of the European Upper Palaeolithic era prevalent before the last glacial epoch. It is named after the type site of La Gravette in the Dordogne region of France where its...
culture, principally in the river valleys of Nitra
Nitra River
The Nitra is a 197 km long river in western Slovakia. It flows into the Váh river close to its confluence with the Danube in Komárno. Its source is in the Malá Fatra mountains north of Prievidza. The river Nitra passes through the towns of Bojnice, Topoľčany, Nitra and Nové Zámky....
, Hron
Hron
Hron is a 298 km long left tributary of the Danube and the second longest river in Slovakia. It flows from its source located in the Low Tatra mountains through central and southern Slovakia, pouring into the Danube near Štúrovo and Esztergom...
, Ipeľ
Ipel
Ipeľ or Ipoly is a 232 km long river in Slovakia and Hungary, tributary to the river Danube. Its source is in central Slovakia in the Slovenské rudohorie Mountains...
, Váh
Váh
The Váh is the longest river in entire Slovakia. A left tributary of the Danube river, the Váh is 406 km long, including its Čierny Váh branch...
and as far as the city of Žilina
Žilina
Žilina is a city in north-western Slovakia, around from the capital Bratislava, close to both the Czech and Polish borders. It is the fourth largest city of Slovakia with a population of approximately 85,000, an important industrial center, the largest city on the Váh river, and the seat of a...
, and near the foot of the Vihorlat, Inovec, and Tribeč
Tribec
Tribeč is a crystalline mountain range in western Slovakia, in the Inner Western Carpathians within the Fatra-Tatra Area, roughly between the towns of Nitra, Partizánske and Zlaté Moravce. It is surrounded by the Danubian Lowland, Pohronský Inovec, Vtáčnik mountains and the Upper Nitra Basin. It is...
mountains, as well as in the Myjava
Myjava
Myjava is a town in Trenčín Region, Slovakia.-Geography:It is located in the Myjava Hills at the foothills of the White Carpathians and not far from the Little Carpathians. The river Myjava flows through the town...
Mountains. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
-bone (22 800 BCE), the famous Venus of Moravany
Venus of Moravany
Venus of Moravany is a small female figurine found by the village of Moravany nad Váhom, Slovakia, in 1938.It is made of mammoth ivory and is dated to 22,800 BC, which places it in the upper Paleolithic. It currently resides in the Bratislava Castle exposition of the Slovak National Museum....
. The figurine was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom
Moravany nad Váhom
Moravany nad Váhom is a village and municipality in Piešťany District in the Trnava Region of western Slovakia.- History :In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1348....
near Piešťany
Pieštany
Piešťany is a town in Slovakia. It is located in the western part of the country within the Trnava Region and is the seat of its own district. It is the biggest and best known spa town in Slovakia and has around 30,000 inhabitants.-History:...
. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods
Gastropoda
The Gastropoda or gastropods, more commonly known as snails and slugs, are a large taxonomic class within the phylum Mollusca. The class Gastropoda includes snails and slugs of all kinds and all sizes from microscopic to quite large...
of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Moravany-Žákovská
Moravany nad Váhom
Moravany nad Váhom is a village and municipality in Piešťany District in the Trnava Region of western Slovakia.- History :In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1348....
, Podkovice, Hubina
Hubina
Hubina is a village and municipality in Piešťany District in the Trnava Region of western Slovakia.-Geography:The municipality lies at an altitude of 200 metres and covers an area of 26.843km². It has a population of about 480 people....
and Radošina
Radošina
Radošina is a municipality with 1,987 inhabitants in the Topoľčany District of the Nitra Region, Slovakia....
. These findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
.
Neolithic
Discovery of tools and potteryPottery
Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...
in several archaeological digs and burial places scattered across Slovakia, surprisingly including northern regions at relatively high altitudes, gives evidence of human habitation in the Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
period. The pottery found in Želiezovce, Gemer
Gemer
Gemer is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the 19th century, and in the beginning of the 20th century, it was united with the Kishont region to form Gömör-Kishont county . Its territory is presently in southern Slovakia and northern Hungary...
, and the Bukové hory massif is characterized by remarkable modeling and delicate linear decoration. It also reveals the first attempts at coloring. This deliberate adornment shows a developed aesthetic sense of the Neolithic craftsmen.
Important archaeological discoveries have been made in several formerly-inhabited caves. For example, humans inhabited the famous Domica
Domica
Domica is the biggest cave in the Slovak Karst in southern Slovakia, Rožňava District. It is a part of the cave complex that continues into the cave Baradla in Hungary. It was discovered in 1926 by Ján Majko. Since 1932, of the are open to public...
cave, almost 6000 meters long, to a depth of 700 meters. This cave offers one of the biggest Neolithic deposits in Europe. The tribes who created the pottery from the Massif Bukové hory inhabited Domica continuously for more than 800 years.
The transition to the Neolithic era in Central Europe featured the development of agriculture and the clearing of pastures, the first smelting of metals at the local level, the "Retz" style pottery and also fluted pottery. During the "fluted-pottery" era, people built several fortified sites. Some vestiges of these remain today, especially in high-altitude areas. Pits surround the most well-known of these sites at Nitriansky Hrádok
Nitriansky Hrádok
Nitriansky Hrádok is a district of a town of Šurany, Slovakia. This settlement was annexed to Šurany in 1976.-Archaeological site:A significant amount of archaeological material have been found at the tell Zámeček , settlement layers of which trace estimated 5,000 years back...
. Starting in the Neolithic era, the geographic location of present-day Slovakia hosted a dense trade-network for goods such as shells, amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
, jewels and weapons. As a result, it became an important hub in the system of European trade routes.
Bronze Age & Iron Age
The Bronze AgeBronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
on the territory of Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BCE. Major cultural, economic, and political development can be attributed to the significant growth in production of copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, especially in central Slovakia (for example in Špania Dolina
Špania Dolina
Špania Dolina is a village and municipality in central Slovakia, near the city of Banská Bystrica. Although its permanent population does not exceed 200 people, it is a picturesque historic village situated 728 m above sea level and is surrounded by the Staré Hory and Veľká Fatra mountains...
) and north-west Slovakia. Copper became a stable source of prosperity for the local population. After the disappearance of the Čakany and Velatice
Velatice
Velatice is a village and municipality in Brno-Country District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 621 ....
cultures, the Lusatian
Lusatian culture
The Lusatian culture existed in the later Bronze Age and early Iron Age in most of today's Poland, parts of Czech Republic and Slovakia, parts of eastern Germany and parts of Ukraine...
people expanded building of strong and complex fortifications, with the large permanent buildings and administrative centers. Excavations of Lusatian hill fort
Hill fort
A hill fort is a type of earthworks used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Some were used in the post-Roman period...
s document the substantial development of trade and agriculture at that period.
The richness and the diversity of tombs increased considerably. The inhabitants of the area manufactured arms, shields, jewelry, dishes, and statues. The arrival of tribes from Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...
disrupted the people of the Calenderberg culture, who lived in the hamlets located on the plain (Sereď
Sered
Sereď is a town in southern Slovak Republic near Trnava, on the right bank of the Váh River on the Danubian Lowland. It has аpproximately 17,000 inhabitants.It has a hotel, cinema, culture house, many restaurants and confectioner's shops.-Geography:...
), and also in the hill forts located on the summits (Smolenice
Smolenice
Smolenice is a village and municipality of Trnava District in the Trnava Region of Slovakia, on the foothills of the Little Carpathians. It is 60 km northeast of Bratislava and 25 km northwest of Trnava...
, Molpí). The local power of the "Princes" of the Hallstatt culture
Hallstatt culture
The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some...
disappeared in Slovakia during the last period of the Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
after strife between the Scytho-Thracian people and the Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic tribes, who advanced from the south towards the north, following the Slovak rivers.
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
in the region. Two major Celtic tribes living in Slovakia were Cotini
Cotini
Cotini was a Celtic tribe most probably living in today's Slovakia, and in Moravia and southern Poland. They were probably identical or constituted a significant part of the archaeological Púchov culture, with the center in Havránok.The tribe was first time mentioned in 10 BC in the Elogium of...
and Boii
Boii
The Boii were one of the most prominent ancient Celtic tribes of the later Iron Age, attested at various times in Cisalpine Gaul , Pannonia , in and around Bohemia, and Transalpine Gaul...
. Cotini were probably identical or made significant part of so-called Púchov culture
Púchov culture
The Púchov culture was an archaeological culture named after site of Púchov-Skalka in Slovakia. Its probable bearer was the Celt Cotini tribe. It existed in northern and central Slovakia between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE...
. The Celts built large oppida
Enclosed oppidum
An enclosed oppidum was a type of large, late Iron Age settlement, or oppidum surrounded by an encircling bank and ditch.They differ from hillforts through being not necessarily sited on high ground and through being permanent settlements with a strong economic function.As well as re-occupying...
in Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
and Liptov
Liptov
Liptó is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently in northern Slovakia.-Geography:...
(the Havránok
Havránok
Havránok is an important archaeological site in northern Slovakia. It is located on a hill above the Liptovská Mara water reservoir around 2 km from the village of Bobrovník, about halfway between Ružomberok and Liptovský Mikuláš in the Liptov region...
shrine). Silver coins with the names of Celtic kings, the so-called Biatec
Biatec
Biatec was the name of a person, presumably a king, who appeared on the Celtic coins minted by the Boii in Bratislava in the 1st century BC. The word Biatec is also used as the name of those coins. In the literature, they are also sometimes referred to as "hexadrachms of the Bratislava type"...
s, represent the first known use of writing in Slovakia. Celtic dominance disappeared with the Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
incursions, the victory of Dacia
Dacia
In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
over the Boii near the Neusiedler See
Neusiedler See
Lake Neusiedl is the second largest steppe lake in Central Europe, straddling the Austrian–Hungarian border. The lake covers 315 km², of which 240 km² is on the Austrian side and 75 km² on the Hungarian side. The lake's drainage basin has an area of about 1,120 km²...
, and the expansion of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
.
Roman era
The Roman epoch began in Slovakia in 6 CE, inaugurated by the arrival of Roman legionRoman legion
A Roman legion normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of perhaps 5,000 soldiers, divided into maniples and later into "cohorts"...
s on this territory that led to a war against the Marcomanni
Marcomanni
The Marcomanni were a Germanic tribe, probably related to the Buri, Suebi or Suevi.-Origin:Scholars believe their name derives possibly from Proto-Germanic forms of "march" and "men"....
and Quadi
Quadi
The Quadi were a smaller Germanic tribe, about which little is definitively known. We only know the Germanic tribe the Romans called the 'Quadi' through reports of the Romans themselves...
tribes. The Kingdom of Vannius
Vannius
Vannius was the king of the Germanic tribe Quadi. He lived in the 1st century. The Kingdom of Vannius was in the western part of present day Slovakia and it was the first political unit in Slovak area. He was a client King of Pannonia and Dalmatia and served from 17-20AD under the reign of Tiberius....
, a barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
kingdom founded by the Quadi, existed in western and central Slovakia from 20 to 50 AD. The Romans and their armies occupied only a thin strip of the right bank of the Danube and a very small part of south-western Slovakia (Celemantia
Celemantia
Celemantia was a Roman castellum and settlement on the territory of the present-day municipality Iža , some 4 km to the east of Komárno. It is the biggest known Roman castellum in present-day Slovakia...
, Gerulata
Gerulata
Gerulata was a Roman military camp located near today's Rusovce, a borough of Bratislava, Slovakia. It was part of the Roman province Pannonia and built in the 2nd century as a part of the Limes Romanus system...
, Devín Castle
Devín Castle
Devín Castle is a castle in Devín, which is a borough of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia....
).
