The Czechs as Integrating and Disintegrating Factors in the Habsburg Empire

Extract

The topic assigned for this section offers us an alternative: integration or disintegration. There is a certain lack of reality about such an alternative. One will retrace in vain the whole story of the confrontation of Czech and Habsburg in pursuit of a genuine Czech impulse to support Habsburg aims. There were periods of peace between the two protagonists, though perhaps tolerance would be a better term, but they were few and insubstantial. They were seldom used for anything but preparation for the next inevitable engagement. I take it that this tradition of enmity is almost axiomatic for Central European history. Little, then, will be said about the Czechs as a force leading toward the integration of Habsburg power. This leaves us a broad field of historical assessment and delineation: the story of the Czech odyssey from their first contact with the Habsburgs in the late thirteenth century until 1918, when they again became a sovereign people in their own land.