In the 7th century, the Slavs created the first supertribal community in the territory of today's Czech Republic and its surroundings, referred to in history as the Sámi Empire, but there are only fragmentary historical records of it. More documented is the Great Moravian Empire (833-906/907), which was already a standard strong early medieval state extending into present-day Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovakia and Ukraine, with its centre in southern Moravia. Its existence was strengthened by the spread of Christianity, especially among the elite, through the mission of the two Byzantine brothers Constantine/Cyril and Methodius. They created the oldest Slavic script (Glagolitic) for liturgical purposes and added key passages of the Bible and other texts to Old Slavonic (the first written language of the Slavs). Old Slavonic became the third liturgical language in history after Greek and Latin, and Great Moravia was completely independent in the ecclesiastical hierarchy (the archbishop was directly subject to the pope).

Great Moravia disappeared under the intense onslaught of the Hungarians at the beginning of the 10th century, but at that time a Czech early Přemyslid state with Prague as its capital was already taking shape. The Přemyslid princes (the longest reigning dynasty in the Bohemian lands) gradually conquered all the families in the Bohemian Basin and later annexed Moravia as well. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Bohemian Principality was permanently elevated to a kingdom, during which time there was a great development of towns and crafts, mining of precious metals and trade. The last Přemyslids (Přemysl Otakar II, Wenceslas II and Wenceslas III) also ruled the neighbouring countries (Austria, Poland, Hungary). At the beginning of the 14th century, the extinct family of the Přemyslids was replaced by the Luxemburgs, the most important of whom, Charles IV, became emperor and Prague became the centre of the Holy Roman Empire (during his reign, Prague University, later Charles University, was founded).

In the first half of the 15th century, the then pan-European efforts to reform the Catholic Church (William Ockham, John Wycliffe, etc.) were most pronounced in Bohemia - the theologian Jan Hus (burned in 1415, among others, rector of Prague University and reformer of Czech spelling) gave the spiritual impetus to this, and the tensions between different social groups eventually escalated rapidly into Hussitism - a religious, national and socially motivated movement. It significantly influenced events throughout Central Europe (four crusades were unsuccessfully waged against the "Bohemian heretics", and even Joan of Arc defended against them), but brought economic disruption and long-term political and cultural isolation to the Czech lands themselves. The most tumultuous period lasted only about two decades, and later Catholics and non-Catholics (accepting both) lived together in the Bohemian lands in relatively peaceful symbiosis until the early 17th century.

From the middle of the 15th century, the turbulent atmosphere in Bohemia and Moravia calmed down again, first under the rule of George of Poděbrady (one of the first to strive to unite Europe in the face of Turkish expansion), later under the Polish Jagiellonians and finally under the Habsburgs. The election of the first Habsburgs (Ferdinand I and especially Rudolf II) marked a period of prosperity for the Bohemian lands again, and Prague became one of the main scientific and artistic centres of Europe for the second time (after Charles IV). In 1618-1620, however, the disputes between a large part of the then Czech society and the Catholics culminated, and the new emperor Ferdinand II, after the defeat of the Estates' troops on the White Mountain, severely suppressed not only political but also religious opposition (the first large wave of emigration from Bohemia and Moravia - up to 200,000 people, often prominent personalities). Gradually, the influence of the local nobility was lost, and the economy and language declined (on the contrary, art - architecture, painting, sculpture and music - developed during the Recatholization).

The "restart" did not occur until more than 100 years later, during the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, and with the subsequent wave of national consciousness throughout Europe. In the Czech lands, however, it was first necessary to "resuscitate" the Czech language itself as one of the basic features of the nation. At the end of the 18th century, Czech was the language of the rural population only, while in the cities it was mainly spoken in German. The so-called "Czech" was the language of the people. The Czech national revival had several phases - the first was purely linguistic (Dobrovský, Jungmann), later literary (Mácha, Tyl, Havlíček, Němcová), music (Smetana) and drama (Tyl, Stroupežnický), and finally economic (the emergence and development of a Czech class of businessmen and merchants, which increasingly competed with the German one - Českomoravská Kolben & Daněk, Škodovy závody) and political (the Czech parties Staročesi, Mladočeši). Since the revolutionary year of 1848, the Czechs had been striving for autonomy within the Austrian monarchy, but unlike the Hungarians, they had not succeeded.

Emancipation efforts culminated during World War I, when many leading politicians began to speak openly about the restoration of a fully independent state. A major contributor to the creation of Czechoslovakia (a common state of Czechs and Slovaks between 1918 and 1992) was the university professor and politician T. G. Masaryk (later the first Czechoslovak president), who soon gained the respect of world politicians (including the American president W. Wilson) and who had a considerable influence on the organisation of Central Europe in the interwar period. The period of the so-called First Republic (1918-1938) was, despite a number of partial shortcomings, one of the best stages of modern Czech history - an economically prosperous country with a stable democratic system, modern education, health care and a relatively friendly social system. However, further development was interrupted by the expansion of Nazi Germany (when the world powers sacrificed Czechoslovakia to "preserve peace"). The six-year period of only formally autonomous Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (killed, executed, tortured) and considerable economic (although Czech lands were not, except at the end of the war, the direct scene of fighting) and moral damage.

