Early history When
Julius Caesar conquered the area he described it as the less economically developed and more warlike part of
Gallia Belgica. His informants told him that especially in the east, the tribes claimed ancestral connections and kinship with the
"Germanic" peoples then east of the
Rhine. Under the
Roman Empire the whole of
Gallia Belgica became an administrative province. The future counties of Flanders and Brabant remained part of this province connected to what is now France, but in the east modern Limburg became part of the Rhine frontier province of
Germania Inferior connected to what is now the Netherlands and Germany.
Gallia Belgica and
Germania Inferior were the two most northerly continental provinces of the
Roman Empire. In the future county of Flanders, the main
Belgic tribe in early Roman times was the
Menapii, but also on the coast were the
Marsacii and
Morini. In the central part of modern Belgium were the
Nervii, whose territory corresponded to medieval Brabant as well as French-speaking Hainaut. In the east was the large district of the
Tungri which covered both French- and Dutch-speaking parts of eastern Belgium. The Tungri were understood to have links to Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. Another notable group were the
Toxandrians who appear to have lived in the
Kempen region, in the northern parts of both the Nervian and Tungrian districts, probably stretching into the modern Netherlands. The Roman administrative districts (
civitates) of the Menapii, Nervii and Tungri therefore corresponded roughly with the medieval counties of Flanders, Brabant and
Loon, and the modern Flemish provinces of East and West Flanders (Menapii), Brabant and Antwerp (the northern Nervii), and Belgian Limburg (part of the Tungri). Brabant appears to have been separated from the Tungri by a relatively unpopulated forest area, the
Silva Carbonaria, forming a natural boundary between northeast and southwest Belgium. Linguistically, the tribes in this area were under
Celtic influence in the south, and
Germanic influence in the east, but there is disagreement about what languages were spoken locally (apart from
Vulgar Latin), and there may even have been an intermediate "
Nordwestblock" language related to both. By the first century AD,
Germanic languages appear to have become prevalent in the area of the Tungri. As Roman influence waned, Frankish populations settled in the Tungiran area east of the Silva Carbonaria, and eventually pushed through it under
Chlodio. They had kings in each Roman district (
civitas). In the meantime, the Franks contributed to the Roman military. The first Merovingian king
Childeric I was king of the Franks within the military of Gaul. He became leader of the administration of
Belgica Secunda, which included the
civitas of the Menapii (the future county of Flanders). From there, his son
Clovis I managed to conquer both the Roman populations of northern France and the Frankish populations beyond the forest areas.
Historical Flanders in the 2nd half of the 16th century. Preserved in the
Ghent University Library. The County of Flanders was a
feudal fief in
West Francia. The first certain Count in the comital family,
Baldwin I of Flanders, is first reported in a document of 862, when he eloped with a daughter of his king
Charles the Bald. The region developed as a medieval economic power with a large degree of political autonomy. While its trading cities remained strong, it was weakened and divided when districts fell under direct French royal rule in the late 12th century. The remaining parts of Flanders came under the rule of the counts of neighbouring imperial
Hainaut under
Baldwin V of Hainaut in 1191. During the late
Middle Ages, Flanders's trading towns (notably
Ghent,
Bruges and
Ypres) made it one of the richest and most urbanized parts of Europe, weaving the
wool of neighbouring lands into cloth for both domestic use and export. As a consequence, a sophisticated culture developed, with impressive art and architecture, rivaling those of northern Italy. Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and the
Franc of Bruges formed the
Four Members, a form of parliament that exercised considerable power in Flanders. Increasingly powerful from the 12th century, the territory's autonomous urban
communes were instrumental in defeating a French attempt at annexation (1300–1302), finally defeating the French in the
Battle of the Golden Spurs (11 July 1302), near
Kortrijk. Two years later, the
uprising was defeated and Flanders indirectly remained part of the French Crown. Flemish prosperity waned in the following century, due to widespread European population decline following the
Black Death of 1348, the disruption of trade during the Anglo-French
Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), and increased English cloth production. Flemish weavers had gone over to
Worstead and
North Walsham in Norfolk in the 12th century and established the woolen industry. The County of Flanders started to take control of the neighbouring
County of Brabant during the life of
Louis II, Count of Flanders (1330–1384), who fought his sister-in-law
Joanna, Duchess of Brabant for control of it. The entire area, straddling the ancient boundary of France and the Holy Roman Empire, later passed to
Philip the Bold in 1384, the
Duke of Burgundy, with his capital in
Brussels. The titles were eventually more clearly united under his grandson
Philip the Good (1396 – 1467). This large Duchy passed in
1477 to the
Habsburg dynasty, and in
1556 to the kings of Spain. Western and southern districts of Flanders were confirmed under French rule under successive treaties of
1659 (Artois),
1668 and
1678. The County of Loon, approximately the modern Flemish province of Limburg, remained independent of France, forming a part of the
Prince-Bishopric of Liège until the French Revolution, but surrounded by the Burgundians, and under their influence.
