Explaining Belgium (part one)
Before Belgium was Belgium
It is hard to explain Belgium to non-Belgians. It is hard to explain Belgium even to Belgians. Belgium is a strange country. Tucked neatly between the big European countries, its limited surface is so densely populated and full of buildings that you could almost mistake it for a city, except it doesn’t have a lot of tall buildings and the actual cities are not very big. Belgium is pretty much a collection of smaller cities and towns with not much open space in-between. And then there is the language border, which divides the already tiny country into even tinier regions with separate media, separate governments, and a whole lot of conflict. How does this country even manage to exist?
In this series of articles, I am going to explain Belgium. How it became Belgium, where all its strange particularities come from, why solutions to problems in the past created new problems in the present, and why these issues will be hard to solve in the future.
For part one, I will take you on a bit of a roller coaster ride. We will start with Julius Caesar and we will end in November 1830, when the most powerful European states had a meeting in London and decided that Belgium would be a thing from then on (much to the dismay of the Dutch king at that time). A country is the sum of all its history, but we will start digging a bit deeper in the next articles when we arrive in the 19th century. But first: Belgium before it became Belgium. Sit tight, here we go.
The brave Belgian tribes that gave Caesar a hard time
If you were wondering where the name Belgium comes from: there was a province on the outskirts of the Roman Empire where the Belgae lived. Caesar described these Celtic tribes in his Commentaries on the Gallic War. There are still quite a lot of remnants of Roman buildings all over the country. The city of Tongeren has turned its Roman past into city marketing with a Gallo Roman Museum and a statue of the rebel leader Ambiorix.
The early Middle Ages
At some point, the Romans lost their grip on the empire and for the next few centuries, Gallia Belgica ended pretty much smack in the middle of Francia. That’s a whole lot of kings with names like Pepin and Clovis and oh so many Charles’. I had to memorize all of them at university. Looting seemed to be the main occupation of the kings and lords in this period. The most famous king was Charlemagne. The Pope crowned him and made him Emperor in the year 800.
Charlemagne’s empire, which spread out over large parts of Europe, was later split between his three grandsons, with the middle part gradually losing the battle for dominance to the eastern and western parts. The western part would eventually develop into the Kingdom of France (the first step into increasingly centralized power culminating into the absolutist monarchy of France) and the eastern part into the Holy Roman Empire (more of an alliance of different kingdoms and states. This part of Europe would keep this structure of fairly independent states until the unification of Germany in 1871).
Most of the territory that is now Belgium was under the protection and influence of the Holy Roman Empire, except for the present-day (Flemish-speaking) provinces of East- and West-Flanders, those were part of East Francia, and then later the Kingdom of France.
Local lords and especially cities increasingly gained more power and independence. The coastal county of Flanders became particularly wealthy and the city of Bruges was an important stop on the trade route of the Hanseatic League. Trade with England was also very lucrative for these areas.
The dukes of Burgundy and the Habsburg Dynasty
In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern times, power was not so much about war and looting anymore, but about wealth, political influence, and marriage. This was especially the case for the Burgundian Netherlands (roughly the Netherlands, Belgium, and Northern France). For about a century (1384–1482), these lands were united under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy. They acquired the lands through marriage, inheritance, and purchase. If you ever hear someone say that Belgians have a Burgundian lifestyle, what they mean is that we like nice food, and drink, and we enjoy spending time dining together.
There was one European family that really perfected the art of gaining land through marriage: the Habsburgs. In 1440, Frederick the peaceful was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and for the next three centuries, that position would be held by a member of the Habsburg family. The Habsburgs dynasty consolidated its power further through a string of alliances through marriage.
The Burgundian Netherlands became the Habsburg Netherlands through the marriage between Maximilian the first and Mary of Burgundy (the sole heiress of the Burgundian dynasty). Actually, it was a bit more complicated and some negotiating with the King of France was required, but eventually, the 17 Provinces (as the area was now called) became part of the Habsburg empire.
It was in this period that first Bruges and then Antwerp grew rich. Bruges was connected to the sea not by a river, but by a tidal channel. Around 1500, this channel started silting and the connection to the sea was lost, effectively ending Bruges' role as a trading port.
This explains the rise of Antwerp in the 16th century. The city by the river Schelde became one of the richest cities in Europe and was central in the spice trade from Portugal and in the sale of English cloth.
The Habsburg territory expanded further when Charles the Fifth inherited large chunks of Europe including Austria (the homelands of the Habsburgs), Spain, and of course, the Habsburg Netherlands. Charles himself was born in the city of Ghent. During his reign, the county of Flanders (part of the Kingdom of France until this time) became part of the Habsburg territory, which meant that now the whole of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands was united under one ruler.
The orange parts on this map are the Burgundian lands that Charles the Fifth inherited. Notice the narrow strip of land in lighter yellow that runs through the orange shape? This is the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, an independent ecclesiastical state under the protection of the Holy Roman Empire. Just to make it slightly more complicated.
