Agriculture in Slovakia has been adversely influenced by globalisation-related problems, competition from the countries with better climatic conditions, and the unfortunate heritage left by the recent past.


II. History

About 100 000 B.C. Neanderthal man lived near the hot springs of the Spiš region. A cast of the cerebral cavity of a Neanderthal woman was found in a travertine heap near Gánovce. About 5000 B.C. The first peasants stepped into the territory of Slovakia and built their settlements there. Roman legions crossed the Danube to first enter the territory of today's Slovakia in the 6th century. Slavic tribes occupied what is now Slovakia in the 5th century A.D. Samo, Frankish monger took over the leadership of the Slavic tribe union from 623 to 658 A.D. He established and headed what came to be called "Samo´s Empire", the first state formation of the westerns Slavs.

In 833, the prince of Moravia captured Nitra and formed the Great Moravian Empire, which included all of present Central and West Slovakia, the Czech Republic and parts of neighbouring Poland, Hungary and Germany. The empire
converted to Christianity with the arrival of the Thessaloniki brothers and missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, in 863.

In 907, the Great Moravian Empire collapsed as a result of the political intrigues of its rulers and invasion by Hungary. By 1018 the whole of Slovakia was annexed by Hungary and remained so for the next 900 years, although the Spis region of East Slovakia belonged to Poland from 1412 to 1772. After a Tatar invasion in the 13th century, the Hungarian king invited Saxon Germans to settle the depopulated north-eastern borderlands. When the Turks overran Hungary in the early 16th century, the Hungarian capital moved from Buda to Bratislava. Only in 1686 was the Ottoman presence finally driven south of the Danube.

The formation of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1867 gave Hungary autonomy in domestic matters and a policy of enforced Magyarisation ('Hungarianisation') was instituted in Slovakia between 1868 and 1918. In 1907 Hungarian became the sole language of elementary education. As a reaction to this, Slovak intellectuals cultivated closer cultural ties with the Czechs, who were themselves dominated by the Austrians. The concept of a single Czecho-Slovakian unit was born for political purposes and, after the Austro-Hungarian defeat in W.W.I., Slovakia, Ruthenia, Bohemia and Moravia united as Czechoslovakia. The centralising tendencies of the sophisticated Czechs alienated many Slovaks and, after the 1938 Munich agreement that forced Czechoslovakia to cede territory to Germany, Slovakia declared its autonomy within a federal state.