Low Countries Beeldenstorm In 1500,
Charles V was born in
Ghent. He inherited the
Seventeen Provinces (1506), Spain (1516) with its colonies and in 1519 was elected
Holy Roman Emperor. Charles V issued the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1549, which established the Low Countries as the Seventeen Provinces (or
Spanish Netherlands in its broad sense) as an entity separate from the
Holy Roman Empire and from France. In 1556 Charles V abdicated due to ill health (he suffered from crippling
gout). Spain and the Seventeen Provinces went to his son,
Philip II of Spain. Over the first half of the 16th century
Antwerp grew to become the second-largest European city north of the
Alps by 1560. Antwerp was the richest city in Europe at this time. According to Luc-Normand Tellier "It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the
Americas." in 1576, in which about 7,000 people died Meanwhile, Protestantism had reached the Low Countries. Among the wealthy traders of Antwerp, the
Lutheran beliefs of the German
Hanseatic traders found appeal, perhaps partly for economic reasons. The spread of Protestantism in this city was aided by the presence of an
Augustinian cloister (founded 1514) in the St. Andries quarter. Luther, an Augustinian himself, had taught some of the monks, and his works were in print by 1518. The first Lutheran martyrs came from Antwerp. The
Reformation resulted in consecutive but overlapping waves of reform: a Lutheran, followed by a militant
Anabaptist, then a
Mennonite, and finally a
Calvinistic movement. These movements existed independently of each other.
Philip II, a devout Catholic and self-proclaimed protector of the
Counter-Reformation,
suppressed Calvinism in Flanders,
Brabant and Holland (what is now approximately
Belgian Limburg was part of the
Prince-Bishopric of Liège and was Catholic
de facto). In 1566, the wave of
iconoclasm known as the
Beeldenstorm was a prelude to religious war between Catholics and Protestants, especially the Anabaptists. The
Beeldenstorm started in what is now
French Flanders, with open-air sermons () that spread through the Low Countries, first to Antwerp and Ghent, and from there further east and north.
The Eighty Years' War and its consequences Subsequently, Philip II of Spain sent
the Duke of
Alba to the Provinces to repress the revolt. Alba recaptured the southern part of the Provinces, who signed the
Union of Atrecht, which meant that they would accept the Spanish government on condition of more freedom. But the northern part of the provinces signed the
Union of Utrecht and settled in 1581 the
Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. Spanish troops quickly started fighting the rebels, and the Spanish armies conquered the important trading cities of Bruges and Ghent. Antwerp, which was then the most important port in the world, also had to be conquered. But before the revolt was defeated, a war between Spain and England broke out, forcing Spanish troops to halt their advance. On 17 August 1585, Antwerp fell. This ended the Eighty Years' War for the (from now on)
Southern Netherlands. The
United Provinces (the Northern Netherlands) fought on until 1648 – the
Peace of Westphalia. , 1622 During the war with England, the rebels from the north, strengthened by refugees from the south, started a campaign to reclaim areas lost to
Philip II's Spanish troops. They conquered a considerable part of Brabant (the later
North Brabant of the Netherlands), and the south bank of the Scheldt estuary (
Zeelandic Flanders), before being stopped by Spanish troops. The front at the end of this war stabilized and became the border between present-day Belgium and the Netherlands. The Dutch (as they later became known) had managed to reclaim enough of Spanish-controlled Flanders to close off the river
Scheldt, effectively cutting Antwerp off from its trade routes. The
fall of Antwerp to the Spanish and the closing of the
Scheldt caused considerable emigration. Many Calvinist merchants of Antwerp and other Flemish cities left Flanders and migrated north. Many of them settled in
Amsterdam, which was a smaller port, important only in the
Baltic trade. The Flemish exiles helped to rapidly transform Amsterdam into one of the world's most important ports. This is why the exodus is sometimes described as "
creating a new Antwerp". Flanders and Brabant, went into a period of relative decline from the time of the
Thirty Years' War. In the Northern Netherlands, the mass emigration from Flanders and Brabant became an important driving force behind the
Dutch Golden Age.
