bohemia

1. A community of persons with artistic or literary tastes who adopt manners and mores conspicuously different from those expected or approved of by the majority of society.
2. The district in which bohemians live.

[Back-formation from BOHEMIAN.]

Type: Public Company
Address: 85647 Highway 995, Eugene, Oregon 97405, U.S.A.
Telephone: (503) 744-4600
Fax: (503) 683-7679
Employees: 2,120
Sales: $291.7 million
Incorporated: 1942 as The Bohemia Lumber Company
SIC: 2421 Sawmills & Planing Mills - General; 2436 Softwood Veneer & Plywood; 2493 Reconstituted Wood Products; 5031 Lumber, Plywood & Millwork; 4789 Transportation Services Nec; 4011 Railroads - Line-Haul Operating; 0811 Timber Tracts

Until its assets were acquired by Willamette Industries Inc., Bohemia, Inc. was regarded as one of the more progressive forest products companies in the United States, leading the way in the efficient of use of harvested timber. With facilities in Oregon and northern California, Bohemia was involved in manufacturing laminated beams, lumber, plywood, particleboard, and numerous other wood products. The company also maintained a small presence in the marine construction market.

For L. L. "Stub" Stewart and his brother Faye Stewart, 1970 marked a transitional point in their tenure as operators in the U.S. forest products industry. Much had changed since they had assumed control of The Bohemia Lumber Company in 1946 and much would change in the years after 1970. One era would witness the rise of their forest products company, the other its demise; together the two time periods relate a story representative of the roller-coaster ride that many of the country's lumber company owners took during the second half of the 20th century. For the two brothers, the good times came before the bad, beginning with their acquisition of The Bohemia Lumber Company following World War II.

The Stewart brothers purchased Bohemia Lumber at a propitious juncture in the 20th century. The wave of prosperity which followed the war's conclusion rejuvenated many industries, including the construction industry, which was the largest single market for companies like Bohemia Lumber. The demand for new housing, which had remained stagnant during the Depression and World War II, sharply increased during the postwar years, making the harvesting and manufacture of timber a lucrative business. To meet this demand, the number of lumber mills in operation soared; however, as more and more new lumber companies entered the business, competition within the industry became increasingly severe.

Small, under-capitalized lumber companies were forced to shut down, causing a precipitous drop in the number of mills in operation throughout the country. From 1950 to 1970, the number of lumber mills in the United States plunged from more than 50,000 to less than 35,000 as the lumber industry underwent two decades of significant change. In the new business environment that arose during these decades, the logging and manufacture of timber became an industry in which only those companies able to make efficient use of raw materials could effectively compete. Integrated mills which used as much of a log as possible became crucial to the success of a lumber company; as a result, the manufacture of plywood, particleboard, and paper became integral elements of a lumber company's profitability. Well-financed companies which were able to incorporate new logging and manufacturing techniques into their operations flourished, while others dropped by the wayside.

In Oregon, where the Stewarts presided over their business, market conditions were particularly harsh. Although the state ranked as the largest timber producing region in the country from 1950 to 1970, the number of lumber mills plummeted during that same period from 1,455 to a mere 450. Despite operating in the midst of so much economic turmoil, Bohemia Lumber took the necessary steps survive and prosper in the highly competitive wood manufacturing industry.

Taking its name from a nearby mining district where James "Bohemia" Johnson had discovered gold in 1863, Bohemia Lumber was established in 1916 near Cottage Grove, Oregon, to produce Douglas fir lumber. Three years after its formation, LaSells Stewart, the father of L.L. and Faye, purchased a one-quarter interest in the company. The company remained in LaSells's partial control until after World War II, when Stewart's sons acquired the lumber concern. Graduates of Oregon State University's prestigious School of Forestry, L. L. and Faye Stewart were well-equipped for the defining developments set to sweep through their industry. While the company posed few economic challenges during the first 15 years of their tenure, the brothers' managerial talents would ultimately be put to the test as the lumber market became more competitive. Together they would diversify Bohemia Lumber's interests, steering the company toward more profitable fields and reducing its dependence on one aspect of business.