Only in 174 CE did the emperor Marcus Aurelius penetrate deeper into the river valleys of Váh, Nitra and Hron. On the banks of the Hron he wrote his philosophical work Meditations
Meditations
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....
. In 179 CE, a Roman legion engraved on the rock of the Trenčín Castle
Trencín Castle
The Trenčín Castle is a castle above the town of Trenčín in western Slovakia.-History:History of the castle goes back to the age of the Roman Empire, testified by the inscription telling about the victory of the II. Roman legion at Laugaricio in 179 AD. The oldest building is a stone rotunda,...
the ancient name of Trenčín
Trencín
Trenčín is a city in western Slovakia of the central Váh River valley near the Czech border, around from Bratislava. It has a population of more than 56,000, which makes it the ninth largest municipality of the country and is the seat of the Trenčín Region and the Trenčín District...
(Laugaritio), marking the furthest northern point of their presence in this part of Europe.
The great invasions of the 4-8th centuries
In the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE the HunsHuns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...
began to leave the Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
n steppes. They crossed the Danube in 377 CE and occupied Pannonia, which they used for 75 years as their base for launching looting-raids into Western Europe.
In 451, under the command of Attila, they crossed the Rhine and laid Gaul
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
to waste; then crossed even the Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
, devastating the countryside of Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
. However, Attila's death in 453 brought about the disappearance of the Hun tribe.
After the Huns in the 5-6th century German tribes began to settle in the Pannonian Basin Ostrogoths, Lombards
Lombards
The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...
, Gepids, Heruli
Heruli
The Heruli were an East Germanic tribe who are famous for their naval exploits. Migrating from Northern Europe to the Black Sea in the third century They were part of the...
. Their reign and rivalry determined the events during the first two-thirds of the 6th century. In the 6th century, an early Lombard state was centered in the territory of present-day Slovakia. Subsequently, the Lombards left from this area and moved first to Pannonia
Pannonia
Pannonia was an ancient province of the Roman Empire bounded north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia....
and then to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where their statehood was continued until the 11th century.
In 568 a nomadic tribe, the Avars
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
, conducted their own invasion into the Middle Danube region. The Avars occupied the lowlands of the Pannonian Plain, established an empire dominating the Pannonian Basin
Pannonian Basin
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in East-Central Europe.The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense - meaning only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea dried...
and they made several raids against the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
whose emperors sent gifts regularly to them in order to avoid their attacks. In 623, the Slavic population living in the western parts of Pannonia
Pannonia
Pannonia was an ancient province of the Roman Empire bounded north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia....
seceded from their empire. In 626, the Avars and the Persians
Sassanid Empire
The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...
jointly besieged but failed to capture Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
; following this failure, the Avars' prestige and power declined and they lost the control over their former territories outside the Pannonian Basin but their reign has lasted to 804.
Early history
The majority of mainstream historians suggest that the settlement of Central and Western Europe by the Slavs began in the 4th century CE. Certain elements attest to the fact that by the beginning of the 6th century, a Slav population had begun to occupy vast territories extending from the VistulaVistula
The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....
, the Dniestr and the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
, including present-day Slovakia, Pannonia
Pannonia
Pannonia was an ancient province of the Roman Empire bounded north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia....
and Carantania.
Based on their interpretation of recent archeological and literal sources, a minority of historians and linguists has developed an alternative theory holding that Slav tribes emerged on this territory thousands of years BCE, evolving from sedentary indigenous peoples in the midst of Celtic and Germanic tribal movements. The best known proponent has been the Russian Slavic and Hungarian linguist Oleg Nikolayevitch Trubatchov, the main editor of the monumental Ethymological Dictionary of Slavic languages, who wrote a detailed book on this theory. Also, Greek and Roman texts provide possible evidence of an older Slavic presence in the area. For example they contend that the first reference to the Slavs — Vénèdes — appears in a work by Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
of Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...
dated 400 BCE.
Mention of the Slav presence also comes in the writings of Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(79 CE) and of Tacitus Cornelius (55-116 CE). The first designation of the Slavs in the Latin form Souveni appears in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
in 160 CE. The Slavs of the middle Danube before the 8th century, who lived on the present-day territories of Slovakia, of north and west Hungary, Moravia, Pannonia, Austria and Slovenia, used this name in the form Sloveni (*Slověne).
Recent research has discovered evidence of the co-existence of the Slavs and the Celtic tribes in the region of Liptov in northern Slovakia, near the area of Liptovská Mara. Investigators discovered six Celto-Slav colonies and the site of a castle with a sanctuary in its center, used for Celtic and Slav rites. Slav tribes also coexisted with the Germanic Quadi
Quadi
The Quadi were a smaller Germanic tribe, about which little is definitively known. We only know the Germanic tribe the Romans called the 'Quadi' through reports of the Romans themselves...
, according to the latest findings of the Czech
Czech people
Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...
archeologist J. Poulík.
The two competing theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Contemporary scholarship in general has moved away from the idea of monolithic nations and the Urheimat debates of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and its focus of interest is that of a process of ethnogenesis, regarding competing Urheimat scenarios as false dichotomies.
The empire of King Samo
Parts of the Slavic population that settled in the Middle Danube area were unified by King SamoSamo
Samo was a Frankish merchant from the "Senonian country" , probably modern Soignies, Belgium or Sens, France. He was the first ruler of the Slavs whose name is known, and established one of the earliest Slav states, a supra-tribal union usually called Samo's empire, realm, kingdom, or tribal...
, after a successful Slavic insurrection against the Avar Khaganate
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
in 623. In 631, Samo defeated the Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
army of King Dagobert I
Dagobert I
Dagobert I was the king of Austrasia , king of all the Franks , and king of Neustria and Burgundy . He was the last Merovingian dynast to wield any real royal power...
at the Battle of Wogastisburg
Battle of Wogastisburg
According to the contemporary Chronicle of Fredegar, the battle of Wogastisburg was a battle between Slavs under King Samo and Franks under King Dagobert I in 631. The Frankish armies were advancing the area of Slavic tribal union in three streams - Alamanni, Lombards, and Austrasian Franks...
. Samo's Empire, the first known political formation of Slavs, disappeared after the death of its founder in 665 and its territory was again included into Avar Khaganate.
The rising of Slavic polities
In the 670s, the new population of the "griffin and tendril" archaeological cultureArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
appeared in the Pannonian Basin (identified as Onogurs
Onogurs
The Onogurs, also known as Utigurs, were a horde of equestrian nomads in the North Eurasian steppe east of the Don River during the 5th to 8th centuries. The Onogurs crossed the Volga and entered into Europe around the year 460 within the larger context of the Great Migrations and the Turkic...
), and shortly afterwards the Avars could expand their territories even also over the Vienna Basin
Vienna Basin
The Vienna Basin is a sedimentary basin between the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains...
. However, archaeological findings from the same period (such as an exquisite noble tomb in Blatnica
Blatnica, Slovakia
Blatnica is a village and municipality in the Turiec region of Slovakia. Administratively it is a part of the Martin District in the Žilina Region. The village is situated under the Greater Fatra Range, at the opening of the spectacular karst Gader and Blatnica valleys...
) also indicate formation of a Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
upper class on the territory that later became the nucleus of Great Moravia.
The Avar supremacy over southern Slovakia lasted until 803 - the year when Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
, helped by the Slavs living north of the Danube (in the nucleus of the future Principality of Nitra
Principality of Nitra
The Principality of Nitra also Nitrian Principality or Slovak Principality is the name for a polity of Nitra Sloviens, centered on large agglomeration, a multi-tribal centre around Nitra, Slovakia. The initially independent Principality of Nitra came into existence in the early 9th century...
), defeated the Avars, who eventually became assimilated into the local Slavic populations.
All information, based on written sources, on the "Principality of Nitra" was recorded in two entries in Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum
Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum
The Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, which translates in English as "The Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians", is a Latin history written in Salzburg in the 870s. It describes the life and career of Salzburg's founding saint Rupert , notably his missionary work in Bavaria, and...
(The Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians) around 870. Nevertheless, during the first decades of the 9th century, the Slavic people living in the north-western parts of the Pannonian Basin
Pannonian Basin
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in East-Central Europe.The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense - meaning only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea dried...
were under the rule of a tribal leader (styled prince by later historians) whose seat was in Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
. An extensive network of settlements developed around the town in the 9th century. In the early 9th century, the polity was situated on the north-western territories of present-day Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
.
Around 828, Archbishop Adalram of Salzburg consecrated a church for Prince Pribina in Nitrava. In 833, Mojmír I, Duke of the Moravians expelled Pribina. Pribina went to count Ratbod, who administered the Eastern March of the Carolingian Empire, where Pribina became the head of a Principality of Lower Pannonia under the suzerainty of East Francia, with his capital of Blatnograd near where the Zala River
Zala River
The Zala is a river in south-western Hungary. Its source is in the hills on the borders with Austria and Slovenia. Its length is 139 km and drains water from 2,622 square km...
flows into the Lake Balaton. Excavations revealed that at least three Nitra castles (Pobedim
Pobedim
Pobedim is a village and municipality in Nové Mesto nad Váhom District in the Trenčín Region of western Slovakia.-Geography:The municipality lies at an altitude of 169 metres and covers an area of 8.609km². It has a population of about 1,218 people....
, Čingov, and Ostrá skala) were destroyed around the time Pribina was expelled.
The era of Great Moravia
Mojmír I
Mojmir I or Moimir I was the first known ruler of the Moravian Slavs . In modern scholarship, the creation of the early medieval state known as "Great" Moravia is attributed either to his or to his successors' expansionist policy...
unified the Slavic tribes settled north of the Danube and extended the Moravian supremacy over them. When Mojmír I endeavoured to secede from the supremacy of the king of East Francia in 846, King Louis the German
Louis the German
Louis the German , also known as Louis II or Louis the Bavarian, was a grandson of Charlemagne and the third son of the succeeding Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye.He received the appellation 'Germanicus' shortly after his death in recognition of the fact...
deposed him and assisted Mojmír's nephew, Rastislav
Rastislav
Rastislav or Rostislav was the second known ruler of Moravia . Although he started his reign as vassal to Louis the German, king of East Francia, he consolidated his rule to the extent that after 855 he was able to repel a series of Frankish attacks...
(846–870) in acquiring the throne. The new monarch pursued an independent policy: after stopping a Frankish attack in 855, he also sought to weaken influence of Frankish priests preaching in his realm. Rastislav asked the Byzantine Emperor
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
Michael III
Michael III
Michael III , , Byzantine Emperor from 842 to 867. Michael III was the third and traditionally last member of the Amorian-Phrygian Dynasty...
to send teachers who would interpret Christianity in the Slavic vernacular. Upon Rastislav's request, two brothers, Byzantine officials and missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...
came in 863. Cyril
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...
developed the first Slavic alphabet
Glagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
and translated the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
language. Rastislav was also preoccupied with the security and administration of his state. Numerous fortified castles built throughout the country are dated to his reign and some of them (e.g., Dowina, sometimes identified with Devín Castle
Devín Castle
Devín Castle is a castle in Devín, which is a borough of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia....
) are also mentioned in connection with Rastislav by Frankish chronicles.
During Rastislav's reign, the Principality of Nitra was given to his nephew Svatopluk as an appanage. The rebellious prince allied himself with the Franks and overthrew his uncle in 870. Similarly to his predecessor, Svatopluk I (871–894) assumed the title of the king (rex). During his reign, the Great Moravian Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, when not only present-day Moravia and Slovakia but also present-day northern and central Hungary, Lower Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, southern Poland and northern Serbia belonged to the empire, but the exact borders of his domains are still disputed by modern authors. Svatopluk also withstood attacks of the seminomadic Hungarian tribes and the Bulgarian Empire
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state founded in the north-eastern Balkans in c. 680 by the Bulgars, uniting with seven South Slavic tribes...
