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Introduction[]
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, was a country in Western Europe existing from 1830 to 1919. It was bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. In 1914, it had a population of 7.5 million.
Belgium was a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Its institutional organization was complex and was structured on both regional and linguistic grounds. It was divided into three highly autonomous regions: the Flemish Region (Flanders) in the north, the Walloon Region (Wallonia) in the south, and the Brussels-Capital Region. Both Flanders and Wallonia were based on two distinct languages officialized by its northern and southern neighbors, Dutch and French.
Belgium was part of an area known as the Low Countries, a somewhat larger region than the current Benelux group of states that also historically included parts of northern France and western Germany. Its modern name was derived from the Latin word Belgium, used in Julius Caesar's "Gallic Wars", to describe the region in the period around 55 BCE. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, the area of Belgium was a prosperous and cosmopolitan centre of commerce and culture.
Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. Between 1888 and 1908, Leopold II, king of Belgium, perpetrated one of the largest massacres in human history in Congo Free State, his private estate (and not a colony of Belgium at that time) causing the deaths of an estimated five to fifteen million Congolese people, during the production of massive amounts of rubber and ivory.
Following the end of World War I, Belgium ceased to exist and was partitioned between the Netherlands and the German Empire as part of the Treaty of Dresden, though armed resistance continued a decade onward. Following the end of World War II, the area was divided linguistically between France and the Netherlands, respectively.
History[]
Antiquity[]
The Belgae were the inhabitants of the northernmost part of Gaul, which was much bigger than modern Belgium. Caesar used the Latin word "Belgium", to refer to their country within northern Gaul, which was a region now in northern France. Modern Belgium corresponds to the lands of the Morini, Menapii, Nervii, Germani Cisrhenani, Aduatuci, and, around Arlon, a part of the country of the Treveri. All of these except the Treveri formed a less Celtic-influenced "transition zone", north of the area Caesar treated as "Belgium".
After Caesar's conquests, Gallia Belgica came to be the Latin name of a large Roman province covering most of Northern Gaul, including the Treveri.
Middle Ages[]
During the 5th century, the area came under the rule of the Frankish Merovingian kings, who were probably first established in what is northern France. The Frankish kingdom had been divided up in many ways, but the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three kingdoms, whose borders had a lasting impact on medieval political boundaries. Most of modern Belgium was in the Middle Kingdom, later known as Lotharingia, but the coastal county of Flanders, west of the Scheldt, became part of West Francia, the predecessor of France. In 870 in the Treaty of Meerssen, modern Belgium lands all became part of the western kingdom for a period, but in 880 in the Treaty of Ribemont, Lotharingia returned to the lasting control of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Foreign rule (1482-1830)[]
In the 15th century, the Duke of Burgundy in France took control of Flanders, and from there they proceeded to unite much of what is now the Benelux, the so-called Burgundian Netherlands. "Belgium" and "Flanders" were the first two common names used for the Burgundian Netherlands which was the predecessor of the Austrian Netherlands, the predecessor of modern Belgium. The union, technically stretching between two kingdoms, gave the area economic and political stability which led to an even greater prosperity and artistic creation.
Born in Belgium, the Habsburg Emperor Charles V was heir of the Burgundians, but also of the royal families of Austria, Castile and Aragon. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 he gave the Seventeen Provinces more legitimacy as a stable entity, rather than just a temporary personal union. He also increased the influence of these Netherlands over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, which continued to exist as a large semi-independent enclave.
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), was triggered by the Spanish government's policy towards Protestantism, which was becoming popular in the Low Countries. The rebellious northern United Provinces eventually separated from the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish (Spanish Netherlands) and the Austrian Habsburgs (Austrian Netherlands) and comprised most of modern Belgium. This was the theatre of several more protracted conflicts during much of the 17th and 18th centuries involving France, including the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), and part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748).
Independence[]
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution led to the separation of the Southern Provinces from the Netherlands and to the establishment of a Catholic and bourgeois, officially French-speaking and neutral, independent Belgium under a provisional government and a national congress. Since the installation of Leopold I as king on 21 July 1831, now celebrated as Belgium's National Day, Belgium has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a laicist constitution based on the Napoleonic code. Although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was granted after the general strike of 1893. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party and the Liberal Party, with the Belgian Labour Party emerging towards the end of the 19th century. French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie. It progressively lost its overall importance as Dutch became recognized as well.
The Berlin Conference of 1885 ceded control of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II as his private possession. From around 1900 there was growing international concern for the extreme and savage treatment of the Congolese population under Leopold II, for whom the Congo was primarily a source of revenue from ivory and rubber production. Many Congolese were killed by Leopold's agents for failing to meet production quotas for ivory and rubber. In 1908, this outcry led the Belgian state to assume responsibility for the government of the colony, henceforth called the Belgian Congo. A commission of both German and Belgian colonists concluded in 1919 that the Congolese population had halved in the years following colonization.
World War I and Dissolution[]
Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 as part of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France, and much of the Western Front fighting of World War I occurred in western parts of the country. Military operations in Belgium also moved westwards as the Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp to the area close to the border with France. The Belgian army fought the defensive Battle of the Yser from Nieuwpoort south to Diksmuide, as the German 4th Army attacked westwards and French, British and some Belgian troops fought the First Battle of Ypres (19 October – 22 November) against the 4th and 6th armies. By November 1914, most of Belgium was under German occupation and Allied naval blockade.
Upon the Dutch entry into the war in late 1918, the Netherlands attempted to pacify their lingual regions within Belgium by occupying a series of military districts in Flanders, annexing the full region for the rest of the war. Armed resistance to German occupation became gradually more fierce, forcing a more immediate withdrawal of German and Dutch troops in Northern France following the Treaty of Dresden and subsequent end of hostilities. As part of the treaty itself, the Benelux was redefined with German ownership of eastern Flanders and all of Wallonia, in exchange for Limburg from the Netherlands. All French-speaking regions within the German Empire were given a special autonomous status until 1938. The Belgian royal family was given amnesty and was offered to continue their rule by merging with the Dutch House of Orange, though this request was declined by Albert I.
During World War II, various resistance groups that had resisted German annexation since 1919 collaborated with French forces in establishing a temporary provisional government under the name of the "Belgian Social Republic", though it only included a few southern counties and parts of Brussels. After the war, the re-establishment of Belgium was an option (mainly held by the newly-founded Restorationists led by Leon Degrelle) on the Allied table, however the new provisional governments of France and the Netherlands resorted to an outright partition off of previous lingual lines due to the length of German occupation.