Academic Encyclopaedia of the Czech History. Vol. VII (K/2 – L: Drnovská book – Lusatian Serbs)

The seventh volume completes the first half of the entire encyclopaedic work, which has been produced under the care of the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the work of its researchers in cooperation with leading experts from other academic and university institutions. The volume is polythematic, but has several distinctive areas in the large and medium-sized entries. It contributes to the definition of the historical milieu in terms of geographical and population concepts (cosmography, landscape, people) and treats in detail some regions without which it is impossible to imagine the medieval and early modern history of the Czech/Bohemian state (Luxembourg and Lusatia, but also the local Slavic people – the Lusatian Serbs). It illuminates key concepts of the Middle Ages and early modern times (e.g. colonisation, coronation, royal city, electorate, fief, Luxemburg dynasty) and modern history (e.g. concentration camps, Košice government programme, May 1945 uprising, legionnaires, air war over the Czech lands, air force). Considerable attention is focused on the period of communist totalitarianism (collectivization of agriculture, communism, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, communist regime, etc.). Other entries are devoted to the history of the state and law, political currents, diplomacy, national minorities, cultural and ecclesiastical history. There are also entries devoted to auxiliary and related disciplines (codicology, comeniology) and especially to contemporary historiography (critical turn, cultural and social anthropology, cultural turn, linguistic turn).