, although sometimes it was he who hired the Hungarians when waging war against East Francia.
In 880, Pope John VIII
Pope John VIII
Pope John VIII was pope from December 13, 872 to December 16, 882. He is often considered one of the ablest pontiffs of the ninth century and the last bright spot on the papacy until Leo IX two centuries later....
set up an independent ecclesiastical province in Great Moravia with Archbishop Methodius as its head. He also named the German cleric Wiching the Bishop of Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
.
After the death of King Svatopluk in 894, his sons Mojmír II
Mojmír II
Mojmir II was the last king of the Great Moravian Empire . Because of a civil war with his brother, he failed to prevent dismemberment of his Empire and probably died while fighting Magyar invaders....
(894-906?) and Svatopluk II
Svatopluk II
Svatopluk II ruled the Principality of Nitra from 894 to 906 and strove to control all of Great Moravia.Svatopluk II was a younger son of Svatopluk I. As Prince of Nitra, Svatopluk II was subordinated to his older brother Mojmír II, the King of Great Moravia which contained the principality as its...
succeeded him as the King of Great Moravia and the Prince of Nitra respectively. However, they started to quarrel for domination of the whole empire. Weakened by an internal conflict as well as by constant warfare with Eastern Francia, Great Moravia lost most of its peripheral territories.
In the meantime, the Hungarian tribes, having suffered a defeat from the nomadic Pechenegs, left their territories east of the Carpathian Mountains, invaded the Pannonian Basin and started to occupy the territory gradually around 896. Their armies' advance may have been promoted by continuous wars among the countries of the region whose rulers still hired them occasionally to intervene in their struggles.
Both Mojmír II and Svatopluk II probably died in battles with the Hungarians between 904 and 907 because their names are not mentioned in written sources after 906. In three battles (4–5 July and 9 August 907) near Brezalauspurc
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
(now Bratislava), the Hungarians routed Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n armies. Historians traditionally put this year as the date of the breakup of the Great Moravian Empire.
Great Moravia left behind a lasting legacy in Central and Eastern Europe. The Glagolitic script and its successor Cyrillic were disseminated to other Slavic countries, charting a new path in their cultural development. The administrative system of Great Moravia may have influenced the development of the administration of the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
.
The settlement of Hungarians in the 10th century
From 895 to 902, the Hungarians (Magyars), progressively imposed their authority on the Pannonian BasinPannonian Basin
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in East-Central Europe.The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense - meaning only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea dried...
. Although some contemporary sources mention that Great Moravia disappeared without trace and its inhabitants left for the Bulgars, Croats and Hungarians following the latters' victories, but archaeological researches and toponyms
Toponymy
Toponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...
suggest the continuity of Slavic population in the valleys of the rivers of the Inner Western Carpathians
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
. Toponyms may prove that the seminomadic Hungarians occupied the Western Pannonian Plain in present-day Slovakia, while the hills were inhabited by a mixed (Slav and Hungarian) population and people living in the valleys of the mountains spoke Slavic language
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
.
Some references even were made to Moravia in the course of the 10th century, and archaeological findings may also refer to the survival of some noble families of Great Moravia. On the other hand, the chroniclers of the early history of the Kingdom of Hungary, recorded that the prominent noble families of the kingdom descended either from leaders of the Hungarian tribes or from immigrants, and they did not connect any of them to Great Moravia. For example, the ancestors of the clan Hunt-Pázmán
Hont-Pázmány
Hont-Pázmány was the name of a gens in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum mentions that the ancestors of the family arrived, in the late 9th century, to the court of Grand Prince Géza of the Magyars from the Duchy of Swabia .The clan Hontpaznan was...
(Hont-Pázmány), whose Great Moravian origin has been advanced by modern scholars, were mentioned by Simon of Kéza to have arrived from the Duchy of Swabia
Duchy of Swabia
Swabia was one of the five stem duchies of the medieval German kingdom, and its dukes were thus among the most powerful magnates of Germany.-History:...
(in the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
) to the kingdom in the late 10th century.
The territory of the present-day Slovakia became progressively integrated into the developing state ( the future Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
) in the early 10th century. The Gesta Hungarorum
Gesta Hungarorum
Gesta Hungarorum is a record of early Hungarian history by an unknown author who describes himself as Anonymi Bele Regis Notarii , but is generally cited as Anonymus...
("Deeds of the Hungarians") mentions that Huba, head of one of the seven Hungarian tribes, received possessions around Nyitra / Nitra and the Zsitva / Žitava River
Žitava River
The Žitava River is a 99.3 km long river in southern Slovakia. It is the right tributary of the Nitra river.-See also:* Peace of Zsitvatorok...
; while according to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum
Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum
The Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum , written mainly by Simon of Kéza around 1282-1285, is one of the sources of early Hungarian history...
("Deeds of the Huns and Hungarians") another tribal leader, Lél
Lehel
Lehel was a Magyar chieftain, one of the brilliant military leaders of prince Taksony of Hungary, the descendant of Árpád. He was one of the most important figures of the Magyar invasions of Europe...
settled down around Galgóc / Hlohovec and following the Hungarians' victory over the Moravians', he usually stayed around Nyitra / Nitra. Modern authors also claim that the north-western parts of the Pannonian Basin were occupied by one of the Hungarian tribes.
Between 899 and 970, the Hungarians frequently conducted raids to the territories of present-day Italy
Italy in the Middle Ages
This is the history of Italy during the Middle Ages.- Transition from Late Antiquity :Italy was invaded by the Visigoths in the 5th century, and Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410. The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 476 by an Eastern Germanic general, Odoacer...
, Germany, France and Spain
Hispania
Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....
and also to the lands of the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
. Such activities continued westwards until the Battle of Augsburg
Battle of Lechfeld
The Battle of Lechfeld , often seen as the defining event for holding off the incursions of the Hungarians into Western Europe, was a decisive victory by Otto I the Great, King of the Germans, over the Hungarian leaders, the harka Bulcsú and the chieftains Lél and Súr...
on the Lech River in 955, when Otto, King of the Germans
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
Otto I the Great , son of Henry I the Fowler and Matilda of Ringelheim, was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany, King of Italy, and "the first of the Germans to be called the emperor of Italy" according to Arnulf of Milan...
destroyed their troops; their raids against the Byzantine Empire finished only in 970.
From 917, the Hungarians made raids to several territories at the same time which may prove the decay of the uniform direction within their tribal federation. The sources prove the existence of at least three and maximum five groups of tribes within the federation, and only one of them was lead directly by the Árpáds
Árpád dynasty
The Árpáds or Arpads was the ruling dynasty of the federation of the Hungarian tribes and of the Kingdom of Hungary . The dynasty was named after Grand Prince Árpád who was the head of the tribal federation when the Magyars occupied the Carpathian Basin, circa 895...
(the dynasty of the future kings of Hungary) who ruled over the western parts of the Pannonian Basin.
Tercia pars regni or Principality of Nitra? - 11th century
The development of the future Kingdom of Hungary started during the reign of Grand Prince GézaGéza of Hungary
Géza , Grand Prince of the Hungarians .Géza was the son of Taksony of Hungary, Grand Prince of the Hungarians and his Pecheneg or Bulgar wife. Géza's marriage with Sarolt, the daughter of Gyula of Transylvania, was arranged by his father.After his father's death , Géza followed him as Grand Prince...
(before 972-997) who expanded his rule over the territories of present-day Slovakia west of the River Garam / Hron
Hron
Hron is a 298 km long left tributary of the Danube and the second longest river in Slovakia. It flows from its source located in the Low Tatra mountains through central and southern Slovakia, pouring into the Danube near Štúrovo and Esztergom...
. Although, he was baptised in or after 972, he never became a convinced Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
– in contrast to his son, Stephen who followed him in 997. Some authors claim that following his marriage with Giselle of Bavaria
Giselle of Bavaria
Blessed Gisela of Hungary was the first queen of Hungary.- Biography :Gisela was a daughter of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria and Gisela of Burgundy....
, Stephen received the "Duchy of Nitra" in appanage from his father. When Géza died, a member of the Árpád dynasty, the pagan Koppány
Koppány
Koppány was a Hungarian nobleman of the tenth century. Brother of the ruling prince of Hungary, Géza of the Árpád dynasty, Koppány ruled as Prince of Somogy in the region south of Lake Balaton...
claimed the succession, but Stephen defeated him with the assistance of his wife's German retinue. A Slovak folk song mentions that Štefan kral (i.e., King Stephen) could only overcome his pagan opponent with the assistance of Slovak warriors around Bény
Bény
Bény is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.-Geography:The bief du Lignon forms the commune's southeastern border, then flows into the Solnan, which forms most of its northeastern border....
/ Bíňa. Following his victory, Stephen received a crown from Pope Silvester II
Pope Silvester II
Pope Sylvester II , born Gerbert d'Aurillac, was a prolific scholar, teacher, and Pope. He endorsed and promoted study of Arab/Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, reintroducing to Europe the abacus and armillary sphere, which had been lost to Europe since the end of the Greco-Roman...
and he was crowned as the first King of Hungary
King of Hungary
The King of Hungary was the head of state of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1000 to 1918.The style of title "Apostolic King" was confirmed by Pope Clement XIII in 1758 and used afterwards by all the Kings of Hungary, so after this date the kings are referred to as "Apostolic King of...
in 1000 or 1001.
The Kingdom of Hungary integrated elements of the former Great Moravian state organization. On the other hand, historians has not reached a consensus on this subject; e.g., it is still being debated whether the formation of the basic unit of the administration (vármegye) in the kingdom followed foreign (Bulgarian, Moravian or German) patterns or it was an internal innovation.
Stephen (1000/1001-1038) established at least eight counties ("vármegye") on the territories of present-day Slovakia: Abaúj
Abaúj
Abaúj is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. In parts of the 19th century, and in the beginning of the 20th century, it was united with Torna County to form Abaúj-Torna county. Its territory is presently in eastern Slovakia and north-eastern Hungary...
/ Abov
Abov
Abov is:* historically the Slovak name of a county in the Kingdom of Hungary * today an informal designation of the part of that county situated in Slovakia, as well as the official name of one of Slovakia's tourist regions...
, Borsod
Borsod
Borsod was the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary in present-day northeastern Hungary. The capital of the county was Miskolc...
/ Boršod, Esztergom
Esztergom
Esztergom , is a city in northern Hungary, 46 km north-west of the capital Budapest. It lies in Komárom-Esztergom county, on the right bank of the river Danube, which forms the border with Slovakia there....
/ Ostrihom, Hont, Komárom
Komárom
Komárom is a city in Hungary on the right bank of the Danube in Komárom-Esztergom county.The city of Komárom was formerly a separate suburban village called...
/ Komárno
Komárno
Komárno is a town in Slovakia at the confluence of the Danube and the Váh rivers. Komárno was formed from part of a historical town in Hungary situated on both banks of the Danube. Following World War I, the border of the newly created Czechoslovakia cut the historical, unified town in half,...
, Nyitra / Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
, Bars
Bars county
Bars is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently in central and southern Slovakia...
/ Tekov
Tekov
Tekov [Hungarian: Bars] is the traditional name of a region situated in southern and central Slovakia. Its territory encompasses the former Bars county, existing in the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11th century until 1918, though it is now administratively divided between the Nitra and Banská...
and Zemplén / Zemplín
were probably founded by him. The scarcely populated northern and north-eastern territories of today Slovakia became the kings' private forests. King Stephen also set up several dioceses in his kingdom; in the 11th century, present-day Slovakia's territories were divided between the Archdiocese of Esztergom (established around 1000) and its suffragan, the Diocese of Eger (founded between 1006–1009).
Boleslaw I of Poland
Bolesław I Chrobry , in the past also known as Bolesław I the Great , was a Duke of Poland from 992-1025 and the first King of Poland from 19 April 1025 until his death...
took some territories of present-day Slovakia east of the River Morava, but Hungarian King Stephen recaptured these territories in 1018.
