This thesis aims to describe the history of welfare state and forms of social security, which preceded the welfare state. Chapter one opens up the topic of the state's role in the social security. It further defines the concept of welfare state, social rights and the link between these phenomenons. Distinctions between social rights and other types of fundamental rights and freedoms are also explored. Chapter two of this thesis aims to describe different approaches to division of welfare state into individual categories. Typology of welfare states is essential to understanding the most important characteristics of individual types of welfare states, the function of welfare state and the ideological, cultural, historical and other roots of the concept of welfare state. Chapter three, the most extensive part of this thesis, describes the welfare state's history itself. The third chapter also summarizes the historical overview of forms of social security, which preceded the welfare state, since the welfare state must be perceived as one of the stages of social security's evolution. Contemporary welfare state carries within itself the heritage of precedeing forms of social security and that is why it is necessary to mention these forms characteristic for ancient times, the middle ages and early modern...