The Czech lands, which lie in the center of Europe and include Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia, have long been settled. The first evidence of inhabitation— artifacts and ceramics— dates from the early Stone Age, roughly 28,000 B.C. From the third century B.C. the Czech lands were inhabited by Celts. The Celtic tribe, called Boii in Latin, is the source of the Latin name Boiohaemum, which gave rise, in turn, to Bohemia, the name for the Czech lands used to this day in many languages. At the start of the first century, German tribes began to encroach on Czech territory. Recent archeological finds prove that in the second century Roman legions encamped in central Moravia, near present-day Olomouc.

Slavic settlement began around the fifth century A.D. From 623 to 659 there existed on Czech territory a loose confederation of Slavic tribes led by the Frankish trader Samo, the so-called Samo’s Realm. In the early ninth century, Christianity began to spread through the Czech lands. In 845, fourteen Czech princes were baptized in German Regensburg. In 830, in Moravia the Great Moravian Empire arose, encompassing both Bohemia and Western Slovakia. In 863 and 864, the Christian mission of Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius , came to Moravia from then Byzantine Salonica, bringing the Glagolitic alphabet and disseminating Christianity in Old Slavic— a language comprehensible to the local population. The Great Moravian Empire, from which the Czechs had broken away just before the end of the 9th century, was overrun in 906-908 by the Magyars. The beginnings of a Czech state, ruled by the Przemyslid dynasty, also date from the 10th century. In 924, Prince Václav took power, only to be murdered in 936 by his brother Boleslav. Václav was later canonized and, as Saint Vaclav became the patron of the Czech lands. Prague, where the first bishopric was established in 973, became the natural center of the Czech state. The most significant monument remaining from the 10th century is the Romanesque Saint George basilica at the Prague Castle.

In 1085, the Premyslid prince Vratislav II was granted a personal royal title. Hereditary kingship, however, was not established in the Czech lands until the reign of Vladislav II in 1158. In the 13th century such cities as Brno, Znojmo or Poděbrady began to be founded, as well as the royal cities Jihlava, Hradec Králové, České Budějovice or Olomouc. King Vaclav II (1278-1305) invited Germans from the neighboring lands to settle the Czech border regions. The Premyslid dynasty died out in 1306 with the murder of Vaclav III. From the 13 century, the Czech Kingdom became a part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Czech king one of the seven electors who chose the emperor.

In 1310 Jan Lucembursky ascended the Czech throne, having married Eliska Premyslovna, the daughter of King Vaclav II. The Czech lands enjoyed an unprecedented renaissance under his son Karel, who became king of the Czech lands in 1346 and in 1355 was elected and crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Karel IV. founded the first university in Central Europe (in Prague in 1348), laid the foundations of Gothic Prague, established Prague's Nove Mesto (New Town), enlarged both the Stare Mesto (Old Town) and Prague Castle, had a stone bridge built across the Vltava which still bears his name, and not far from Prague built Karlstejn Castle. In his day Prague was the center of the empire. With four hundred thousand inhabitants, it was then one of the largest cities in Europe.

After the death of Karel IV, in 1378, his son Vaclav IV assumed power. In Prague the preacher Konrad Waldhauser rose to prominence, agitating against injustice in the church and promoting its reform. His attempts at reformation were later continued by the rector of the university of Prague, Master Jan Hus. Hus's preaching, which anticipated the later Protestant movement, aroused the indignation of the church, but was received enthusiastically by the people. In 1414, Hus was summoned to Konstanz, to answer charges of heresy before the church council. Despite coercion and imprisonment, Hus never recanted. On July 6 1415, he was condemned by the Council of Konstanz and burnt as a heretic.

When news of Hus's death reached Bohemia, the rivalry between Catholics and Hussites, who agreed with Hus's views on church reform, turned to open hostility. Outrages were committed on both sides, particularly after the death of King Vaclav IV in 1419. The defenestration of councillors and aldermen from the Prague town hall and the concentration of Hussites in cities and mountain regions marked the start of the Hussite revolution and the wars which were to follow. In 1420 the Hussites promulgated their demands in the "Four Articles of Prague". In the same year the city of Tábor, later to become the center of the Husite movement, was founded.

The church reacted to the developments in the Czech lands with five crusades between 1420 and 1431. All were routed in battle with the Hussite troops. The Hussite army was commanded by the legendary, invincible Jan Žižka z Trocnova (1374 – 1422). He was succeeded in command of the Hussite troops by Prokop Holy. The Hussites, however, could not rid themselves of internal divisions and splintered into a radical wing of Taborites, who refused all compromise, and a moderate wing, which sought to reach agreement with the emperor and the church. This led finally to a fratricidal battle at Lipany in 1434, in which the Taborites were defeated. A treaty known as the Basilean Compact brought an end to the Hussite wars. Negotiations began at a church council in Basle (1453), where representatives of the Hussites defended the "Four Articles of Prague". It was agreed that in the Czech lands the right to take communion in both kinds, bread and wine, would be preserved. In 1436 a treaty was finally signed between the Emperor Sigmund and the Czech kingdom at the Council of Jihlava.

In 1448 Jiří z Poděbrad, an adherent of Hussitism, became regent of the Czech lands. In 1458, upon the untimely death of King Ladislav Pohrobek (1453-1457), he was elected king by the Czech Estates. The beginnings of the Czech Reform church, the Jednota bratrská (in English often called the Czech or Moravian Brethren), date from his reign. After the death of the Hussite king Jiri z Podebrad in 1471, the Jagellonian dynasty assumed the Czech throne and reigned until 1526, when after the death of King Ludvik Jagellonsky at the battle of Mohacs, the Habsburg Ferdinand I was elected king of the Czech lands.