Following King Stephen's death, his kingdom got involved in internal conflicts among the claimants for his crown and Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry III , called the Black or the Pious, was a member of the Salian Dynasty of Holy Roman Emperors...
also intervened in the struggles. In 1042, the Emperor Henry captured some parts of today Slovakia east of the River Hron and granted them to King Stephen's cousin, Béla, but following the withdrawal of the Emperor's armies, King Samuel Aba
Samuel Aba of Hungary
Samuel Aba , King of Hungary , Palatine of Hungary .-King of Hungary:Samuel was from Northern Hungary, Castle Gonce / Castle Abaújvár, County of Aba...
's troops recaptured the territories.
In 1048, King Andrew I of Hungary conceded one-third of his kingdom
Tercia pars regni
The Tercia pars regni or Ducatus is the denomination for territories occasionally governed separately by members of the Árpád dynasty within the Kingdom of Hungary in the 11th-12th centuries...
(Tercia pars regni) in appanage to his brother, Duke Béla. The duke's domains were centered around Nyitra / Nitra and Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
(in Romanian: Biharea in present-day Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
). During the following 60 years, the Tercia pars regni were governed separately by members of the Árpád dynasty (i.e., by the Dukes Géza
Géza I of Hungary
Géza I was King of Hungary from 1074 until his death. During King Solomon's rule he governed, as Duke, one third of the Kingdom of Hungary. Afterwards, Géza rebelled against his cousin's reign and his followers proclaimed him king...
, Ladislaus, Lampert
Lampert of Hungary
Lampert was a member of the Árpád dynasty; Duke of one-third of the Kingdom of Hungary .Lampert was the third son of the future King Béla I of Hungary and his Polish wife...
and Álmos
Prince Álmos
Álmos was a Hungarian prince, the son of King Géza I of Hungary, brother of King Kálmán. He held several governmental posts in the Kingdom of Hungary....
). The dukes accepted the kings' supremacy, but some of them (Béla, Géza and Álmos) rebelled against the king in order to acquire the crown and allied themselves with the rulers of the neighbouring countries (e.g., the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, Bohemia
Kingdom of Bohemia
The Kingdom of Bohemia was a country located in the region of Bohemia in Central Europe, most of whose territory is currently located in the modern-day Czech Republic. The King was Elector of Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, whereupon it became part of the Austrian Empire, and...
).
The history of the Tercia pars regni ended in 1107, when King Coloman of Hungary occupied its territories taking advantage of the pilgrimage of Duke Álmos (his brother) to the Holy Land. Although, Duke Álmos, when returned to the kingdom, tried to reoccupy his former duchy with the military assistance of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry V was King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor , the fourth and last ruler of the Salian dynasty. Henry's reign coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor...
, but he failed and was obliged to accept the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
.
Developing counties and towns - the 12-13th centuries
Following the occupation of his brother's duchy, King Coloman set up (or re-established) the third bishopric in present-day Slovakia, the Diocese of Nitra. The royal administration of the territory was developing gradually during the 11-13th centuries: new counties were established with the partition of existing ones or central counties of the kingdom expanded their territory northward Pozsony / Prešporok, Trencsén / Trenčín, Gömör-Kishont / Gemer and NógrádNógrád
Nógrád is a village in Nógrád County, Hungary.- External links :*...
/ Novohrad, while the kings' private forests were organised into "forest counties" around Zólyom / Zvolen and Sáros
Sáros county
Sáros was a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently in northeastern Slovakia...
/ Šariš Castle.
The colonisation of the northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary continued during the period; Slavic, Hungarian, German and Walloon
Walloon language
Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...
"guests" (hospes) arrived to the scarcely populated lands and settled down there. The contemporary documents mention that settlers from Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
and Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
arrived to the western parts of present-day Slovakia, while on the northern and eastern parts, Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
and Ruthenian
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...
"guests" settled down. Royal privileges prove that several families of the developing local nobility (e.g., the Zathureczky, Pominorszky and Viszocsányi families) were of Slavic origin. German "guests" settled down in several future towns (e.g., in Korpona / Krupina
Krupina
Krupina is a town in southern central Slovakia. It is part of the Banská Bystrica Region and has 7,812 inhabitants as of 2005.-History:The territory of modern day Krupina was inhabited since the Neolithic, based on archaeological findings from the Bronze Age. The first written reference to the...
, Óbars / Starý Tekov and Selmecbánya / Banská Štiavnica
Banská Štiavnica
Banská Štiavnica is a town in central Slovakia, in the middle of an immense caldera created by the collapse of an ancient volcano. For its size, the caldera is known as Štiavnica Mountains. Banská Štiavnica has a population of more than 10,000. It is a completely preserved medieval town...
already by the first half of the 13th century. The settlers in the Szepes / Spiš
Spiš
Spiš is a region in north-eastern Slovakia, with a very small area in south-eastern Poland. Spiš is an informal designation of the territory , but it is also the name of one the 21 official tourism regions of Slovakia...
region were originally of Hungarian and Slavic (e.g., Polish) origin; from the 1240s, Walloon "guests" arrived to the region and German settlers joined them.
The territory of present-day Slovakia was rich in raw materials like gold, silver, copper, iron and salt and therefore the mining industry developed gradually in the region. The development of the mining industry and commerce enstrengthened the position of some settlements and they received privileges from the kings: the first town privileges
Town privileges
Town privileges or city rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium.Judicially, a town was distinguished from the surrounding land by means of a charter from the ruling monarch that defined its privileges and laws. Common privileges were related to trading...
were granted to Nagyszombat / Trnava
Trnava
Trnava is a city in western Slovakia, 47 km to the north-east of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of a kraj and of an okres . It was the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric . The city has a historic center...
(1238), Óbars / Starý Tekov (1240) and Selmecbánya / Banská Štiavnica
Banská Štiavnica
Banská Štiavnica is a town in central Slovakia, in the middle of an immense caldera created by the collapse of an ancient volcano. For its size, the caldera is known as Štiavnica Mountains. Banská Štiavnica has a population of more than 10,000. It is a completely preserved medieval town...
(1241 or 1242) in present-day Slovakia. The inhabitants of the privileged towns were mainly of German origin, but Hungarian and Slavic citizens were also present in the towns. The presence of Jews in several towns of today Slovakia (e.g., in Pozsony / Bratislava, Bazin / Pezinok
Pezinok
Pezinok is a city in southwestern Slovakia. It is roughly northeast of Bratislava and has a population of 21,334 .Pezinok lies near the Little Carpathians and thrives mainly on viticulture and agriculture, as well as on brick making and ceramic production.-History:From the second half of the 10th...
) is also documented at least from the 13th century; the Jew's special status was confirmed by a charter of King Béla IV of Hungary
Béla IV of Hungary
Béla IV , King of Hungary and of Croatia , duke of Styria 1254–58. One of the most famous kings of Hungary, he distinguished himself through his policy of strengthening of the royal power following the example of his grandfather Bela III, and by the rebuilding Hungary after the catastrophe of the...
in 1251, but decisions of local synods limited their activities (i.e., they could not hold offices and they could not own lands). The Muslims
Böszörmény
Böszörmény, also Izmaelita or Szerecsen , is a name for the Muslims who lived in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 10-13th centuries. Some of the böszörmény probably joined the federation of the seven Magyar tribes during the 9th century, and later smaller groups of Muslims arrived to the Carpathian...
, living in the region of Nyitra / Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
, also had to face similar limitations and they disappeared (probably became Christian) by the end of the 13th century.
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
invaded and devastated
Mongol invasion of Europe
The resumption of the Mongol invasion of Europe, during which the Mongols attacked medieval Rus' principalities and the powers of Poland and Hungary, was marked by the Mongol invasion of Rus starting in 21 December 1237...
the north-western parts of the kingdom, only some fortresses (e.g., Trencsén / Trenčín
Trencín
Trenčín is a city in western Slovakia of the central Váh River valley near the Czech border, around from Bratislava. It has a population of more than 56,000, which makes it the ninth largest municipality of the country and is the seat of the Trenčín Region and the Trenčín District...
, Nyitra / Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
, Fülek / Fiľakovo
Filakovo
Fiľakovo is a town in the Banská Bystrica Region of south-central Slovakia. Historically it was part of the Nógrád region.-Geography:...
) could resist their attacks. Following the withdrawal of the Mongol troops (1242), several castles were built or enstrengthened (e.g., Komárom
Komárom
Komárom is a city in Hungary on the right bank of the Danube in Komárom-Esztergom county.The city of Komárom was formerly a separate suburban village called...
/ Komárno
Komárno
Komárno is a town in Slovakia at the confluence of the Danube and the Váh rivers. Komárno was formed from part of a historical town in Hungary situated on both banks of the Danube. Following World War I, the border of the newly created Czechoslovakia cut the historical, unified town in half,...
, Beckó / Beckov
Beckov
Beckov is a village and municipality in Nové Mesto nad Váhom District in the Trenčín Region of western Slovakia.-History:In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1208...
and Zólyom / Zvolen
Zvolen
Zvolen |Slatina]] rivers, close to Banská Bystrica. With its ancient castle, the town has a historical center, which represents the seat of an okres .-History:...
) on the order of King Béla IV. He also continued his policy of granting town privileges to several settlements, e.g., to Korpona / Krupina
Krupina
Krupina is a town in southern central Slovakia. It is part of the Banská Bystrica Region and has 7,812 inhabitants as of 2005.-History:The territory of modern day Krupina was inhabited since the Neolithic, based on archaeological findings from the Bronze Age. The first written reference to the...
(1244), Nyitra / Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
(1248), Besztercebánya / Banská Bystrica
Banská Bystrica
Banská Bystrica is a key city in central Slovakia located on the Hron River in a long and wide valley encircled by the mountain chains of the Low Tatras, the Veľká Fatra, and the Kremnica Mountains. With 81,281 inhabitants, Banská Bystrica is the sixth most populous municipality in Slovakia...
(1255) and Gölnicbánya / Gelnica
Gelnica
Gelnica is a town in the Košice Region of Slovakia. It has a population of 6,171.-Geography:It is located in the northern part of the Slovak Ore Mountains, in the Hnilec river valley, which flows few kilometres downstream into Hornád...
(1270). During his reign, new German
Carpathian Germans
Carpathian Germans , sometimes simply called Slovak Germans , are a group of German language speakers on the territory of present-day Slovakia...
immigrants settled down in Szepesvár / Spiš whose privileges were granted in 1271 by King Stephen V of Hungary
Stephen V of Hungary
Stephen V , was King of Hungary from 1270 to 1272.-Early years:...
.
The last decades of the 13th century were characterized by discords within the royal family and among the several groups of the aristocracy. The decay of the royal power and the rise of some powerful aristocrats gave rise to the transformation of the administrative system: the counties that had been the basic units of the royal administration ("royal counties") transformed gradually into autonomous administrative units of the local nobility ("noble counties"); however, the local nobility was not able to stop the rise of oligarchs.
The period of the oligarchs - 1290-1321
Following the Mongol invasion of the kingdom, a competition started among the landowners: each of them endeavored to build a castle with or without the permission of the king. The competition started a process of differentiation among the noble families, because the nobles who were able to build a castle could also expand their influence over the neighbouring landowners. The conflicts among the members of the royal family also strengthened the power of the aristocrats (who sometimes received whole counties from the kings) and resulted in the formation of around eight huge territories (domains) in the kingdom, governed by powerful aristocrats in the 1290s.In present-day Slovakia, most of the castles were owned by two powerful aristocrats (Amade Aba
Amade Aba
Amade Aba, sometimes Amadeus Aba was a Hungarian oligarch in the Kingdom of Hungary who ruled de facto independently the northern and north-eastern counties of the kingdom...
and Matthew Csák) or their followers. Following the extinction of the Árpád dynasty (1301), both of them pretended to follow one of the claimants for the throne, but, in practice, they governed their territories independently. Amade Aba governed the eastern parts of present-day Slovakia from his seat in Gönc
Gönc
Gönc is a small town in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, Northern Hungary, 70 kilometers from county capital Miskolc. It is the northernmost town of Hungary and the second smallest town of the county.- History :...