In 1956, Bohemia Lumber began making moves to compete in increasingly aggressive lumber markets. The Stewart brothers built a new sawmill in Culp Creek, Oregon, to replace the company's original mill; further, they also began acquiring other timber-related interests to complement their sawmill operations. In the mid-1960s, Bohemia Lumber assumed control of Cascade Fiber--an ailing particleboard manufacturer based in Eugene, Oregon--through a management contract. Eventually, Cascade Fiber became a wholly owned division of Bohemia Lumber, when the company purchased the remaining 50 percent interest. This acquisition quickly became one of Bohemia Lumber's more profitable divisions and it added diversity to the company's range of products where none had existed previously. Bohemia Lumber continued to expand in 1969 when it began constructing a laminated beam plant in Saginaw, Oregon. Completed in 1971, the plant could produce 50,000 board feet a day using wood stock the company had previously supplied to other laminated beam manufacturers. Ultimately, laminated beams became Bohemia Lumber's mainstay product.

The same year that Bohemia Lumber began construction of its laminated beam plant, L. L. and Faye Stewart broadened the scope their operations considerably with the acquisition of The Umpqua River Navigation Company. The Umpqua River Navigation Company was involved in the sand and gravel business, in dredging, and in the construction of marine jetties--which were necessities on the Pacific Coast, where few natural harbors existed along the region's numerous navigable rivers. A passenger and freight hauler earlier in the century, Umpqua River Navigation Co. was primarily engaged in marine construction projects awarded through government agency contracts. The addition of Umpqua River Navigation Co., which was formed into Bohemia Lumber's Umpqua Division, provided an immediate boost to profits and gave the Stewart brothers a well-rounded, vertically integrated company to surmount the obstacles that lay ahead in the 1970s and 1980s.

While these moves toward diversification were being executed during the 1960s, significant ownership changes were being effected as well. In 1960, U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers acquired a 50 percent interest in Bohemia Lumber, which it bought back in 1967 in anticipation of Bohemia becoming a publicly owned company. When Bohemia Lumber finally went public in late 1968, the event also signalled a name change from The Bohemia Lumber Company to Bohemia, Inc.

With its new name and the solid backing of its initial stock offering, Bohemia exited the 1960s propelled by unprecedented financial growth and buoyed by its recent diversification into laminated beams and marine construction. Sales increased 50 percent in 1969, jumping from $20.1 million to $30.3 million, but more impressive was Bohemia's profit growth, which soared 900 percent from $507,000 to $4.5 million. Much of Bohemia's financial growth was attributable to its strategic operating philosophy during the 1960s, which elevated the company's stature in the lumber industry from a basic sawmill operator to that of a more sophisticated forest products company with diversified interests in profitable lines of business. By incorporating innovative technologies, such as hauling logs by helium balloons and adopting advanced manufacturing techniques, L. L. and Faye Stewart had created a company able to compete in the lumber industry's new arena.

By the beginning of the 1970s, Bohemia was regarded as one of the more progressive manufacturers of lumber, plywood, and particleboard in the country. The company did much of its own logging, primarily from publicly owned stands of old growth Douglas fir, and operated four plants within Oregon that produced products sold domestically to wholesalers, distributors, retail yards, industrial users, and government agencies. Bohemia also enjoyed a sizeable international demand for its harvested lumber, shipping its softwood lumber to such countries as England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Holland, Belgium, and Australia.

Annual sales, which had hovered around $10 million before the company's diversification and expansion program during the 1960s, approached $60 million annually during the early 1970s and amounted to $130 million annually by the end of the decade. Fueling this growth was a continued commitment to expansion and to using as much of each log as possible. When L.L. and Faye Stewart had acquired the company, using 40 percent of a log was considered efficient. As competition intensified and new technologies emerged, such a percentage could no longer sustain a lumber company's profitability. As one lumber industry official observed, the drive for efficient and total use of harvested timber was analogous to using every part of a hog except its squeal, a goal that Bohemia had demonstrated considerable success in achieving. During the late 1970s, Bohemia stunned the logging industry when it achieved 100 percent log usage by developing a patented extraction process to obtain commercially marketable products from material formerly regarded as waste--Douglas fir bark. From bark, the company was able to produce a wide range of products, including vegetable wax, cork, and extenders for plywood adhesives.

