A summary based on a great paper by Magdziarz et al.[1]:
- Between 1850 and 1914, an estimated 1.5 million Czechs emigrated to mostly the US. Most of these people were agricultural and industrial workers
- In 1918, the US introduced restrictions on immigration from Czechoslovakia, which was the most common migration destination for Czechs. This didn't actually seem to have much of an effect in numbers as the early 1920s saw the peak of emigration from Czechoslovakia to the US.
- In the interwar periods, more Czechs moved to Slovakia than Slovaks moved to Czechia - and not by a small amount, the year that is used as an example, 1930, had a ratio of 3:1.
- After WWII, Czechoslovakia was under Soviet influence, which caused a decline in both immigration and emigration. There were two notable events that caused emigration though:
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet bloc troops (estimated 23k emigrants from 1948-1950).
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops (approximately 100k emigrants from late 1968 to end of 1969). This emigration apparently contained more Czechs than Slovaks.
- From 1948 to 1989, somewhere from 200k to 500k Czechs left Czechoslovakia, many were skilled workers.
- In 2017, there were nearly 1m Czech citizens living in other countries, many of which had left in the 90s after the fall of socialism.
- In 2012, an estimated 2.5m people of Czech descent were living outside of the Czech Republic with 1.6m of those in the US, 40k in Canada, and 55k in the UK.
- Some other common emigration destinations are Slovakia, Germany, and Austria.
- It seems that most emigration is most often done for financial reasons, although not many studies have been done.
Internal migration seems pretty hard to find any data on, but according to a study done by Krizkova
[2], it seems that Czechs generally migrate to less urban places more than urban
places, although it should be noted that this data is from a pre-print version of the paper.
As for colonial expansion, it seems like some people in Czechoslovakia had maybe proposed
colonizing Togo although it never had any traction in government: "Czechoslovak Togo ... was a proposed Czechoslovak colony in West Africa. The author of this idea is considered to be the Czech adventurer Jan Havlasa, but sometimes also the Czech orientalist Alois Musil or Emil Holub.
[3][4]"
[5], but that's about the extent of Czech colonial history. I would guess this
is partly due to forming relatively recently (Czechoslovakia formed in 1918, Czech
Republic in 1993) when colonialism was losing popularity.
References:
[1] W. Magdziarz, K. Pedziwiatr, and J. Sikorska, Czech Republic: Migration and demographic patterns in Central-Eastern Europe. 2023. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7778399.
[2] I. Krizkova, “Immigrant internal migration in a new destination country: Do immigrants suburbanise in Czechia and why?,” Population, Space and Place, vol. 26, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1002/psp.2326.
[3]“Český sen o dobývání Afriky měl k realitě velmi blízko. Kolonie byly na dosah ruky | ČtiDoma.cz.” Accessed: July 08, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20210402163117/https://www.ctidoma.cz/kultura/2018-05-30-cesky-sen-o-dobyvani-afriky-mel-k-realite-velmi-blizko-kolonie-byly-na-dosah-ruky
[4] M. Varausová and petr kutka, “Mohlo být africké Togo československou kolonií?,” Světoběžník.info. Accessed: July 08, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://svetobeznik.info/mohlo-byt-africke-togo-ceskoslovenskou-kolonii/
[5] “Czechoslovak Togo,” Wikipedia. July 18, 2025. Accessed: July 18, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Czechoslovak_Togo&oldid=1301080080