. He was killed by Charles Robert of Anjou's assassins at the south gate in Kassa / Košice
Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
in 1311.
Matthew Csák was the de facto ruler of the western territories of present-day Slovakia, from his seat at Trencsén / Trenčín
Trencín
Trenčín is a city in western Slovakia of the central Váh River valley near the Czech border, around from Bratislava. It has a population of more than 56,000, which makes it the ninth largest municipality of the country and is the seat of the Trenčín Region and the Trenčín District...
. He allied himself with the murdered Amade Aba's sons against Kassa / Košice, but King Charles I of Hungary
Charles I of Hungary
Charles I , also known as Charles Robert , was the first King of Hungary and Croatia of the House of Anjou. He was also descended from the old Hungarian Árpád dynasty. His claim to the throne of Hungary was contested by several pretenders...
, who had managed to acquire the throne against his opponents, gave military assistance to the town and the royal armies defeated him at the Battle of Rozgony / Rozhanovce
Battle of Rozgony
The Battle of Rozgony or Battle of Rozhanovce was fought between King Charles I of Hungary and the family of Palatine Amade Aba on June 15, 1312, on the Rozgony field. Chronicon Pictum described it as the "most cruel battle since the Mongol invasion of Europe"...
in 1312. However, the north-western counties remained in his power until his death in 1321 when the royal armies occupied his former castles without resistance.
Pozsony / Požoň county was de facto ruled by the Dukes of Austria from 1301 to 1328 when King Charles I of Hungary
Charles I of Hungary
Charles I , also known as Charles Robert , was the first King of Hungary and Croatia of the House of Anjou. He was also descended from the old Hungarian Árpád dynasty. His claim to the throne of Hungary was contested by several pretenders...
reoccupied it.
The Late Middle Ages - 14-15th centuries
King Charles I strengthened the central power in the kingdom following a 20-year long period of struggles against his opponents and the oligarchs. He concluded commercial agreementsCongress of Visegrád (1335)
The first Congress of Visegrád was a 1335 summit in Visegrád in which Casimir III of Poland, Charles I of Hungary, and John I of Bohemia formed an anti-Habsburg alliance...
with Kings John of Bohemia and Casimir III of Poland
Casimir III of Poland
Casimir III the Great , last King of Poland from the Piast dynasty , was the son of King Władysław I the Elbow-high and Hedwig of Kalisz.-Biography:...
in 1335 which increased the trade on the commercial routes leading from Kassa / Košice to Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
and from Zsolna / Žilina
Žilina
Žilina is a city in north-western Slovakia, around from the capital Bratislava, close to both the Czech and Polish borders. It is the fourth largest city of Slovakia with a population of approximately 85,000, an important industrial center, the largest city on the Váh river, and the seat of a...
to Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...
.
The king confirmed the privileges of the 24 "Saxon
Carpathian Germans
Carpathian Germans , sometimes simply called Slovak Germans , are a group of German language speakers on the territory of present-day Slovakia...
" towns in Szepes / Spiš, strengthened the special rights of Eperjes
Eperjes
Eperjes is a village in Csongrád county, in the Southern Great Plain region of southern Hungary.-Geography:It covers an area of and has a population of 697 people ....
/ Prešov
Prešov
Prešov Historically, the city has been known in German as Eperies , Eperjes in Hungarian, Fragopolis in Latin, Preszów in Polish, Peryeshis in Romany, Пряшев in Russian and Пряшів in Rusyn and Ukrainian.-Characteristics:The city is a showcase of Baroque, Rococo and Gothic...
and granted town privileges to Szomolnok / Smolník
Smolník
Smolník is a village and municipality in the Gelnica District in the Košice Region of eastern Slovakia.-External links:*...
. The towns of present-day Slovakia were still dominated by its German citizens. However, the Privilegium pro Slavis
Privilegium pro Slavis
Privilegium pro Slavis is a privilege granted to the Slovak inhabitants of Žilina by the King Louis I of Hungary during his visit of Žilina in 1381. According to this privilege Slovaks and Germans each occupied half of the seats in the city council and the mayor should be elected each year,...
, dated to 1381, attests notably to nation-building
Nation-building
For nation-building in the sense of enhancing the capacity of state institutions, building state-society relations, and also external interventions see State-building....
in the wealthy towns: King Louis I gave the Slavs half of the seats in the municipal council of Zsolna / Žilina. Many of the towns (e.g., Besztercebánya / Banská Bystrica, Pozsony / Bratislava, Kassa / Košice, Körmöcbánya / Kremnica and Nagyszombat / Trnava) received the status of "free royal cities" (liberæ regiæ civitates) and they were entitled to send deputies to the assemblies of the Estates of the Kingdom
Estates of the realm
The Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...
from 1441.
In the first half of the 14th century, the population of the regions of the former "forest counties" increased and their territories formed new counties such as Árva
Arva
Arva may refer to:* Arva, Ontario, a community located in Middlesex Centre, Ontario, Canada* Arva, a village in Valea Călugărească Commune, Prahova County, Romania* Arva, a village in Broşteni Commune, Vrancea County, Romania...
/ Orava, Liptó / Liptov, Turóc / Turiec
Turiec
Turóc , , /comitatus Thurociensis) is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary...
, Zólyom / Zvolen
Zvolen
Zvolen |Slatina]] rivers, close to Banská Bystrica. With its ancient castle, the town has a historical center, which represents the seat of an okres .-History:...
in the northern parts of present-day Slovakia. In the region of Szepes / Spiš, some elements of the population received special privileges: the 24 "Saxon" towns formed an autonomous community, independent of Szepes county / Spiš county, and the "nobles with ten lances" were organised into a special autonomous administrative unit ("seat"). In 1412, King Sigismund
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
Sigismund of Luxemburg KG was King of Hungary, of Croatia from 1387 to 1437, of Bohemia from 1419, and Holy Roman Emperor for four years from 1433 until 1437, the last Emperor of the House of Luxemburg. He was also King of Italy from 1431, and of Germany from 1411...
mortgaged 13 of the "Saxon" towns to King Władysław II of Poland
Jogaila
Jogaila, later 'He is known under a number of names: ; ; . See also: Jogaila : names and titles. was Grand Duke of Lithuania , king consort of Kingdom of Poland , and sole King of Poland . He ruled in Lithuania from 1377, at first with his uncle Kęstutis...
so they de facto belonged to Poland until 1769.
From the 1320s, most of the lands of present-day Slovakia were owned by the kings, but prelate
Prelate
A prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who is an ordinary or who ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from the Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, which means "carry before", "be set above or over" or "prefer"; hence, a prelate is one set over others.-Related...
s and aristocratic families (e.g., the Drugeth
Drugeth
The Drugeth was a noble family of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 14-17th centuries whose possessions were situated on the north-eastern parts of the kingdom. The ancestors of the family left Apulia for Hungary during the reign of King Charles I...
, Szentgyörgyi
Szentgyörgyi
The Szentgyörgyi, also Szentgyörgyi és Bazini, was a noble family of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 13-16th centuries. The ancestor of the family, Thomas descended from the gens Hont-Pázmány and he was the head of Nyitra County around 1208. The family was named after its two castles, Szentgyörgy ...
and Szécsényi
Szécsényi
The Szécsényi was a noble family of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 14-15th centuries. The ancestor of the family, Thomas descended from the gens Kacsics. He was one of the most powerful barons of King Charles I of Hungary and he hold several dignities during his reign. The family was named after...
families) also hold properties on the territory. In December 1385, the future King Sigismund, who was Queen Mary of Hungary's prince consort
Prince consort
A prince consort is the husband of a queen regnant who is not himself a king in his own right.Current examples include the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , and Prince Henrik of Denmark .In recognition of his status, a prince consort may be given a formal...
at that time, mortgaged the territories of present-day Slovakia west of the Vág / Váh River to his cousins, the Margraves Jobst
Jobst of Moravia
Jobst of Moravia, Jobst von Mähren from the House of Luxembourg was the eldest son of Margrave John Henry of Moravia, the younger brother of Emperor Charles IV....
and Prokop of Moravia; and the former held his territories until 1389, while the latter could maintain his rule over some of the territories until 1405. King Sigismund (1387–1437) granted vast territories to his followers (e.g., to the members of the Cillei, Rozgonyi and Perényi families) during his reign; one of his principal advisers, the Polish Stibor of Stiboricz
Stibor of Stiboricz
Stibor of Stiboricz of Ostoja coat of arms was an aristocrat of Polish origin in the Kingdom of Hungary. He was a close friend of King Sigismund of Hungary who appointed him to several offices during his reign. For instance, between 1395 and 1401, then from 1409 to 1414 he was the voivode of...
styled himself "Lord of the whole Váh" referring to his 10 castles around the river.
Following the death of King Albert
Albert II of Germany
Albert the Magnanimous KG was King of Hungary from 1438 until his death. He was also King of Bohemia, elected King of Germany as Albert II, duke of Luxembourg and, as Albert V, archduke of Austria from 1404.-Biography:Albert was born in Vienna as the son of Albert IV, Duke of Austria, and Johanna...
(1439), civil war broke out among the followers of the claimants for the throne. The Dowager Queen Elisabeth hired Czech mercenaries
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
led by Jan Jiskra who captured several towns on the territory of present-day Slovakia (e.g., Körmöcbánya / Kremnica, Lőcse / Levoča
Levoca
Levoča is a town in the Spiš region of eastern Slovakia with a population of 14,600. The town has a historic center with a well preserved town wall, a Renaissance church with the highest wooden altar in Europe, carved by Master Paul of Levoča, and many other Renaissance buildings.On 28 June 2009,...
and Bártfa / Bardejov
Bardejov
Bardejov is a town in North-Eastern Slovakia. It is situated in the Šariš region and has about 33,000 inhabitants. The spa town, mentioned for the first time in 1241, exhibits numerous cultural monuments in its completely intact medieval town center...
) and maintained most of them until 1462 when he surrendered to King Matthias Corvinus
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
Matthias Corvinus , also called the Just in folk tales, was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458, at the age of 14 until his death...
.
Habsburg and Ottoman administration
The Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
conquered the central part of the former Kingdom of Hungary, and set up a Ottoman provinces there (see Budin Eyalet, Eğri Eyalet, Uyvar Eyalet
Uyvar Eyalet
Uyvar Eyalet was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.It was established during the reign of Mehmed IV. In 1663 the Ottoman expeditionary force led by Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed defeated the Austrian garrison of the city of Uyvar and conquered the region. The Peace of Vasvár recognised Ottoman control over...
).
Transylvania became a Ottoman protectorate vassal and a base which gave birth to all the anti-Habsburg revolts led by the nobility of the Kingdom of Hungary during the period 1604 to 1711.
The remaining part of the former Kingdom of Hungary, which included much of present-day territory of Slovakia (except for the southern central regions), northwestern present-day Hungary, northern Croatia and present-day Burgenland, resisted Ottoman conquest and subsequently became a province of the Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
. It remained to be known as the Kingdom of Hungary, but it is referred to by some modern historians as the "Royal Hungary
Royal Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary between 1538 and 1867 was part of the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, while outside the Holy Roman Empire.After Battle of Mohács, the country was ruled by two crowned kings . They divided the kingdom in 1538...
".
