Integrating Interwar Czechoslovakia. A view from Slovakian Roads

Abstract

Before 1918, modern-day Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1918, Slovakia became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia. This change necessitated, and produced, a wholesale transformation of its infrastructure. Trunk roads were redirected from Budapest westwards to Prague. In the new system builder’s visions, infrastructure alone had the power to bring Czechs and Slovaks together into one nation. From the 1930s onwards, as Germany started the construction of its motorway network, some engineers, entrepreneurs and politicians presented Czechoslovakia as a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe. Automobiles and motorways were modern and promising technologies also with economic importance. In my paper, I will show how roads as a technology were thus used by Czechoslovak politicians and engineers to achieve the integration of their young nation-state into a Europe reshaped by the conflict. This account illustrates the development of infrastructure systems in Central Europe from World War I to the interwar period