Bohemia (green) within the Czech Republic today. File:Flag of Bohemia.svg|thumb|right|Historical flag of Bohemia

Bohemia ( ; ; ; ; ) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands, currently the Czech Republic. In a broader meaning, it often refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in historical contexts, such as the Kingdom of Bohemia.

Bohemia has an area of 52,750 km² and 6.25 million of the Czech Republic's 10.3 million inhabitants. It is bordered by Germany to the southwest, west, and northwest, Poland to the north-east, the Czech historical region of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše within the Sudeten mountains.

History

Coat of Arms of Bohemia

see: History of Czechoslovakia

thumb|right|Historical map with Bohemia proper outlined in pink, Moravia in yellow, and Austrian Silesia in orange.

Ancient Bohemia

Roman authors provide the first clear reference to this area as Boiohaemum, from Germanic Boi-Heim, "home of the Boii", a Celtic people. As part of the territory often crossed during the Migration Period by major Germanic and Slavic tribes, the western half was conquered and settled from the 1st century BC by Germanic (probably Suebic) peoples including the Marcomanni; the elite of some Boii then migrated west to modern Switzerland and southeastern Gaul. Those Boii that remained in the eastern part were eventually absorbed by the Marcomanni. Part of the Marcomanni, renamed the Bavarians (Baiuvarum), later migrated to the southwest.

After the Bavarian emigration, Bohemia was partially repopulated around the sixth century by the Slavic precursors of today's Czechs, though the exact amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or (more probably) three waves. The first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Langobards left Bohemia (circa 568 AD). Later immigrants came from the Black Sea region, as shown by their place names—for example "Dudleb" (today in Prachens region, South Bohemia) is of Iranian origin and "Charvat" is of Turkic origin. Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samo's tribal confederation. His death marked the end of the archaic-"Slavonic" confederation, just the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia.

Other sources (Descriptio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii, Bavaria, 800-850) divide the population of Bohemia at this time into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare (Bohemani) and Fraganeo. (The suffix -ani or -ni means "people of-"). The great tribes of Dudleb, Lemuz and Charvat are missing from this list, which shows a linguistic and cultural shift in favor of Slavonic dialects, a common occurrence in nomadic immigrations. The first religions of these "Bohemians" are unclear, although some Iranian religion-inspired cults (for example, the god Mihr) have been discovered in extant graves (from Pohořelice, Kal, Mikulčice in the 8th century), and a temple of the Fire called Žīži in the center of Fraga. Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century, but became dominant much later, in the 10th or 11th century. The ninth century was crucial for the future of Bohemia - the manorial system sharply declined (as in Bavaria) and the power of central Fraganeo - Czechs grew. It was caused because they kept strategical central cult in their territory. They were predominately Slavs and it contributed to transformation of neighbouring populations into new nation named and led by them with united slavic ethnical subconsciousness.