Ferdinand I, prince of Austria was elected king of Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. After the conquest of Buda in 1541 by the Ottomans, Pressburg (the modern-day capital of Slovakia, Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
) became, for the period between 1536 to 1784/1848 the capital and the coronation city of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.
From 1526 to 1830, nineteen Habsburg sovereigns went through coronation ceremonies as Kings and Queens of the Kingdom of Hungary in St. Martin's Cathedral
St. Martin's Concathedral
The St. Martin's Cathedral is a cathedral in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava. It is situated at the western border of the historical city center below Bratislava Castle. It is the largest and finest, as well as one of the oldest churches in Bratislava, known especially for previously being the...
.
Due to the Ottoman invasion, the territories that formerly were administered by the Kingdom of Hungary became, for almost two centuries, the principal battleground of the Turkish wars, and the region paid dearly for the defense of the Habsburg Monarchy (and, moreover, of the rest of Europe) against Ottoman expansion. The territory paid not only with the blood and the goods of its population, but also by losing practically all of its natural riches, especially gold and silver, which went to pay for the costly and difficult combats of an endemic war. In addition, the double taxation
Double taxation
Double taxation is the systematic imposition of two or more taxes on the same income , asset , or financial transaction . It refers to taxation by two or more countries of the same income, asset or transaction, for example income paid by an entity of one country to a resident of a different country...
of some areas was a common practice, which further worsened the living standards of the declining population of local settlements.
During Ottoman administration, parts of the territory of present-day Slovakia were included into Ottoman provinces known as the Budin Eyalet, Eğri Eyalet and Uyvar Eyalet
Uyvar Eyalet
Uyvar Eyalet was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.It was established during the reign of Mehmed IV. In 1663 the Ottoman expeditionary force led by Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed defeated the Austrian garrison of the city of Uyvar and conquered the region. The Peace of Vasvár recognised Ottoman control over...
. Uyvar Eyalet had its administrative center in the territory of present-day Slovakia, in the town of Uyvar
Nové Zámky
Nové Zámky is a town in southwestern Slovakia.-Geography:The town is located on the Danubian Lowland, on the Nitra River, at an altitude of 119 metres. It is located around 100 km from Bratislava and around 25 km from the Hungarian border. It is a road and railway hub of southern...
(Slovak: Nové Zámky). In the second half of the 17th century, Ottoman authority was expanded to eastern part of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary, where an vassal Ottoman principality led by prince Imre Thököly
Imre Thököly
Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk was a Hungarian statesman, leader of an anti-Habsburg uprising, Prince of Transylvania, and vassal king of Upper Hungary.- Early life :Imre Thököly was born at Késmárk, Royal Hungary Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk (Thököly/Tököly/Tökölli Imre in Hungarian, Mirko...
was established.
After the ousting of the Ottomans from Budin (which later became Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
) in 1686, it became the capital of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. Despite living under Hungarian, Habsburg and Ottoman administration for several centuries, the Slovak people succeeded in keeping their language and their culture. The survival of the Slovaks was aided by the fact that the greatest loss of life were in the areas populated more heavily by Hungarians.
Slovak National Movement
During the 18th century the Slovak National Movement emerged, partially inspired by the broader Pan-Slavic movementPan-Slavism
Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...
with the aim of fostering a sense of national identity among the Slovak people. Advanced mainly by Slovak religious leaders, the movement grew during the 19th century. At the same time, the movement was divided along the confessional lines and various groups had different views on everything from quotidian strategy to linguistics. Moreover, the Hungarian control remained strict after 1867 and the movement was constrained by the official policy of magyarization
Magyarization
Magyarization is a kind of assimilation or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure .Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met...
.
The first codification of a Slovak literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
by Anton Bernolák
Anton Bernolák
Anton Bernolák Anton Bernolák Anton Bernolák (1 October 1762 in Slanica (a now inundated village near Námestovo – 15 January 1813 in Nové Zámky) was a Slovak linguist and Catholic priest and the author of the first Slovak language standard.-Life:...
in the 1780s was based on the dialect from western Slovakia. It was supported by mainly Roman Catholic intellectuals, with the center in Trnava
Trnava
Trnava is a city in western Slovakia, 47 km to the north-east of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of a kraj and of an okres . It was the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric . The city has a historic center...
. The Lutheran intellectuals continued to use a Slovakized form of the Czech language. Especially Ján Kollár
Ján Kollár
Ján Kollár was a Slovak writer , archaeologist, scientist, politician, and main ideologist of Pan-Slavism.- Life :...
and Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavel Jozef Šafárik
Pavol Jozef Šafárik Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry / Schaffáry/ Schafary/ Saf(f)arik / Šafarík/ Szafarzik, Czech Pavel Josef Šafařík, German Paul Joseph Schaffarik, Serbian Павле Јосиф Шафарик, Latin Paulus Josephus Schaffarik, Hungarian Pál József Saf(f)arik) Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry /...
were adherents of Pan-Slavic concepts that stressed the unity of all Slavic peoples. They considered Czechs and Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
members of a single nation and they attempted to draw the languages closer together.
In the 1840s, the Protestants split as Ľudovít Štúr
Ludovít Štúr
Ľudovít Štúr , known in his era as Ludevít Velislav Štúr, was the leader of the Slovak national revival in the 19th century, the author of the Slovak language standard eventually leading to the contemporary Slovak literary language...
developed a literal language based on the dialect from central Slovakia. His followers stressed the separate identity of the Slovak nation and uniqueness of its language. Štúr's version was finally approved by both the Catholics and the Lutherans in 1847 and, after several reforms, it remains the official Slovak language
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
.
In the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
the Slovak nationalist leaders took the side of the Austrians in order to promote their separation from the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austrian monarchy. The Slovak National Council
Slovak National Council (1848-1849)
The Slovak National Council was a Slovak political body, which was created in Vienna on September 15-16, 1848 during the Revolutions of 1848...
even took part in the Austrian military campaign as setting up auxiliary troops against the rebel government of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
. In September, 1848, it managed to organize a short living administration on the captured territories. However, the Slovak troops were later disbanded by the Vienna Imperial Court. On the other hand, tens of thousands of volunteers from the current territory of Slovakia, among them a great number of Slovaks, fought in the Hungarian Army. After the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution, the Hungarian political elite was oppressed by the Austrian authorities, many participant of the Revolution being executed, imprisoned or forced to emigrate. In 1850, with the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into five military districts or provinces, two of them had administrative centers in the territory of present day Slovakia: the Military District of Pressburg ( Bratislava / Pozsony ) and the Military District of Kaschau ( Košice
Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
/ Kassa ).
The Austrian authorities abolished both provinces in 1860. The Slovak political elite made use of the period of neo-absolutism of the Vienna court and the weakness of the traditional Hungarian elite to promote their national goals. Turz-Sankt Martin (Martin
Martin, Slovakia
Martin is a city in northern Slovakia, situated on the Turiec river, between the Malá Fatra and Veľká Fatra mountains, near the city of Žilina. The population numbers approximately 58,000, which makes it the eighth largest city in Slovakia...
/ Túrócszentmárton) became the foremost center of the Slovak National Movement with foundation of the nationwide cultural association Matica slovenská
Matica slovenská
The Matica slovenská Mother) is Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation. It is based in the city of Martin...
(1863), the Slovak National Museum
Slovak National Museum
The Slovak National Museum is the most important institution focusing on scientific research and cultural education in the field of museological activity in Slovakia...
, and the Slovak National Party
Slovak National Party (historical party)
The Slovak National Party was a Slovak conservative and nationalist political party in the Kingdom of Hungary and then in Czechoslovakia from 1871 to 1938...
(1871).
The heyday of the movement came to the sudden end after 1867, when the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
domains in central Europe underwent a constitutional transformation
Ausgleich
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Compromise re-established the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary, separate from and no longer subject to the Austrian Empire...
into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The territory of present-day Slovakia was included into the Hungarian part of dual Monarchy dominated by the Hungarian political elite which distrusted the Slovak elite due to its Pan-Slavism, separatism and its recent stand against the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
. Matica was accused of Pan-Slavic separatism and was dissolved by the authorities in 1875 and other Slovak institutions (including schools) shared the same fate.
New signs of national and political life appeared only at the very end of the 19th century. Slovaks became aware that they needed to ally themselves with others in their struggle. One result of this awareness, the Congress of Oppressed Peoples of the Kingdom of Hungary, held in Budapest in 1895, alarmed the government. In their struggle Slovaks received a great deal of help from the Czechs. In 1896, the concept of Czecho-Slovak Mutuality was established in Prague to strengthen Czecho-Slovak cooperation and support the secession of Slovaks from the Kingdom of Hungary. At the beginning of the 20th century, growing democratization of political and social life threatened to overwhelm the monarchy. The call for universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
became the main rallying cry. In the Kingdom of Hungary, only 5 percent of inhabitants could vote. Slovaks saw in the trend towards representative democracy a possibility of easing ethnic oppression and a break-through into renewed political activity.
The Slovak political camp, at the beginning of the century, split into different factions. The leaders of the Slovak National Party based in Martin, expected the international situation to change in the Slovaks' favor, and they put great store by Russia. The Roman Catholic faction of Slovak politicians led by Father Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak politician and Catholic priest, one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before Second World War...
focused on small undertakings among the Slovak public and, shortly before the war, established a political party named the Slovak People's Party
Slovak People's Party
The Slovak People's Party was a Slovak right-wing party and was described as a fascist and...
. The liberal intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
rallying around the journal Hlas ("Voice"), followed a similar political path, but attached more importance to Czecho-Slovak cooperation. An independent Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Slovakia
The Social Democratic Party of Slovakia was a left wing political party in Slovakia...
emerged in 1905.
Albert Apponyi
Count Albert Apponyi de Nagyappony was a distinguished Hungarian nobleman and politician from an ancient noble family dating back to the 13th century. He was born on 29 May 1846, in Vienna, where his father, Count György Apponyi, was the resident Hungarian Chancellor at the time...
. The new act stipulated that the teaching of the Hungarian language, as one of the subjects, must be included in the curriculum of non-state owned four years elementary schools in the frame-work of the compulsory schooling, as a condition for the non-state owned schools to receive state-financing. Ethnic tension intensified when 15 Slovaks were killed during a riot on occasion of the consecration of a new church at Černová / Csernova near Rózsahegy / Ružomberok
Ružomberok
Ružomberok is a town in northern Slovakia, in the historical Liptov region. It has a population of around 30,000-Geography:...
(see Černová tragedy
Cernová tragedy
The Černová massacre was a shooting that happened in Csernova on 27 October 1907 in which 15 people were killed and many were wounded after gendarmes fired into a crowd of people gathering for the consecration of a church...
). The local inhabitants wanted the popular priest and nationalist politician Andrej Hlinka to consecrate their new church. But bishop Párvy according to the canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
refused to consent and appointed ethnic Slovak canon Anton Kurimsky, former parish priest of Rózsahegy / Ružomberok
Ružomberok
Ružomberok is a town in northern Slovakia, in the historical Liptov region. It has a population of around 30,000-Geography:...
for the task. Local gendarmes, all of them ethnic Slovaks, shot dead 15 Slovak protesters among a crowd of app. 400 rioters who attacked on the priests' convoy escorted by the gendarems. All this added to Slovak estrangement from and resistance to Hungarian rule, and the incident became the topic of a propaganda campaign against Austria-Hungary.
Before the outbreak of World War I, the idea of Slovak autonomy became part of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Franz Ferdinand was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia, and from 1889 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia...
's plan of federalization of the monarchy, developed with help of the Slovak journalist and politician Milan Hodža
Milan Hodža
Milan Hodža was a prominent Slovak politician and journalist, serving from 1935 to 1938 as the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia and in December 1935 as the acting President of Czechoslovakia...
. This last realistic attempt to tie Slovakia to Austria-Hungary was abandoned because of the Archduke's assassination, which in turn triggered World War I.
