Miroslav Hroch Nations In The 19th Century

Development of the Serbian and Czech Nations in the 19th Century
Is a nation more than a group of people that share language and traditions? Miroslav Hroch defined a nation as being “not… an eternal category, but… the product of a long and complicated historical development.” In other words, the aspects that make someone identify himself as a Czech or Serb, go beyond the language, food, national music, or even geographic location. Moreover, the formation and development of the Czech and Serbian nations did not happen overnight. By the 1800’s, the Serbs were spread over the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the Czechs lived in the Austrian empire. They both were subject nations, but the long 19th century marked the beginning of the end of being considered as such. In the long 19th century, the Serbs, with the intention of gaining their independence, defined their
Czechs nationalists were advocating for the equality of the Czechs in comparison to the Germans and Hungarians. For example, German was the official language in Austria and Magyar was the official language in Hungary, but the Czech language was not even considered a formal language. In consequence, Czech nationalists initiated a “national revival”. One of the ways they proceeded with that movement was to elevate the Czech language. The legitimization of the Czech language in the 19th century can be partly attributed to the famous writer Palacky who, as a mean of proving that Czech was a language as deserving as German, switched from German to Czech when he wrote the “History of Bohemia”(1836-1857). In the same book, he also denounced how German culture was imposed on Czechs by describing Czech History as “a ceaseless battle between German and Slavic Elements.” (Johnson, p.