When the Czechs and Slovaks went their separate ways in 1993, the break-up of their currency was relatively orderly — although the extended prelude to the split provoked capital flight from the weaker territory.

Czechoslovakia, one of the new countries to emerge from the empire of the Hapsburgs after the Great War, was never much of a nation state, but contained two distinct ethnic groups: the Czechs and the Slovaks.