With pioneering manufacturing techniques such as its bark by-product extraction process, Bohemia was able to secure an enviable position in the lumber industry, a position that was bolstered by its steady expansion. By 1974 Bohemia's expansion included the purchase of a 50 percent interest in the Oregon Pacific and Eastern Railway, the construction of a planning mill, and the acquisition of a sawmill in Dexter, Oregon. Concurrent with the completion of its bark conversion plant in 1976, Bohemia constructed a mill designed to process small logs harvested from second growth timber and acquired Yuba River Lumber Company and Brunswick Timber Products, which gave the company three additional sawmills and more than 26,000 acres of timberland.

Despite such impressive gains in the 1970s, Bohemia suffered three years of debilitating losses in the early 1980s when the lumber industry experienced an economic downturn. Between 1982 and 1985, the company racked up operating losses of more than $16 million, while long-term debt rose an alarming 150 percent to $47 million. Chiefly to blame were rising interest rates, which crippled the construction market, and cheap timber from Canada and the southern United States; but even more deleterious to Bohemia's long-term stability was its reliance on publicly owned timber stands. At this time, Bohemia obtained about 70 percent of its timber from public land. This practice proved catastrophic during the recession, for the company had to honor long-term contracts with state and federal agencies even though the markets for its timber products had dwindled. Bohemia continued to be plagued financially by this miscalculation long after economic conditions improved.

In an effort to combat its financial slide during the early 1980s, Bohemia contracted out its logging operations--a move that saved the company $3.5 million a year--and renegotiated its labor contract with employees. In addition, Bohemia sold two inefficient sawmills and a plywood plant, helping the company to recover from its financial malaise. However, as time progressed and environmental concerns intensified, Bohemia's future profitability came into question. Those same public lands which had caused Bohemia so much trouble in the early 1980s now presented a new problem, in that they were becoming the subject of a contentious debate between environmentalists and federal legislators.

The environmental debate surrounding the harvesting of government-owned timber created a new business climate in which two types of lumber companies emerged: large forest product companies owning sizeable private timberlands, and small forest product companies that could operate in an entrepreneurial fashion. Although Bohemia was Oregon's eighth largest forest products company and the state's 13th largest public company, it did not own enough private land or capital to compete with the country's largest forest products producers; likewise, Bohemia was too large and owned too much to be run like an entrepreneurial organization. Acknowledging the company's precarious and vulnerable position, Bohemia's management announced in late 1990 that the company's assets would be liquidated. Less than a year later, Willamette Industries Inc., a $2 billion forest products company also based in Oregon, purchased Bohemia's assets for $122 million, ending its 75-year existence as a lumber company.

Further Reading

Astman, Fred, "Bohemia Inc.," Wall Street Transcript, September 19, 1977.

Beauchamp, Marc, "Almost Out of the Woods," Forbes, October 5, 1987, p. 198.

"Bohemia Enters Discussions," Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1989, p. A4.

"Bohemia Inc.," Wall Street Journal, July 2, 1990, p. C14.

"Bohemia Inc. Completes Purchase," Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1980, p. 44.

"Bohemia Inc. Terminates Talks," Wall Street Journal, April 10, 1989, p. B5C.

"Bohemia Plans to Sell All Assets in 18 Months," Forest Industries, March 1991, p. 8.

"Boise to Sell 11 Plants to Willamette," New York Times, May 16, 1992, p. 40.

Brown, Craig, "Drive to Survive," Oregon Business, August 1991, p. 29.

Fisher, Roger V., "Bohemia, Inc.," Wall Street Transcript, April 30, 1973, p. 32,760.

Mayhew, Harold D., "Bohemia Inc.," Wall Street Transcript, November 21, 1983, p. 71,919.

"1969 Will Be Tough to Beat for Bohemia Lumber Co.," Investment Dealers' Digest, December 2, 1969, p. 34.

Raphael, Marvin S., "The Bohemia Lumber Company," Wall Street Transcript, January 12, 1970, p. 19,176.

Stewart, L.L., "Bohemia Inc.," Wall Street Transcript, October 14, 1974, p. 38,419.

Taylor, John H., "The Ducks Are Flying," Forbes, July 20, 1992, p. 124.

"Two Buyers Found for Bohemia Assets," Forest Industries, September 1991, p. 6.

"Unloading Ships by Balloon May Be More Than Hot Air," Wall Street Journal, March 15, 1973, p. 10.

"Willamette to Buy Bohemia," Wall Street Journal, August 15, 1991, p. C12.