Southern Netherlands (1581–1795) Although arts remained relatively impressive for another century with
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and
Anthony van Dyck, Flanders lost its former economic and intellectual power under Spanish, Austrian, and French rule. Heavy taxation and rigid imperial political control compounded the effects of industrial stagnation and Spanish-Dutch and Franco-Austrian conflict. The Southern Netherlands suffered severely under the
Franco-Dutch War,
Nine Years' War and
War of the Spanish Succession. But under the reign of Empress Maria-Theresia, these lands again flourished economically. Influenced by
the Enlightenment, the Austrian Emperor
Joseph II was the first sovereign who had been in the Southern Netherlands since King Philip II of Spain left them in 1559.
French Revolution and Napoleonic France (1795–1815) In 1794, the
French Republican Army started using Antwerp as the northernmost naval port of France.
Rise of the Flemish Movement In 1873, Dutch became an official language in public secondary schools. In 1898, Dutch and French were declared equal languages in laws and Royal orders. In 1930, the first Flemish university was opened. The first official translation of the Belgian constitution in Dutch was not published until 1967.
World War I and its consequences , a memorial to soldiers killed in
World War I Flanders (and Belgium as a whole) saw some of the greatest loss of life on the
Western Front of the
First World War, in particular from the three battles of
Ypres. The war strengthened Flemish identity and consciousness. The occupying German authorities took several Flemish-friendly measures. The resulting suffering of the war is remembered by Flemish organizations during the yearly
Yser pilgrimage in
Diksmuide at the monument of the
Yser Tower.
Right-wing nationalism in the interbellum and World War II During the interbellum and
World War II, several right-wing
fascist and/or national-socialistic parties emerged in Belgium. Since these parties were promised more rights for the Flemings by the German government during World War II, many of them collaborated with the Nazi regime. After the war, collaborators (or people who were
Zwart, "Black" during the war) were prosecuted and punished, among them many Flemish nationalists whose main political goal had been the emancipation of Flanders. As a result, until today
Flemish nationalism is often associated with
right-wing politics. Flemish nationalism is however a direct consequence of the events of the years prior to the first World War, in which many were oppressed by the French speaking majority. This ultimately gave way to a rising feeling of cultural autonomy and even a sense of a nationalism.
Flemish autonomy After World War II, the differences between Dutch-speaking and French-speaking Belgians became clear in a number of conflicts, such as the
Royal Question, the question whether King Leopold III should return (which most Flemings supported but Walloons did not) and the use of Dutch in the
Catholic University of Leuven. As a result, several
state reforms took place in the second half of the 20th century, which transformed the unitary Belgium into a federal state with
communities, regions and language areas. This resulted also in the establishment of a
Flemish Parliament and
Government. During the 1970s, all major political parties split into a Dutch and French-speaking party. Several Flemish parties still advocate for more Flemish autonomy, some even for Flemish independence (see
Partition of Belgium), whereas the French-speakers would like to keep the current state as it is. Recent governments (such as
Verhofstadt I Government) have transferred certain federal competences to the regional governments. On 13 December 2006, a
spoof news broadcast by the Belgian Francophone public broadcasting station
RTBF announced that Flanders had decided to declare independence from Belgium. The
2007 federal elections showed more support for Flemish autonomy, marking the start of the
2007–2011 Belgian political crisis. All the political parties that advocated a significant increase of Flemish autonomy gained votes as well as seats in the
Belgian federal parliament. This was especially the case for
Christian Democratic and Flemish and
New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) (who had participated on a shared
electoral list). The trend continued during the
2009 regional elections, where CD&V and N-VA were the clear winners in Flanders, and N-VA became even the largest party in Flanders and Belgium during the
2010 federal elections, followed by the
longest-ever government formation after which the
Di Rupo I Government was formed excluding N-VA. Eight parties agreed on a
sixth state reform which aim to solve the disputes between Flemings and French-speakers. However, the
2012 provincial and municipal elections continued the trend of N-VA becoming the biggest party in Flanders. However, sociological studies show no parallel between the rise of nationalist parties and popular support for their agenda. Instead, a recent study revealed a majority in favour of returning regional competences to the federal level. == Government and politics ==