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Belgium - History

While the history of Belgium can be viewed as a microcosm of the history of Western Europe, Belgium has existed essentially in its present form only since 1830, when an uprising led to independence from The Netherlands. The history of the Belgian people is a long record of prosperity and misfortune.

The country's name goes back to a Celtic tribe, the Belgae, whom Julius Caesar described in his Commentaries as the most courageous tribe of all Gaul. The territory anciently known as Belgian differed considerably from that which has assumed the name in modern times. The Belgae were forced to yield to Roman legions during the first century BC. For some 300 years thereafter, what is now Belgium flourished as a province of Rome. But Rome's power gradually lessened. In about AD 300, Attila the Hun invaded what is now Germany and pushed Germanic tribes into northern Belgium. About 100 years later, the Germanic tribe of the Franks invaded and took possession of Belgium. The northern part of present-day Belgium became an overwhelmingly Germanized and Germanic-Frankish-speaking area, whereas in the southern part people continued to be Roman and spoke derivatives of Latin.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Belgian history was characterized by quasi-independent trading and manufacturing towns that arose from the Viking ravages of Northern Europe. In the Middle Ages they had the most thriving industry in Europe, and splendid guild halls and bell towers still attest the magnificence of that era. Connected by an excellent series of canals, these city-states — Ghent, Brugge, Antwerp, Liege and others — play a central role to this day in Belgian cultural and commercial life. Under various rulers, and especially during the 500 years from the 12th to the 17th century, the great cities of Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, and Antwerp took turns at being major European centers for commerce, industry (especially textiles), and art. Flemish painting--from Van Eyck and Breugel to Rubens and Van Dyck--became the most prized in Europe. Flemish tapestries hung on castle walls throughout Europe.

But the country was also a debatable land, between Germany and France, the road for attack by one on the other, and therefore the battleground in many wars now long forgotten. After coming under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy and, through marriage, passing into the possession of the Hapsburgs. After centuries of wars of dynastic succession, Belgium — as part of the area known as the Lowlands which comprised what is now modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands — came into the possession of Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1500s.

The Protestant Revolution polarized the Lowlands into two hostile regions; the resultant geographic and political split established the United Provinces of The Netherlands in the north and the remaining Catholic territories in the south, which are equivalent to the modern boundaries of Belgium.

Belgium was occupied by the Spanish (1519-1713) and the Austrians (1713-1794). Belgian history for 300 years reflected closely the history of Western Europe, as it was first ruled for nearly two centuries by the Spanish, then passed to the Austrian Hapsburg Empire via the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and was later annexed to France by Napoleon in 1794.

For a long time the sovereigns of France strove to add these provinces to their dominions, as they built up the kingdom of France; but they got only part of what they tried for, since England in the fourteenth century, as in the sixteenth and the seventeenth and the nineteenth and the twentieth, dreaded to see the country right across the narrow waters from her, and almost at the mouth of the estuary of the Thames, in the hands of some powerful rival. The Belgian provinces joined the other Netherlands in the revolt against Philip II, but the population, being almost entirely Roman Catholic, accepted the overtures of Spain, and in 1579 abandoned the contest. Under the languishing rule of Spain, and afterward under the ineffective administration of Austria, these provinces suffered decline. By the Treaty of Munster the port cf Antwerp was closed, so that its commerce was ruined, in order to promote the interests of Holland.

Following the French Revolution, Belgium was invaded and annexed by Napoleonic France in 1795. The Austrian Netherlands were easily occupied by the French and presently annexed to France. This annexation of Belgium and the opening of the port of Antwerp had much to do with the unyielding opposition of Great Britain to the Revolutionary governments and to Napoleon.

Following the defeat of Napoleon's army at the Battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815 just a few miles south of Brussels, Belgium was separated from France and made part of the Netherlands by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Austria resigned her Belgian possessions, since they were too distant to be easily defended, and in exchange for them she took territory in the north part of Italy. Belgium was then added to the Dutch Netherlands, partly to make a strong state on the French frontier, partly to compensate Holland for the colonies she had lost to England.

