Imperial Nations and Subject Peoples: Czechs in the Austrian Empire and After (17th - 21st ct)

Course supervisor: David L. Robbins, PhD

Instructors: Mgr. Marcela Janíčková, prof. David L. Robbins, PhD, Blanka Maderová, PhD

Recommended number of ECTS credits: 6

Grading procedure:

- midterm: 40% of the final grade

- final exam: 40% of the final grade

- presentation: 20% of the final grade

- make-up exams are possible

Attendance:

Two absences are permitted. If you are absent more times, you will be asked to write a paper to make up for the class(es) missed.

COURSE CONTENT

Session 1 Introduction

Session 2 Lecture: Enlightenment in theory

Session 3 Enlightenment in practice: reforms under Maria Teresa and Joseph II

Session 4 Romanticism as a backlash against Enlightenment

Session 5 Birth of Nationalism; its growth during the Napoleonic wars

Session 6 Czech national revival and its phases: development of language, synthesis of the Czech cultural tradition including the history of the Czechs,

creation of works that institutionalized Czech culture and formed Czech identity.

Weaknesses of the Czech national revival and gradual self-critique

Session 7 Springtime of Nations in the German Confederation – consequences of German unification movement on the relations between Bohemian Czechs and Bohemian Germans.

Plans for revamping of Austria

Session 8 Aftermath of the revolution of 1848 – Francis Joseph’s and Bach’s absolutism and its erosion

From constitutional monarchy to Austria-Hungary; beginning of the (Czech) political life in the Austrian Empire

Session 9 Czech politics and culture in Austria-Hungary from Ausgleich to 1910’s

Encounter of the "national culture" with cosmopolitan modernism

Session 10 Jews in Austria-Hungary (18th and 19th ct)

Session 11 WWI and Czech striving for independent Czechoslovakia

Session 12 Midterm exam

Session 13 First Czechoslovak Republic: experiment in building a pluralist society

State Right argument vs. right to national determination; Idea of the Czechoslovak nation state with minorities;

geography, demographics, political system, economic situation.

Session 14 Continuation: First Czechoslovak Republic: experiment in building a pluralist society

Session 15 Attitudes of Slovaks to Czechoslovakia and Czechs: from establishment of the republic to the Munich agreement of 1938

Session 16 Attitudes of Bohemian Germans to Czechoslovakia and Czechs in the 1920's: from refusal to acceptance, from negativism to activism.

Bohemian Germans in the 1930's: from autonomist goals to destruction of the First Czechoslovak Republic.

Session 17 WWII in the Czech lands: the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Session 18 Post-war changes in Central Europe and Czechoslovakia – crafting a welfare state:

changes of the political system, expulsion and resettlement of populations, coping with the past (retribution decrees and amnesty law), first nationalizations in the economy.

Session 19 Communist seizure of power in February 1948, Construction of the Communist Utopia

Attractions and realities of life in the communist society in the 1950's

Session 20 Causes and the program of the Prague Spring reform movement

Session 21 Czechoslovak experience under Normalization

Session 22 Velvet Revolution of 1989; political transformation

Session 23 Break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993, establishment of the Czech Republic

Economic transformation and its crisis

Session 24 European Integration

Final Exam