The formation of Czechoslovakia
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the Slovak cause took firmer shape in resistance and in determination to leave the Dual Monarchy and to form an independent republic with the Czechs. The decision originated amongst people of Slovak descent in foreign countries. Slovaks in the United States of America, an especially numerous group, formed a sizable organization. These, and other organizations in Russia and in neutral countries, backed the idea of a Czecho-Slovak republic. Slovaks strongly supported this move.
The most important Slovak representative at this time, Milan Rastislav Štefánik
Milan Rastislav Štefánik
Milan Rastislav Štefánik , Kingdom of Hungary – May 4, 1919 in Ivanka pri Dunaji, Czechoslovakia) was a Slovak politician, diplomat, and astronomer. During World War I, he was General of the French Army, at the same time the Czechoslovak Minister of War, one of the leading members of the...
, a French citizen of Slovak origin, served as a French general and as leading representative of the Czecho-Slovak National Council based in Paris. He made a decisive contribution to the success of the Czecho-Slovak cause. Political representatives at home, including representatives of all political persuasions, after some hesitation, gave their support to the activities of Masaryk
Tomáš Masaryk
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , sometimes called Thomas Masaryk in English, was an Austro-Hungarian and Czechoslovak politician, sociologist and philosopher, who as an eager advocate of Czechoslovak independence during World War I became the founder and first President of Czechoslovakia, also was...
, Beneš
Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš was a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled diplomat.- Youth :...
and Štefánik.
During the war the Hungarian authorities increased harassment of Slovaks, which hindered the nationalist campaign among the inhabitants of the Slovak lands. Despite stringent censorship, news of moves abroad towards the establishment of a Czech-Slovak state got through to Slovakia and met with much satisfaction.
During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(1914–1918) Czechs, Slovaks, and other national groups of Austria-Hungary gained much support from Czechs and Slovaks living abroad in campaigning for an independent state. In the turbulent final year of the war, sporadic protest actions took place in Slovakia - politicians held a secret meeting at Liptószentmiklós / Liptovský Mikuláš
Liptovský Mikuláš
Liptovský Mikuláš is a town in northern Slovakia, on the Váh River. It lies in the Liptov region, in Liptov Basin near the Low Tatra and Tatra mountains...
on 1 May 1918.
At the end of the war Austria-Hungary dissolved. The Prague National Committee proclaimed an independent republic of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
on 28 October, and, two days later, the Slovak National Council at Martin
Martin, Slovakia
Martin is a city in northern Slovakia, situated on the Turiec river, between the Malá Fatra and Veľká Fatra mountains, near the city of Žilina. The population numbers approximately 58,000, which makes it the eighth largest city in Slovakia...
acceded to the Prague proclamation. The new republic was to include the Czech lands (Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
and Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
), a small part of Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, Slovakia, and Carpatho-Ukraine. The new state set up a parliamentary democratic government and established a capital in the Czech city of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.
As a result of the counter-attack of the Hungarian Red Army in May–June, 1919, Czech troops were ousted out from central and eastern parts of present Slovakia, where an puppet short-lived Slovak Soviet Republic
Slovak Soviet Republic
The Slovak Soviet Republic comprised a very short-lived communist state in south and eastern Slovakia from 16 June to 7 July 1919, with its capital in...
with capital in Prešov
Prešov
Prešov Historically, the city has been known in German as Eperies , Eperjes in Hungarian, Fragopolis in Latin, Preszów in Polish, Peryeshis in Romany, Пряшев in Russian and Пряшів in Rusyn and Ukrainian.-Characteristics:The city is a showcase of Baroque, Rococo and Gothic...
was established. However, the Hungarian army stopped its offensive, later the troops were withdrawn on the Entente's diplomatic intervention. In the Treaty of Trianon
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
signed in 1920, the Paris Peace Conference set the southern border of Czechoslovakia further south from the Slovak-Hungarian language border due to strategic and economic reasons. Consequently, some fully or mostly Hungarian-populated areas were also included into Czechoslovakia. According to the 1910 census, which had been manipulated by the ruling Hungarian bureaucracy, population of the present territory of Slovakia numbered 2,914,143 people, including 1,688,413 (57.9%) speakers of Slovak language
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, 881,320 (30.2%) speakers of Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, 198,405 (6.8%) speakers of German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, 103,387 (3.5%) speakers of Ruthenian
Ruthenian language
Ruthenian, or Old Ruthenian , is a term used for the varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth....
/Ukrainian language
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and 42,618 (1.6%) speakers of other languages. In addition, in Carpatho-Ukraine
Carpatho-Ukraine
Carpatho-Ukraine was an autonomous region within Czechoslovakia from late 1938 to March 15, 1939. It declared itself an independent republic on March 15, 1939, but was occupied by Hungary between March 15 and March 18, 1939, remaining under Hungarian control until the Nazi occupation of Hungary in...
, which was also included into Czechoslovakia in this time period, 1910 manipulated Hungarian census recorded 605,942 people, including 330,010 (54.5%) speakers of Ruthenian
Ruthenian language
Ruthenian, or Old Ruthenian , is a term used for the varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth....
/Ukrainian language
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, 185,433 (30.6%) speakers of Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, 64,257 (10.6%) speakers of German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, 11,668 (1.9%) speakers of Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, 6,346 (1%) speakers of Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
/Czech language
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, and 8,228 (1.4%) speakers of other languages. Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded in Slovakia 3,254,189 people, including 2,224,983 (68.4%) Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
, 585,434 (17.6%) Hungarians, 154,821 (4.5%) Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
, 120,926 (3.7%) Czechs, 95,359 (2.8%) Ruthenians
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...
/Ukrainians
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
and 72,666 (3%) others.
Slovaks, whom the Czechs outnumbered in Czechoslovak state, differed in many important ways from their Czech neighbors. Slovakia had a more agrarian and less developed economy than the Czech lands, and the majority of Slovaks practised Catholicism while the Czechs had less likelihood of adhering to established religions. The Slovak people had generally less education and less experience with self-government than the Czechs. These disparities, compounded by centralized governmental control from Prague, produced discontent among Slovaks with the structure of the new state.
Although Czechoslovakia, alone among the only east-central European countries, remained a parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1938, it continued to face minority problems, the most important of which concerned the country's large German population. A significant part of the new Slovak political establishment sought autonomy for Slovakia. The movement toward autonomy built up gradually from the 1920s until it culminated in independence in 1939.
In the period between the two world wars, the Czechoslovak government attempted to industrialize Slovakia. These efforts did not meet with success, partially due to the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the worldwide economic slump of the 1930s. Slovak resentment over perceived economic and political domination by the Czechs led to increasing dissatisfaction with the republic and growing support for ideas of independence. Many Slovaks joined with Father Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak politician and Catholic priest, one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before Second World War...
and Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest, politician of the Slovak People's Party, and Nazi collaborator. Between 1939 and 1945, Tiso was the head of the Slovak State, a satellite state of Nazi Germany...
in calls for equality between Czechs and Slovaks and for greater autonomy for Slovakia.
Towards autonomy of Slovakia, 1938 - 1939
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
concluded the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
, which forced Czechoslovakia to cede the predominantly German region known as the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
to Germany. In November, by the First Vienna Award
First Vienna Award
The First Vienna Award was the result of the First Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace on November 2, 1938. The Arbitration and Award were direct consequences of the Munich Agreement...
, Italy and Germany compelled Czechoslovakia (later Slovakia) to cede primarily Hungarian-inhabited Southern Slovakia to Hungary. They did this in spite of pro-German official declarations of Czech and Slovak leaders made in October.
On 14 March 1939, the Slovak Republic
Slovak Republic (1939-1945)
The Slovak Republic , also known as the First Slovak Republic or the Slovak State , was a fascist state which existed from 14 March 1939 to 8 May 1945 as a puppet state of Nazi Germany. It existed on roughly the same territory as present-day Slovakia...
(Slovenská republika) declared its independence and became a nominally independent state in Central Europe under Nazi German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
control of foreign policy and, increasingly, also some aspects of domestic policy. Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest, politician of the Slovak People's Party, and Nazi collaborator. Between 1939 and 1945, Tiso was the head of the Slovak State, a satellite state of Nazi Germany...
became Prime Minister and later President of the new state.
On 15 March, Nazi Germany invaded what remained of Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
, and Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
after the Munich agreement. The Germans established a protectorate over them which was known as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
. On the same day, the Carpatho-Ukraine
Carpatho-Ukraine
Carpatho-Ukraine was an autonomous region within Czechoslovakia from late 1938 to March 15, 1939. It declared itself an independent republic on March 15, 1939, but was occupied by Hungary between March 15 and March 18, 1939, remaining under Hungarian control until the Nazi occupation of Hungary in...
declared its independence as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. But Hungary immediately invaded and annexed the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. On 23 March, Hungary then occupied some additional disputed parts of territory of the present-day Eastern-Slovakia. This caused the brief Slovak-Hungarian War
Slovak-Hungarian War
The Slovak–Hungarian War or Little War , was a war fought from March 23 to March 31/April 4, 1939 between the First Slovak Republic and Hungary in eastern Slovakia.-Prelude:...
.
World War II
Slovak Republic (1939-1945)
The Slovak Republic , also known as the First Slovak Republic or the Slovak State , was a fascist state which existed from 14 March 1939 to 8 May 1945 as a puppet state of Nazi Germany. It existed on roughly the same territory as present-day Slovakia...
went through the early years of the war in relative peace. As an Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
ally, the country took part in the wars against Poland
Slovak invasion of Poland (1939)
The Slovak invasion of Poland occurred during Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. The recently-created Slovak Republic joined the attack, and the Slovak field army contributed over 50,000 soldiers in three divisions...
and the Soviet Union. Although its contribution was symbolic in the German war efforts, the number of troops involved (approx. 45,000 in the Soviet campaign) was rather significant in proportion to the population (2.6 million in 1940).
Soon after independence, under the authoritarian government of Jozef Tiso, a series of measures aimed against the 90,000 Jews in the country were initiated. The Hlinka's Guard began to attack Jews, and the "Jewish Code" was passed in September 1941. Resembling the Nuremberg Laws, the Code required that Jews wear a yellow armband, and were banned from intermarriage and many jobs. The Slovak Parliament accepted a bill (May 1942) unanimously deciding the deportation of the Jews. It may be interesting to note that the only voice (vote) disagreeing came from the representative of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia János Esterházy
János Esterházy
Count János Esterházy a member of the House of Esterházy was the most prominent ethnic Hungarian politician in former Czechoslovakia...
. Between March and October 1942, the state deported approximately 57,000 Jews to the German-occupied part of Poland, where almost all of them were killed. The deportation of the remaining 24,000 was stopped after the Papal Nuncio informed the Slovak president that the German authorities were killing the Jews deported from Slovakia. However, 12,600 more Jews were deported by the German forces occupying Slovakia after the Slovak National Uprising
Slovak National Uprising
The Slovak National Uprising or 1944 Uprising was an armed insurrection organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II. It was launched on August 29 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to overthrow the collaborationist Slovak State of Jozef Tiso...
in 1944. Around a half of them were killed in concentration camps. Some 10,000 Slovak Jews survived hidden by local people and 6,000–7,000 got official protection from the Slovak authorities.
On 29 August 1944, 60,000 Slovak troops and 18,000 partisans, organized by various underground groups and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, rose up against the Nazis. The insurrection later became known as the Slovak National Uprising
Slovak National Uprising
The Slovak National Uprising or 1944 Uprising was an armed insurrection organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II. It was launched on August 29 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to overthrow the collaborationist Slovak State of Jozef Tiso...
. Slovakia was devastated by the fierce German counter-offensive and occupation, but the guerrilla warfare continued even after the end of organized resistance. Although ultimately quelled by the German forces, the uprising was an important historical reference point for the Slovak people. It allowed them to end the war as a nation which had contributed to the Allied victory.