Belgium was agricultural and manufacturing, Holland commercial; the one wished to tax imports and exports, the other property and industry. For fifteen years the Belgian people endured a union which they disliked, a union that was made burdensome and oppressive by the Dutch rulers. It was during the brief rule of William of Orange of The Netherlands that the linguistic division of Belgium was severely aggravated due to his attempts to "reform" the educational system by replacing French with Dutch in the primary education levels. Attempts to extend these reforms to the secondary schools, which had traditionally been the forum for training the nobility and middle-class French speakers who had dominated the regional governments for years, were perceived by the French-speaking inhabitants as a thinly veiled attempt at subverting their Catholic religion by introducing Dutch Protestantism as well as supplanting their positions of dominance in political and business circles.

In 1830 they rebelled, and, by the assistance of Great Britain and France, they got their independence from the Dutch. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1831. They offered the crown to the Duc de Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe; but the father refusing his consent, they next offered it, on the recommendation of England, to Leopold, fourth son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who accepted it 4 June 1831 under the title of Leopold I. In the following year Leopold married, as his second wife, the daughter of Louis Philippe, a circumstance that no doubt contributed toward curbing the French King's designs on the annexation of Belgium to his own dominions.

Belgium was established as a state independent and perpetually neutral; and when in 1839 Holland at last accepted Belgian independence, this provision was again confirmed by the five great powers: Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia. Thus Belgium was made a neutralized state as Switzerland had been in 1815. The country now went forward with its development in safety. Shortly before the Franco-German War, it is true, Napoleon III entered into secret negotiations with Prussia, apparently in hope that he might be able to add Belgium to France; but this came to nothing. When later, in 1870, Bismarck revealed the proposal, the British Government at once made treaties with France and with Prussia respectively, engaging to join forces with either one if the other violated Belgian neutrality.

After 1831 the little country experienced a great industrial development, its population and its prosperity increasing. Unlike Holland, which remained an agricultural and commercial country, Belgium possessed great resources of coal and iron, and became one of the great industrial regions of Europe. The constitution, which had been adopted in 1831, was the most liberal at the time in continental Europe. As in Great Britain the ministry was responsible to a parliament. As elsewhere then the franchise was narrow, being allowed only to those who paid a considerable tax. In 1848 it was extended a little, but thereafter for nearly half a century no change was made. Meanwhile, great industrial populations had been assembled in the cities, and after the franchise had been widely extended in all the neighboring countries still in Belgium only one man in ten could vote.

When the original constitution was drawn up in 1831, French, which had been the language of the government since the days of Spanish rule, was made the official language with little regard for equal treatment for the Dutch-speaking population. Due to their having the majority of the population and the increased importance of the Flemish seaports of Brugge, Gent and Antwerp, the Dutch-speaking majority obtained a series of laws making Flanders officially bilingual in 1873, recognizing Dutch as an official language in 1898, and, finally, establishing separate French and Dutch administrations in the Flanders and Wallonian regions in 1921.

In 1893, the labor leaders called a general strike, and the legislature, soon yielding, provided for manhood suffrage, though with double votes or even triple votes to men of property and at the head of a family or with unusual educational attainments or experience in public office. The result of this extension of the franchise, as in Spain, was to give much greater power to the clergy, who controlled the Catholic voters.

For 84 years, Belgium remained neutral in the various intra-European wars until German troops overran the country on August 4, 1914. Brussels once in her power, Germany began to organize the occupation of the country. The activities of the government of occupation were considerable in all spheres. Always the same main policy emerged: in matters political, economic or social, the one aim of Germany was to make Belgium and all her resources serve the needs of the war; while preparing for her annexation — at the very least for her absorption — in the event of the German victory, and rendering her in any case innocuous as an independent nation by effecting her economic ruin.

To disintegrate the Belgian nation was Germany's constant aim from the first days of the war, and the exploitation of the language differences of the country formed her chief means of pursuing it. Imagining that favour shown to the Flemish language would suffice to stimulate the separatist movement, the German Government adopted an attitude distinctly hostile to the use of French.