Charles the Fifth spent most of his time fighting against France, the Ottoman empire, and trying to hold back the protestant reformation. In 1555, he decided enough was enough, he abdicated and divided the Habsburg territory between his son and his brother. He spent his final years in a villa in Spain.
The Eighty Years’ War and Spanish rule
Lutheranism and Calvinism were gaining popularity all over Europe. Phillips the Second, the son of Charles the Fifth, was a devout catholic and not too pleased with all the religious dissent. Together with his right-hand man the Duke of Alba, he went around chopping off protestant heads. In the meantime, radical Calvinists periodically vandalized Catholic churches and smashed statues of saints.
The whole thing got out of hand and resulted in 80 years of fighting (with some truces in between). This ended by a split of the Netherlands into the new Dutch Republic (present-day the Netherlands) and the Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium).
The Dutch Republic closed off its borders and entered its golden age in the 17th century. The Dutch somehow managed to defend their territory and the country became very rich through trade over water and trade routes to South-Asia.
The Southern Netherlands on the other hand experienced a pretty tough time under Spanish rule. Thousands of protestants had fled the cities and joined the Dutch Republic. Besides that, the city of Antwerp was now cut off from the sea because the mouth of the river Schelde was on Dutch territory, losing its role as an important European port city.
Austrian rule (1715–1794)
The problem with having a society based on a royal dynasty is that if at some point a king doesn’t produce babies … you get a succession war. Which was exactly what happened in Spain in the early 18th century. This resulted in lots of fighting all over Europe and in the end, the big states sat together and came up with a solution that would keep some sort of balance of power in Europe. In the Treaty of Utrecht, it was decided that the Spanish Netherlands would now become the Austrian Netherlands (the other line of Habsburgs who descended from Ferdinand the first, the brother of Charles the Fifth).
In this period, the Austrian Netherlands had a female ruler for 40 years. Her name was Maria Theresa and she goes into history as one of the “enlightened” monarchs because she invested in education and tried to improve the living conditions of her subject (while simultaneously boosting the economy and consolidating the power of course).
While his mother had given the Southern Netherlands a lot of autonomy in arranging their own affairs, her son Joseph the Second decided that it was time for more reforms like giving the protestants right of citizenship and regulating the number of village carnivals. With these reforms, he managed to anger all layers of society to such an extent that it ended up in a revolt in 1790, and very briefly, the Southern Netherlands became a republic. His brother Leopold the Second stepped in and put an end to that nonsense.
French rule (1794–1815)
Revolution was all over Europe in this period. Revolutionary France annexed the Southern Netherlands in 1794 (including the prince-bishopric of Liège, which had been independent until that time). For the Southern Netherlands that meant the confiscation of church property and conscription into the French army.
Napoleon introduced the Code Napolean in 1801, which transformed the Southern Netherlands into a bureaucratic state and the language of law legally became French.
The Dutch and the Belgians unite (1815–1830)
After Napoleon’s defeat, the mayor European states decided at the Congress of Vienna that it might be a good idea to make the former Dutch Republic and the former Austrian Netherlands into one country! So they created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country was designed to be a buffer state that would keep France from its expansive tendencies. They decided to put a protestant king in charge. His name was William the First.
The new king and his new reforms were not particularly popular in the former Southern Netherlands. The catholic church was obviously not too happy with a protestant king, but there was also a growing group of liberals who demanded a proper parliamentary system. This combination of interests led to the Belgian revolution in 1830.
After some fighting and negotiating, the Kingdom of Belgium was constructed and later legitimized by an agreement between Belgium, Austria, France, the German Confederation, Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom, known as the Treaty of London.
So what have we learned so far?
That for a long time, Belgium was a collection of counties, dukedoms, cities, and a prince-bishopric with relative independence. The area was one of the richest places in 16th century Europe because of trade routes. Different rulers gained control over these lands, mostly through marriage.
The religious wars were the main reason why Belgium and the Netherlands were divided. To this day, Belgium is a predominantly catholic country. To the south, the border with France was formed because of old territorial claims. So although French is the language spoken in the south of Belgium, these regions were never part of France (except during French Annexation obviously). The (Flemish) county of Flanders on the other hand wás part of the Kingdom of France at some point. The issue of language in Belgium is a complicated mess, I will come back to it in one of the next articles.
The United Netherlands and later the Kingdom of Belgium were allowed to exist because the powerful European states thought it would be a good idea to have a buffer state after the French Revolution.
Belgium never had the cultural coherence or the centralized government that France had. It also didn’t have the tradition of alliances between states like Germany. For most of its history, Belgium was part of bigger states but remained fairly autonomous on a local level.
Belgium will become a proper state in its own right in the 19th century. The country will become one of the first industrialized nations in Europe. This is why chocolate. But that is also for another article.
How did I do? This ended up being a ten-minute read, so that’s pretty condensed for a few millennia worth of history. The medievalists probably hate me for rushing through their favorite period, but for me, the fun starts in the 19th century. On to the Belgian revolution!
