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East European Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 1

Modern Czech patriotism and nationalism evolved under the specific political, socio-economic, and cultural conditions which arose in the Czech lands after the breakup of the medieval Czech state and the victory of the Habsburgs and the Catholic church in seventeenth-century Bohemia. The sovereignty of the Czech state gradually faded. In time, the nation lost its nobility and its creative cultural groups. The majority of the non-Catholic nobility emigrated. The language and the attitudes of the noble families which remained or came to Bohemia from abroad to seize estates inclined toward the principles of the Viennese government. German, the language of the governing classes, was also accepted by the church nobility and the wealthy urban population. In this way, the affluent townsmen attempted to reach the social and cultural level of the governing groups. Under the given circumstances, the nation consisted of rural serfs, urban artisans, tiny groups of intellectuals, and increasing numbers of the poor in towns and villages. In the new economic, social, and ideological milieu, the society and culture of the modern nation was formed by these groups. This long and difficult process manifested itself in different forms and with various degrees of intensity, Favorable stimulation was provided by the economic reconstruction after the Thirty Years’ War and later by the economic and social reforms of Enlightened Absolutism, modern rationalism, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the revolutionary movements of the first half of the nineteenth century, Czech national awareness, thought, and action reacted to these historical phenomena vigorously.

After the battle of White Mountain and the Thirty Years’ War, the Czech population drew upon the older heritage of national thought. The period saw no abrupt or distinct decline of national consciousness and thought. Abroad, in culturally and politically developed Western Europe, the Czech emigration achieved the climax of Czech national thought. The continuation of the ideological level of the period before the Thirty Years’ War was unbroken, but was enriched with new, progressive elements. The