"Willamette Industries Gets 94.5 Percent of Shares in Offer for Bohemia," Wall Street Journal, September 27, 1991, p. B10.

— Jeffrey L. Covell

The crown lands of early modern Bohemia stretched across a significant portion of central Europe. Though centered on the kingdom of Bohemia proper and oriented administratively around its capital, Prague, they also included Upper and Lower Lusatia, the margravate of Moravia, and the assorted duchies of Silesia. There was little institutional cohesion among these territories; Saxony absorbed Lusatia in 1635, while Prussia seized nearly all of Silesia in 1742. Before the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Bohemia boasted a population of three million, more than that of contemporary England. The region was also blessed with an array of natural resources that supported a thriving economy. The Elbe River valley and the southern Moravian plain were fertile agricultural regions while the silver mines of Jihlava (Iglau), KutnáHora (Kuttenberg) and the German settlement of Joachimsthal (Jáchymov) were known throughout Europe. Also important to the economy were the traditional Bohemian trades of brewing and fish farming combined with a textile industry that had a particularly strong base in Silesia with the commercial center of Breslau (Wrocław) as its most important hub.

Rulers and Religious Reform

The crown of St. Wenceslas was elective, and power within the kingdom was divided between the royal court and the three Estates: the lords, the knights, and the burghers. Constitutionally, Bohemia's political status was solidified by Emperor Charles IV (ruled 1355–1378). In 1356 he established the kingdom as one of the empire's seven electoral principalities. Charles founded central Europe's first university in Prague, began an ambitious building program in the city, raised the bishopric to an archbishopric, and initiated a lively cultural exchange with Italy. Both Petrarch and Cola di Rienzo visited Bohemia.

Scholars traditionally date Bohemia's early modern period to the accession of the Habsburgs in 1526. The two most pressing problems the new dynasty faced, however, had their origins in the previous century. Most serious was the issue of religion. Jan Hus (c. 1372/1373–1415) headed a reform movement that accelerated after his execution at the Council of Constance in 1415. Opposition to Rome crystallized around the Four Articles of Prague, which called for a general reform of clerical life and insisted upon the administration of the Eucharist in the form of both bread and wine. The Hussites successfully resisted five crusades and eventually won significant concessions that were negotiated at the Council of Basel in 1437. There were fissures, however, within the original reform movement. The radical contingent of the Hussite revolution would be crushed at the battle of Lipany in 1434. The Utraquists, representing a more conservative ecclesial tradition, would carry on Hus's legacy under the leadership of Jan Rokycana, a former master of the university. The Unity of Czech Brethren, a smaller group with a more biblicist orientation, would emerge as an independent body in the 1450s. The coming of the Reformation in the sixteenth century added further complexity to an already complex religious landscape. Lutheranism gained ground especially in German communities and among the nobility whereas Calvinism had a significant influence on the Czech Brethren. By the time Ferdinand I von Habsburg had ascended the throne, Bohemia had a well-established reputation as a homeland of heresy. The second problem from the Habsburg perspective was political. Their predecessors, the Jagiellonian kings, Władysław II and Ludvík (ruled 1471–1526), were relatively weak rulers. During their tenure the power of the Estates had grown at the expense of the crown.

Ferdinand's approach to these problems was initially gradual and indirect. In terms of politics, he worked around the Estates with his powers of patronage and appointment. He was able to select allies to staff such important positions as grand burgrave and chancellor. This gave him a freer hand at the conclusion of the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) to discipline the nobility who had joined the revolt. His response to the towns that had been allied with the rebels was even harsher. He deprived them of many of their traditional liberties and privileges. With regard to religion, Ferdinand, a devout Catholic, had even less room to maneuver. As Bohemia's king, he was constitutionally obligated to uphold the Compactata, those concessions the Utraquists had won at Basel, but he did provide the Catholic Church with an institutional framework upon which they could build. In 1561 he appointed Antonín Brus of Mohelnice as archbishop, a seat that had remained vacant ever since the defection of Konrad von Vechta to the Utraquists in 1421. Even more significantly, he invited the Jesuits to the Bohemian lands. Among their number was the young Edmund Campion (1540–1581), whose confessional rhetoric intensified divisions between the kingdom's various religious communities. The work of the Society of Jesus, especially in education, yielded handsome dividends within a generation.

