History, 19th and 20th century, Cisleithania, Czechoslovakia, identity, the nationality issue, population census, ethnic classification, ethnic conflict.

The study compares several aspects of national politics in the Bohemian lands under two different political and ideological regimes, Habsburg Cisleithania and the First Czechoslovak Republic. I focus specifically on those aspects of politics which affected the ways in which the two regimes approached the definition and determination of relevant statistical data in censuses. Cisleithania was a supranational state, which had to respond to the fact that during the 19th century the national idea established itself as the new leading form of collective identification. The Czechoslovak Republic thus defined itself as ?the nation state of the Czechs and Slovaks,? although in reality it incorporated sizeable ethnic minorities.