In January 1993 the Slovak Republic became an independent state after the division of Czecho-Slovakia into two states. With an area of 49,000 km2 and population of 5.3 million, it is one of the smaller European states. The capital of Slovakia is Bratislava with a population of half a million people. The world at large began to take an interest in Slovakia, the Slovaks, and their culture and history only after 1993. Since the history of the Slovaks developed within the framework of the Kingdom of Hungary until 1918, and then within Czechoslovakia, not only the amateur, but also the expert public may ask what the history of Slovakia is. Does such a history really exist?

In fact, Slovakia and the Slovaks have long been a subject of historical scholarship. If we could trace the development of Hungarian historiography, we would find that since various chroniclers were of Slovak ethnic origin (not least Ján of Turiec, the most eminent), Slovakia and especially the Slovak ethnic group have attracted interest. This tradition continued in humanist and Baroque historiography, since the territory of present-day Slovakia formed a substantial part of Habsburg Hungary during this period. The rest of Hungary was under Turkish domination. Interest in Slovakia and the Slovaks was heightened in the period of the Enlightenment, mainly thanks to the formally written defences (apologias) of the Slovaks (the earliest-known example is that of Ján Baltazár Magin from 1723) (Fig. 3), which used historical arguments.