Ferdinand's successors, Maximilian II (ruled 1564–1576) and Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612), were more ambiguous confessionally, and Bohemia's non-Catholics made substantial gains during their reigns. In 1575 the Utraquists and Brethren jointly issued a single confession, the Confessio Bohemica, to which Maximilian gave a verbal guarantee of acceptance. More substantial, however, was a written grant of toleration, the Letter of Majesty, that the estates were able to wring out of Rudolf in 1609 as a result of his famous quarrel with his brother and political rival, Matthias. Bohemia's Rudolfine era is far better known for the great flowering of Renaissance culture that developed under the emperor's aegis. Though Ferdinand had commissioned what is arguably Bohemia's most important Renaissance monument, the gracefully arcaded summer palace, Rudolf easily surpassed his predecessors as both patron and collector. The imperial court at Prague attracted artists from across the Continent, including the fascinating Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Both Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler enjoyed Rudolf's patronage, while the emperor himself was deeply involved in the hermetic arts. Rudolf even showed an interest in Jewish learning, inviting Prague's most important Cabalist, Rabbi Loew, to an extended interview in the castle. Politically and confessionally, however, tensions were rising to a crisis level by the time Matthias officially ascended the throne.

In his feud with Rudolf, Matthias had supported the Protestants. He disappointed the Czech Estates as king, however, failing to address many of their grievances that had arisen from the growing political power of Bohemia's Catholics. The Estates eventually took matters into their own hands. Although the zealous Catholic, Ferdinand of Styria, had been elected Matthias's successor in 1617, matters quickly changed when, in the following year, leaders of the Estates announced their revolutionary intentions by throwing two imperial officials, along with their servant, from a high window of the Prague castle. Ferdinand II was quickly deposed and replaced by the Calvinist elector palatine, Frederick. As the estates appealed to the broader Protestant world for assistance, the Catholics rallied behind Ferdinand in this dramatic opening chapter of the Thirty Years' War. Bohemia's fate was quickly decided. On 9 November 1620, Catholic forces defeated Frederick's supporters on a chalky upland outside Prague.

The imperial victory at White Mountain, a great turning point in Czech history, afforded Emperor Ferdinand II the opportunity to resolve definitively both the political and religious problems of the stubborn kingdom. First, the elective status of the Bohemian crown was abolished in 1624. Then, in 1627 the Renewed Constitution redistributed power and privilege. The Chancellery was moved to Vienna, and the clergy were officially recognized as a new estate. Before 1620 the Catholic community had constituted approximately ten percent of the population. Now, the nobility and townspeople had the option to either convert or leave the kingdom in exile. Nearly a quarter chose the latter. Bohemia also suffered directly from war with a significant population loss and the destruction of its once thriving network of small towns. Before 1618 there were nearly eight hundred towns in the Bohemian kingdom. After the war there were hardly more than two hundred. Prague itself was occupied in 1631 by the Saxons, while the Swedes overran its left bank in 1648.

Stability slowly returned in the second half of the seventeenth century. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) ensured that Bohemia would remain firmly in the Habsburg orbit, while the suppression of a great peasant revolt in 1680 and the Turkish defeat of 1683 granted Bohemia a degree of security the kingdom had not known for many generations. It was also in this period that Bohemia's traditionally fractious nobility were more thoroughly domesticated. The Czech nobility came to play a substantial role in the governance of the empire. Although Albrecht von Wallenstein was an ambiguous Habsburg ally, there were others who exercised a quieter but important role in the imperial capital. The Lobkowitz, Liechtenstein, Černín, Kinsky, and Dietrichstein families served the Habsburgs faithfully in a variety of functions. Ironically, it was Kaspar Kaplíř, a grandson of one of the Czech rebels executed by Ferdinand in 1621, who would help lead the defense of Vienna some sixty years later against the Ottomans. Religious issues, too, were more effectively resolved in the two generations after Westphalia. A confessional identity that was thoroughly Catholic but authentically Czech was fashioned in this period. The cults of older but neglected saints were revived while newer ones were established. The old pilgrimage route from Prague to Stará Boleslav, the site of the martyrdom of St. Wenceslas, once more became popular, and newer forms of devotion, such as that to the Infant of Prague, quickly found their place in the religious life of the region. The exuberant art and architecture of the Bohemian baroque reflected the new self-confidence of the secular and clerical elites. This period culminated in 1729 with the canonization of the immensely popular John Nepomuk, who in the fourteenth century had supposedly been thrown into the Moldau for refusing to betray the secrets of the confessional.

