I am working on a map showing the different historical regions of Europe. By historical regions, I mean areas whose borders have been in place long enough (several centuries) and that have developped a cultural identity.

The purpose of this map would be to help studying the history of different european regions since historical records often refer to regions that have ceased to exist.

As an example, in France people are used to the « départements » sub division and will often use a département to refer to a specific place. But this sub division dates back to 1790 which means that everything that happened prior to 1790 use an older sub division that has been in place for much longer and was based on cultural identities but is no longer used.

Now as for Slovakia, I don’t know the relevance of the map I have found. Some people told me it was the county division of Slovakia which seems to be partially false since this is not the current administrative division of Slovakia but the county division dating back to the Kingdom of Hungary. So, my questions are : what are the regions people use when talking about the history of Slovakia ? Are there cultural differences in various parts of Slovakia and if so, is there a map of the cultural regions ?

by Poussin_Casoar

6 comments

  1. No, historical is…..welll kind of complicated and not really liked among slovaks.

  2. These are administrative regions from the late 19th century when we were part of Hungary. I can say that they pretty much follow the culturally distinguishable regions.

  3. These are historical subdivisions in use during the late Kingdom of Hungary. They more or less follow the cultural regions, which usually follow valleys and are divided by mountain ranges. However, it’s not a 100 % match with the cultural regions. E.g. Záhorie (northwestern area) is a single cultural region with its own dialect, but has been historically divided between Bratislava and Nitra/Trnava subdivisions.

    [Here a map of the cultural regions](https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoznam_regi%C3%B3nov_Slovenska#/media/S%C3%BAbor:Tourism_regions_of_Slovakia_sk.png).

    [The current division](https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BAbor:Kraje_Slovenska.svg) consists of greater regions, but it’s been suggested multiple times to change them to follow the natural regions (which would be more similar to the historical and culture subdivisions, a bit updated because of commuting possibilities etc.)

  5. Bratislava doesn’t fit, that one came brand new later. Prešporok would fit that place better.

  6. Remnants of historical counties from Kingdom of Hungary before 1918. You can still find the present day counterparts in Hungary. Although they were only governmental units, some of them had some kind of cultural unity (like Novohrad and Gemer).

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