With many warning signs, pre-war conditions were restored for less than three years. In February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with the support of the Soviet Union, took over all power and very quickly introduced new totalitarianism (often more brutal than the German occupiers) with a series of political trials ending in death sentences or many years of imprisonment (often in uranium mines or other camps, similar to the Soviet gulags). The majority of the middle class and peasants also lost their property and were forced to form involuntary agricultural cooperatives; the savings of virtually the entire nation were buried by the currency reform of 1953. The situation gradually began to improve in the 1960s, culminating in the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. The attempted reform of the socialist establishment ("socialism with a human face", the "third way") and its violent liquidation by the tanks of the Soviet Union and four other "friendly" armies were then watched with suspense and sympathy by the whole world.

However, the leadership of the state gradually resigned and despite the sacrifice of Jan Palach and Jan Zajic (both students burned themselves to death in Prague in early 1969 in protest against the gradual return of pre-1968 conditions), a period of so-called normalisation set in, when most of the achievements of the Prague Spring were forgotten and massive purges in all spheres of society, including education and culture, were again taking place, with devotion to the Communist Party and acceptance of "international aid" from the USSR being more important than professional qualities. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to the West, while many others closed themselves off in so-called internal emigration, completely resigning themselves to public affairs and devoting themselves only to their work, family and hobbies. However, the regime provided most of the population with certain economic benefits (significant support for young families), so the disapproval of events was expressed by most people at most by listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Therefore, the declaration of the opposition civil movement Charter 77 (led by Václav Havel and other dissident figures) met with only lukewarm public interest, yet the state authorities unleashed several waves of repressive actions against the Charter and its signatories. The situation changed only in 1989 - the new Charter 77 declaration "A Few Sentences" was signed by 40,000 people, including many prominent personalities (scientists, actors, singers, etc.), and the final change was triggered by the brutal police crackdown on the student march in Prague on 17 November 1989, which launched the so-called Velvet Revolution.

After more than four decades, the communists have given up their hitherto hard-enforced leadership role in society without much resistance. Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic (he held the office with a brief interruption from 1989 to 2003). The Czech Republic (escalating Slovak efforts for full independence led to the non-violent division of the common state on 31 December 1992) was gradually admitted to the main international structures, notably NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2003 (including entry into the Schengen area in 2007). However, the transition to a fully democratic society with a functioning market economy was (and in some respects still is) accompanied by a number of mistakes and errors, which, especially among people who initially accepted the post-Soviet changes with uncritical expectations, nowadays cause considerable scepticism. Like other countries, the Czech Republic has had to deal with the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-2015, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 2022 onwards. All these issues have contributed to a fairly significant polarisation of society, but it has not reached the level where it would fundamentally affect the stability of the country.

Written monuments from the earliest period are only sporadic. Only clergymen knew how to read and write at that time. The written language was either Latin or Old Slavonic.

In the 14th century, the Czech language penetrated into literature and official communication. The first books written in Czech appear. Charles IV ordered the first translation of the Bible into Czech. At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, a proposal for spelling reform appears, introducing the use of diacritical marks into Czech. Jan Hus was the promoter of this proposal, but it is not clear whether he was also its author.

Czech written literature experienced great development especially after the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. For a long time, the  Royal Bible was used as a model for the written language.

After the defeat of the Estates Uprising in 1620, there was a gradual decline in Czech literature, which was caused mainly by the forced emigration of Czech non-Catholic intellectuals (Jan Amos Komenský, Pavel Stránský, etc.). The renewed provincial government (1627, 1628) introduced German as the second official language in Bohemia and Moravia.

The attempt to introduce German as a uniform language in all the countries of the Habsburg Commonwealth in the 18th century (driven mainly by practical reasons rather than national ones) proved unrealistic, as the Czech-speaking population was large and, after the loss of a large part of the territory of Germanised Silesia, had a percentage advantage over the German-speaking population in the rest of the Bohemian Crown.

The abolition of serfdom allowed the emergence of a movement known as the National Revival at the end of the 18th century. Thanks to the efforts of the national revivalists, the level of Czech literature was raised again during the 19th century. And thanks to compulsory schooling and the high literacy rate of the population, the written language ceased to be the preserve of a narrow class of intellectuals.

Of the various attempts at codification, the grammar of Josef Dobrovský, first published in 1809, was finally generally accepted. The publication of Josef Jungmann's five-volume Czech-German Dictionary (1830-1835) contributed to the renewal of the Czech vocabulary. Journalism developed and artistic creation tried to get closer to the living language. Some vestiges of the obsolete spelling of the King’s Bible were removed. The written Czech language at that time more or less took on its present form.

https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historick%C3%BD_v%C3%BDvoj_%C4%8De%C5%A1tiny  (in Czech only)