In the second half of the 15th century, the country so long devastated by religious strife and wars finally saw peaceful coexistence between Catholics and supporters of the Hussite reforms. A gradual regeneration began. Throughout the 16th century, cities expanded, Renaissance castles were built, especially in Prague, and in Southern Bohemia Jakub Krčín (1535-1604) established an extensive and justly famous network of fish-ponds. Humanistic literature flourished. In Moravian Kralice a brotherhood of scholars worked on a translation of the Bible from its Hebrew and Aramaic sources. Their translation, published from 1579 to 1594 under the title Biblí svatá (Holy Bible), is generally known as the Bible Kralická (Kralice Bible). The Bible had a huge influence on the Czech language and literature, and its language is alive to this day.

During the reign of Rudolf II (1576-1611), Prague again became the cultural center of the empire, but after his death disputes broke out between Catholics and reformers, peaking in the revolt of the Czech Estates against King Matyas, who succeeded his brother, Rudolf, to the throne. Like the Hussite revolution, this uprising, too, began with a defenestration. In May of 1618 two royal governers were thrown out a window of Prague castle. In August of 1619 the Czech Estates selected as king Fridrich Falcky. His reign was short-lived, however. The army of the Czech Estates was decisively defeated on November 8, 1620, near Prague at the battle of White Mountain. King Fridrich fled. The Czech lands were cruelly punished. 27 Czech lords who had participated in the defense against the Hapsburgs were publicly executed on the Old Town Square in Prague in June of 1621. To this day, the place where the the executioner’s block and gallows stood is marked on the cobblestones. The execution of the Czech lords was but a prologue to further repressive, anti-reformation decrees. Emperor Ferdinand II, who assumed the throne in 1620, pardoned a series of participants in the uprising, but confiscated their lands. In a nation which had been nine-tenths Protestant, counter-Reformation was undertaken by force. The Thirty Years' War, which followed on the Estates' uprising, devastated and impoverished the country to such an extent that of more than three million inhabitants, only eight hundred thousand remained. Many preferred to emigrate to neighboring countries where they could practice Protestantism. The best known of them was Jan Ámos Komenský (1592-1672), a Czech thinker and pedagogue and a leading figure among the Czech Brethren. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, sealed the fate of the Czech lands. They lost their independence and would remain within the borders of Austro-Hungary under Hapsburg rule until 1918.

The Czech nobility and landowners were decimated, their estates given to foreigners and the serfs required to work much longer for their new masters, leading in the late 17th century to revolts bloodily suppressed. Forced re-Catholicization of the country continued. The Kralice Bible and a number of other books were placed on the index: banned books found during house-to-house searches were collected and burned. The majority of Czechs could not but succumb to the pressure. Only a tiny minority of secret Brethren managed to preserve their faith while pretending to be Catholic. Some preferred to convert to Judaism, the only other faith recognized by law. Remaining monuments to this time are a series of Baroque churches in the countryside, and buildings of the high Czech Baroque, erected mostly in the first half of the 18th century.

Some relief came with the reforms of Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790). The Jesuit order was disbanded, torture during criminal trials was forbidden, the judiciary was made independent, and in 1781 a patent abolishing serfdom was published; in the same year the Patent of Tolerance was published, legalizing Protestantism. At the same time, however, government was centralized and higher schools and the civil service Germanized.

Around this time, reaction against Germanization emerged in the form of the Czech National Revival. In the 1780's, the first Czech newspapers appeared in Prague, Czech theaters opened, and in 1792 a department of Czech language and literature was established at the university in Prague. In 1806 mandatory elementary education was introduced in the Czech lands. In the 19th century, the country was industrialized and education, culture, and Czech literature developed rapidly. In the revolutionary year of 1848, serfdom was definitively abolished. In 1869, a law was promulgated requiring eight years of mandatory schooling. In 1882, Charles University in Prague was divided into a Czech and a German branch. In 1883, the renovated National Theater opened in Prague.

With its defeat in the First World War (1914-1918), Austro-Hungary collapsed. New states emerged from its ruins, among them Czechoslovakia, which was founded on October 28, 1918, as a democratic state with Tomáš G. Masaryk (1850-1937) as its president. In addition to Bohemia and Moravia, Czechoslovakia also included Slovakia and Podkarpatská Rus (Subcarpathian Ukraine). Given its ethnic composition and its population of 14 million, it was not a very stable state. Along with two and a half million Slovaks, who since the fall of the Great Moravian Empire had been part of Hungary, Czechoslovakia comprised a German minority of nearly three million, a more than half-million Hungarian minority in Southern Slovakia, a Polish minority in Northeast Moravia, and a Rusyn population in Podkarpatská Rus.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power and neighboring Germany became a Nazi totalitarian state. In 1938 Hitler's Germany invaded Austria, claiming it as a part of the so-called Great German Reich. Czechoslovakia, with its three million Germans concentrated mainly along the border, was next in line. Hitler demanded that the border territories be ceded to Germany. Although Czechoslovakia had a defense pact with Great Britain and France, the representatives of those nations wanted to avoid war at all cost. The Munich Accord of September 15, 1938, obliged the Czechoslovak government to capitulate and cede the Bohemian and Moravian border regions to Germany. The truncated state was then seized by the German army on March 15, 1939, and renamed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The previous day, Slovakia had proclaimed its independence and Hungary had claimed Podkarpatska Rus. On September 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out. In May of 1945, when the war ended, Czechoslovakia was restored, but with Podkarpatska Rus now a part of the Soviet Union, which thus obtained a common border with Czechoslovakia. Germans were expelled en masse from the border regions. In February of 1948, the communists came to power in a putsch; Czechoslovakia became a totalitarian state and a part of the Soviet bloc.