Voluntary Associations and Nation-building in Nineteenth-century Prague

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Prague underwent a rapid transformation from provincial backwater to one of the major cities in the Habsburg realm. For Czech historian Zdeněk Šolle, this change began with the revolutionary year 1848: ‘the events of 1848 showed the key position of Prague in the future of the crownland, and of the Czech nation. We can honestly date this year … as the beginning of a new stage in the development of the capital city of Prague’.¹ Although the 1848 revolution was relatively short-lived in Prague, weakened by disputes between its Czech and German leaders and crushed by military force in June 1848, its long-term impact re-made the city. The abolition of serfdom helped accelerate industrial development within the Habsburg Empire, and the neo-absolutist regime imposed after the revolution instituted liberal economic policies which fuelled the expansion of business. The results were spectacular, and turned Prague into a thriving industrial and banking centre whose population grew from 146, 418 in 1843 to 514, 345 by the century’s end.² The migration of peasants from the Czech-speaking countryside driving this population growth shifted the ethnic balance of the capital at a time when national movements were challenging traditional loyalties and creating new societal fault-lines based on language and ethnicity.