The Eighteenth Century

The death of Emperor Charles VI in 1740 precipitated another crisis in Bohemia as the Bavarian elector, Charles Albert, challenged the claims of Charles's daughter, Maria Theresa. Although he was accepted as king by a narrow majority of the Bohemian nobility, support for the Bavarian was tepid, and after the military victories of the Austrians in Moravia and Bohemia (though not in Silesia), Maria Theresa assumed the reins of government without a major outcry from the nobility. She continued the process of political centralization. The last institutional reminder of an independent Bohemian kingdom was lost when the Bohemian Chancellery was merged with the Austrian in 1749. She also reorganized local government by reducing the Estates' role in its administration. Czechs, however, would continue to exert considerable influence at the imperial court, as best exemplified in the career of the Moravian noble, Prince Kaunitz, who directed Habsburg foreign policy from the 1750s to the 1790s. Economically, the policies of cameralism benefited the kingdom significantly. The Habsburgs focused their efforts on developing important centers of textile production in northern Bohemia and southern Moravia. Financial prosperity would bring its own problems, for Bohemia bore 50 percent of the imperial tax burden, a figure that would increase even more by the 1730s.

Important intellectual and religious reforms came along with these economic changes. After White Mountain, the Jesuits held a virtual monopoly on education. Concerned that doctrinal error might slip back into the region, the Jesuits were cautious and frequently resistant to intellectual innovation. Ironically, reversing the pattern of the seventeenth century, it was the Habsburgs, beginning most notably with Joseph I (ruled 1705–1711), who would push for religious and educational reform within Bohemia. This process of liberalization would culminate with the enlightened policies of Maria Theresa's advisor, Gerhard van Swieten, and Joseph II (co-regent 1765–1780, ruled 1780–1790). Bohemia's first scientific society was founded in the 1770s. A chair of Czech language was established at the university in the 1790s. Most important, however, were the twin edicts of 1781 that abolished serfdom and granted religious toleration. Even the Jews won a series of new privileges. One of the oldest and largest settlements in central Europe, the Jewish community of Prague had experienced a wide range of conditions from Ferdinand I to Maria Theresa. With Joseph II they were allowed to move more freely in Christian society and even attend the university. Although the conservative Francis II (ruled 1792–1835) attempted to rescind many of the reforms of Joseph and his brother Leopold (ruled 1790–1792), the important changes they initiated survived and ultimately transformed Bohemia in the following century.

Bibliography

Brock, Peter. The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries. The Hague, 1957.

Eberhard, Winfried. Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen. Munich, 1981.

Evans, R. J. W. "The Habsburg Monarchy and Bohemia, 1526–1848." In Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Mark Greengrass. London, 1991. Most concise overview in English on early modern Bohemia (pp. 134–150).

——. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation. Oxford, 1979.

Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Eila. Böhmen und die böhmischen Stände in der Zeit des beginnenden Zentralismus: Eine Strukturanalyse der böhmischen Adelsnation um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1982.

Heymann, Frederick. "The Impact of Martin Luther upon Bohemia." Central European History 1 (1968): 107–130.

Kaufmann, Thomas Da Costa. The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II. Chicago, 1988.

Kerner, Robert Joseph. Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Political, Economic, and Social History. New York, 1932.

Macek, Josef. "Bohemia and Moravia." In The Renaissance in National Context, edited by R. Porter and M. Teich, pp. 197–220. Cambridge, U.K., 1992.

Muneles, Otto, ed. The Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period. Prague, 1965.

Polišenský, Josef. The Thirty Years' War. London, 1971.

Teich, Mikuláš. "Bohemia: From Darkness into Light." In The Enlightenment in National Context, edited by R. Porter and M. Teich, pp. 141–163. Cambridge, U.K., 1981.

Teich, Mikuláš, ed. Bohemia in History. Cambridge, U.K., 1998. Chapters 5–8 cover the early modern period.

Zdeněk, David. "The Strange Fate of Czech Utraquism." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 641–668. Important revisionist article on the religious culture of sixteenth-century Bohemia.

—HOWARD LOUTHAN