The monarch, King Albert, rallied his troops, and together with the French army, was able to hold on to a corner of the Flemish region in Belgium throughout the war. Some of the fiercest battles of World War I were fought on these "Flanders Fields". The effects of the German invasion and subsequent occupation were devastating, with 46,000 dead, in excess of 150,000 severely wounded, and the economy systematically dismantled to support the German war effort. Nearly all heavy industry was destroyed, the infrastructure wasthrown into total collapse, and economic losses were estimated to exceed 7 billion Belgian Francs (BF), representing approximately 16 percent of the country's wealth.

The Conference of Versailles, which produced the peace treaty ending World War I, attempted to redress Belgian claims for reparations but only provided for BF 2 billion to compensate for actual damages. As a matter of necessity, the restructuring of the economy was made the highest post-war priority, but the extensive ravages of four years of war, coupled with the insurmountable challenge of restoring the infrastructure and economy, made this an unattainable task. By 1924, price levels had risen to five times their pre-war highs, the national debt had more than doubled, and the Belgian currency had depreciated rapidly, making not only reconstruction almost impossible but also taking a severe toll on the living conditions of the working class.

In order to avoid total chaos, a system of unprecedented social reform was initiated, and the granting of universal male suffrage in 1919 lent considerable influence to the emerging political parties which were developing along religious,economic, and, of course, linguistic lines. The majority parties (Catholic, Liberal, and Socialist) and several smaller splinter groups so divided the electorate that the formation of a stable coalition government proved next to impossible, with 17 governments being formed in 21 years from 1919 to 1940.

During this time, Belgium, in an effort to provide for its political and economic security, entered into a number of international pacts and associations: it became part of the French alliance system under a Franco-Belgian military agreement in 1922, was one of the first signatories of the League of Nations, and, in 1925, signed the Locarno Treaty with France and Germany to guarantee their borders. On the economic front, Belgium established the Belgian-Luxembourg Economic Union in 1922, and participated in the Treaty of Oslo in 1930, which established preferential customs arrangements among the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, The Netherlands,and Luxembourg.

The inter-war years also saw an unprecedented blooming of Flemish culture and widespread feelings of Flemish nationalism in northern Belgium. De Vlaq or Duitse-Vlaamse Arbeidsgemeenschap (Society for German-Flemish Cooperation) was founded in Belgium in 1935 by German and Flemish students who hoped to inspire greater sympathy for the Third Reich among the Flemish by fostering cultural exchanges. This served to intensify ethnic rivalry with the southern French-speaking Walloons and threatened the economic recovery and social order. Partly as a result, Belgium abrogated the Locarno Treaties and all other such pacts in 1936 and reverted to its policy of neutrality in an unsuccessful effort to hold off a potential Nazi invasion.

When this failed, Belgium was invaded on September 10, 1940, and was occupied by Germany until late 1944. Following the German occupation, De Vlaq became an openly political movement which advocated the incorporation of Flanders into a Greater German Reich and recognized Adolf Hitler as its Fuehrer. As the most pro-Nazi of the Flemish fascist groups, it received the moral and financial support of the German SS and cooperated very closely with the Algemene - SS Vlaanderen. At the end of 1942, groups of Flemish SS men and De Vlaq members began to carry out special actions against persons suspected of being anti-Nazi. These actions ranged from house searches to beatings to assassinations of prominent personalities.

It was in the Ardennes region of southwest Belgium, near the city of Bastogne, that the last great land battle of the war in Europe - the Battle of the Bulge - was fought in December 1944, and where 13,299 American soldiers now lie buried in one of the largest American military cemeteries outside the continental United States. Because of his controversial behavior during the German occupation, King Albert was forced to abdicate in 1951 in favor of his son, King Baudouin.

A trial on war crimes charges began on 23 June 1947 before the Seventh Flemish Chamber of the Court Martial of Brabant. On 14 October 1947, after more than 50 sessions, the court-martial convicted 59 of the defendants and sentenced 25 to death.

Belgium was invaded by Germany in 1914 and again in 1940. Those invasions, plus disillusionment over postwar Soviet behavior, made Belgium one of the foremost advocates of collective security within the framework of European integration and the Atlantic partnership. Since 1944, when British, Canadian, and American armies liberated Belgium, the country has lived in security and at a level of increased well-being.