Czech lands were pretty developed (relatively speaking) for many centuries, e. g. T the first German speaking university was established in Prague. Then the communist era spoiled it, World Bank recognized Czechia as "developed" 9nly in 2006.
Czechia didn't catch up to Western Europe HDIs until the mid-2010s, and Median wages were significantly lower than much of Western Europe until recently (eg. The datapoint above), and GDP per Capita is still significantly behind much of Western Europe and the Asian Tigers.
Even South Korea didn't officially become developed until the mid-2010s, and they outpaced Czechia in HDI and GDP per Capita by the early 2000s.
Alternatively, if Czechia was a developed country in the mid-2000s, then Turkey and Hungary are now developed countries in the early 2020s as they have hit similar indicators as Czechia in the 2000s.
> Czech lands were pretty developed
Developed versus developing is a technical-ish term.
Czechia was absolutely a developing country until recently. Just having a medieval university or some industrial capacity in the early 20th isn't saying much, as Korea and Taiwan were in a similar boat as well under the otherwise brutal Japanese colonial rule.
And even today, water treatment in Czechia lags significantly behind much of the Western EU member states.
Saying otherwise is just Eurocentricism.
And it also ignores that fact that for most of it's history, it was CzechoSLOVAKIA and Slovakia is still lagging behind on developmental indicators to this day, despite having a similar linguistic and ethnic proximity to Czechs as Serbs are to Croats.
Quite a lot of industrial capacity since the early 19th. Czech Lands had a lot of black coal and water, so heavy industry started flourishing early, once steam engines were available. The first industrial ironworks in Ostrava started producing steel in 1828; the heavy ingots back then had to be transported by horses, because first railway only reached the region a decade later.
" for most of it's history, it was CzechoSLOVAKIA"
Nope, bad history. Czechoslovakia was a relatively short-lived country, only extant for three generations. The Slovaks spent almost a millennium, from approximately 1000 to 1918, as a Hungarian de-facto colony, Felvidék (the Upper Land); subject of a different kingdom. The Czech crown lands never extended to Slovakia. The only unitary state was the 20th century republic.