Later in 1944 the Soviet attacks intensified. Hence the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, helped by Romanian troops, gradually routed out the German army from Slovak territory. On 4 April 1945, Soviet troops marched into the capital city of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava.
Czechoslovakia after World War II
The victorious Powers restored Czechoslovakia in 1945 in the wake of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, albeit without the province of Ruthenia
Ruthenia
Ruthenia is the Latin word used onwards from the 13th century, describing lands of the Ancient Rus in European manuscripts. Its geographic and culturo-ethnic name at that time was applied to the parts of Eastern Europe. Essentially, the word is a false Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
, which Prague ceded to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Beneš decrees
Beneš decrees
Decrees of the President of the Republic , more commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws that were drafted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II and issued by President...
, adopted as a result of the events of the war, led to disenfranchisement and persecution of the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia. (The affected Hungarians regained Czechoslovak citizenship in 1948.)
The Czechs and Slovaks held elections in 1946. In Slovakia, the Democratic Party won the elections (62%), but the Czechoslovak Communist Party won in the Czech part of the republic, thus winning 38% of the total vote in Czechoslovakia, and eventually seized power in February 1948, making the country effectively a satellite state
Satellite state
A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...
of the Soviet Union.
Strict Communist control characterized the next four decades, interrupted only briefly in the so-called Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
of 1968 after Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubcek
Alexander Dubček , also known as Dikita, was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia , famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring...
(a Slovak) became First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
. Dubček proposed political, social, and economic reforms in his effort to make "socialism with a human face" a reality. Concern among other Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
governments that Dubček had gone too far led to the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968, by Soviet, Hungarian, Bulgarian, East German, and Polish troops. Another Slovak, Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák was a Slovak politician, president of Czechoslovakia and a long-term Communist leader of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia...
, replaced Dubček as Communist Party leader in April 1969.
Normalization (Czechoslovakia)
In the history of Czechoslovakia, normalization is a name commonly given to the period 1969 to about 1987. It was characterized by initial restoration of the conditions prevailing before the reform period led by Alexander Dubček , first of all, the firm rule of the Communist Party of...
", in which the apologists for the 1968 Soviet invasion prevented as best they could any opposition to their conservative régime. Political, social, and economic life stagnated. Because the reform movement had had its center in Prague, Slovakia experienced "normalization" less harshly than the Czech lands. In fact, the Slovak Republic saw comparatively high economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s relative to the Czech Republic (and mostly from 1994 till ).
The 1970s also saw the development of a dissident movement, especially in the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1977, more than 250 human-rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activists signed a manifesto called Charter 77
Charter 77
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...
, which criticized the Czechoslovak government for failing to meet its human-rights obligations.
On 17 November 1989, a series of public protests known as the "Velvet Revolution
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
" began and led to the downfall of Communist Party rule in Czechoslovakia. A transition government formed in December 1989, and the first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1948 took place in June 1990. In 1992, negotiations on the new federal constitution deadlocked over the issue of Slovak autonomy. In the latter half of 1992, agreement emerged to dissolve Czechoslovakia peacefully. On 1 January 1993, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic each simultaneously and peacefully proclaimed their existence. Both states attained immediate recognition from the United States of America and from their European neighbors.
In the days following the "Velvet Revolution," Charter 77 and other groups united to become the Civic Forum
Civic Forum
The Civic Forum was a political movement in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, established during the Velvet Revolution in 1989...
, an umbrella-group championing bureaucratic reform and civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
. Its leader, the playwright and former dissident Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
won election as President of Czechoslovakia in December 1989. The Slovak counterpart of the Civic Forum, Public Against Violence
Public Against Violence
The Public Against Violence was a political movement that was established in Bratislava, Slovakia on 20 November 1989. It was the Slovak counterpart of the Czech Civic Forum ....
, expressed the same ideals.
In the June 1990 elections, Civic Forum and Public Against Violence won landslide victories. Civic Forum and Public Against Violence found, however, that although they had successfully completed their primary objective — the overthrow of the communist régime — they proved less effective as governing parties. In the 1992 elections, a spectrum of new parties replaced both Civic Forum and Public Against Violence.
Independent Slovakia
Václav Klaus
Václav Klaus is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister .An economist, he is co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as president of...
's Civic Democratic Party won in the Czech lands on a platform of economic reform, and Vladimír Mečiar
Vladimír Meciar
Vladimír Mečiar is a Slovak politician who was Prime Minister of Slovakia from 1990 to 1991, from 1992 to 1994, and from 1994 to 1998. He is the leader of the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia...
's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) emerged as the leading party in Slovakia, basing its appeal on the fairness of Slovak demands for autonomy. Mečiar and Klaus negotiated the agreement to divide Czechoslovakia, and Mečiar's party — HZDS — ruled Slovakia for most of its first five years as an independent state, except for a 9-month period in 1994 after a vote of no-confidence, during which a reformist government under Prime Minister Jozef Moravčík
Jozef Moravcík
Jozef Moravčík is a Slovak diplomat and political figure. He served as the Prime Minister of Slovakia from 16 March 1994 to 13 December 1994, and later as the Mayor of Bratislava.- References :*...
operated.
The first president of newly-independent Slovakia, Michal Kováč
Michal Kovác
Michal Kováč was a Slovak politician in the early 1990s and the first President of Slovakia after the creation of that state from 1993 to 1998....
, promised to make Slovakia "the Switzerland of Eastern Europe". The first prime minister, Vladimír Mečiar, had served as the prime minister of the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia since 1992.
Rudolf Schuster
Rudolf Schuster
Rudolf Schuster was the second President of Slovakia . He was elected on 29 May 1999 and inaugurated on 15 June. Schuster was defeated in the presidential elections of April 2004, in which he ran as an independent...
won election as president in 1999. Vladimír Mečiar's semi-authoritarian government allegedly breached democratic norms and the rule of law
Rule of law
The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...
before its replacement after the parliamentary elections of 1998 by a coalition led by Mikuláš Dzurinda
Mikuláš Dzurinda
Mikuláš Dzurinda is a Slovak politician who was Prime Minister of Slovakia from 30 October 1998 to 4 July 2006. He was a founder and leader of the Slovak Democratic Coalition and the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union...
.
The first Dzurinda government made numerous political and economic reforms that enabled Slovakia to enter the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...
(OECD), close virtually all chapters in European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(EU) negotiations, and make itself a strong candidate for accession to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, the popularity of the governing parties declined sharply, and several new parties that earned relatively high levels of support in public opinion-polls appeared on the political scene. Mečiar remained the leader (in opposition) of the HZDS, which continued to receive the support of 20% or more of the population during the first Dzurinda government.
In the September 2002 parliamentary election, a last-minute surge in support for Prime Minister Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) gave him a mandate for a second term. He formed a government with three other center-right parties: the Party of the Hungarian Coalition
Party of the Hungarian Coalition
The Party of the Hungarian Coalition, officially registered under the compound name Strana maďarskej koalície – Magyar Koalíció Pártja, is a political party in Slovakia, for the ethnic Hungarian minority...
(SMK), the Christian Democrats
Christian Democratic Movement
The Christian Democratic Movement is a political party in Slovakia.It is represented in the parliament. It was also member of the government coalition, but it left that coalition on 7 February 2006 due to disputes over an international treaty between Slovakia and the Holy See dealing with the...
(KDH) and the Alliance of the New Citizen
Alliance of the New Citizen
The Alliance of the New Citizen is a liberal party in Slovakia. The abbreviation ANO also means YES in Slovak. It was a member of the government coalition from October 2002 to September 2005. Its leader Pavol Rusko is the founder and former owner of Markíza and he was the Minister of Economics...
(ANO). The coalition won a narrow (three-seat) majority in the parliament. The government strongly supports NATO and EU integration and has stated that it will continue the democratic and free market-oriented reforms begun by the first Dzurinda government. The new coalition has as its main priorities - gaining of NATO and EU invitations, attracting foreign investment, and reforming social services such as the health-care system. Vladimír Mečiar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, which received about 27% of the vote in 1998 (almost 900,000 votes) received only 19.5% (about 560,000 votes) in 2002 and again went into opposition, unable to find coalition partners. The opposition comprises the HZDS, Smer
Direction - Social Democracy
The party Direction – Social Democracy , often abbreviated to Smer, is a centre-left political party in Slovakia. It is led by Robert Fico, who was Prime Minister from 2006 to 2010. It is the largest party in the National Council, with 62 seats....
(led by Róbert Fico), and the Communists
Communist Party of Slovakia
The Communist Party of Slovakia is a communist party in Slovakia, formed in 1992, through the merger of the Communist Party of Slovakia – 91 and the Communist League of Slovakia.According to Luboš Blaha the KSS supported the government of Robert Fico....
, who obtained about 6% of the popular vote.
Initially, Slovakia experienced more difficulty than the Czech Republic in developing a modern market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
. Slovakia joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the EU on 1 May 2004. Slovakia was, on 10 October 2005, for the first time elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council (for 2006–2007).
The latest elections took place on 17 June 2006, where leftist Smer won elections with 29.14% (around 670 000 votes) of the popular vote and formed coalition with Slota's Slovak National Party and Mečiar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Their opposition comprises the former ruling parties: the SDKÚ, the SMK and the KDH.
See also
- Communist Party of CzechoslovakiaCommunist Party of CzechoslovakiaThe Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
- History of BratislavaHistory of BratislavaThis page gives an overview of the history of Bratislava – the capital of Slovakia and the country's largest city.-Prehistory:In the area where present-day Bratislava lies, three skeletons of the Pliopithecus vindobonensis were found in the borough Devínska Nová Ves in 1957, dating 25–15...
- History of CzechoslovakiaHistory of CzechoslovakiaWith the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed, encouraged by, among others, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson...
- History of the Czech Republic
- History of PolandHistory of PolandThe History of Poland is rooted in the arrival of the Slavs, who gave rise to permanent settlement and historic development on Polish lands. During the Piast dynasty Christianity was adopted in 966 and medieval monarchy established...
- History of EuropeHistory of EuropeHistory of Europe describes the history of humans inhabiting the European continent since it was first populated in prehistoric times to present, with the first human settlement between 45,000 and 25,000 BC.-Overview:...
- History of the European UnionHistory of the European UnionThe European Union is a geo-political entity covering a large portion of the European continent. It is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions that have taken it from 7 member states to 27, a majority of states in Europe....
- History of the Slovak language
- List of Presidents of Czechoslovakia
- List of Prime Ministers of Czechoslovakia
- List of Presidents of Slovakia
- List of Prime Ministers of Slovakia
- List of rulers of Slovakia
- Politics of SlovakiaPolitics of SlovakiaPolitics of Slovakia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, with a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in the parliament and it can be exerced in some cases also by the government or directly by citizens. Executive power is exercised by the...
- Slovaks in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)Slovaks in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)Whereas Czechs wished to create a Czechoslovak nation, Slovaks sought a federal republic in 1918. The new Czechoslovak republic , with its predominantly Czech administrative apparatus, hardly responded to Slovak aspirations for at least some form of autonomy...
- Slovaks in Czechoslovakia (1960-1990)Slovaks in Czechoslovakia (1960-1990)The division between Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia persisted as a key element in the reform movement of the 1960s and the retrenchment of the 1970s, a decade that dealt harshly with the aspirations of both Czechs and Slovaks. Ethnicity still remains integral to the social, political, and...
External links
- History of Slovakia at the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs website
- Detailed Slovak history timeline until 1714
- Overview from slovakia.org
- Brief description at the U.S. Department of State website
- History of the Slovak national movement
- Concise Jewish History of Slovakia
- History of Slovakia by Jozef Komornik
- Frontier of the Roman Empire in Slovakia