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Flanders

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This article is about a region of Europe and a region of Belgium. For other meanings, see Flanders (disambiguation).

File:Vlagvlaanderengroot.png

Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen, French: Flandre or Flandres) is a northern area in Europe, which are now in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The French city of Lille claims to be the capital of this area. But Flanders is also the northern region of Belgium, covering 13,522 km² and containing six million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants. It is also used as a metonym for both the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium, and the institutions of the Flanders region.

Contemporary Belgian Flanders

Since the Flemish parliamentary assembly, the Flemish Parliament, united its regional and community institutions immediately after they were established by the Belgian legislator, the word 'Flanders' refers to either the Flemish people (or nation), or to its political institutions.

Flemish people live in either the Flemish Region or in the Brussels-Capital region. The Flemish region is divided into 5 provinces:

  1. Antwerp ('Antwerpen' in Dutch)
  2. Limburg ('Limburg' in Dutch)
  3. East Flanders ('Oost-Vlaanderen' in Dutch)
  4. Flemish Brabant ('Vlaams-Brabant' in Dutch)
  5. West Flanders ('West-Vlaanderen' in Dutch)
Provinces of Flanders
Provinces of Flanders

In a stricter but slightly old-fashioned sense, 'Flanders' is the name of two provinces in western Belgium, West Flanders and East Flanders, combined area 6149 km² and population 2.5 million. The ensemble of Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium is often referred to as Flemish (Vlaams in Dutch), although the standard language used in Flanders is the same as in the Netherlands, Dutch.

In Flanders, a strong political grassroots movement strives for greater autonomy for Flanders. It's called the Flemish movement. Within this movement, one can distinguish those who just want to improve current institutions (more 'federalism'), those preferring a looser union with souvereign powers for Flanders (confederalism), and those favouring Flemish independence, thus complete sovereignty for Flanders. The latter are often called the separatist movement.

See also: List of Minister-Presidents of Flanders, De Vlaamse Leeuw

History

Middle Ages

The geographical region and former county of Flanders contains not only the two Belgian provinces but also the present-day French département of Nord, in parts of which there is still a Flemish-speaking minority, and the southern part of the Dutch province of Zeeland known as Zeeuws-Vlaanderen ("Sealandic Flanders"). The Artois area of today's French département of Pas-de-Calais was also also a part until it became a separate county in 1237.

Thus defined, Flanders covers a total area of 12,500 km² with 6 million inhabitants since 2004, or 16,500 km² with 6.2 million inhabitants if Artois is included. During the later Middle Ages its trading towns (notably Ghent (Gent), Bruges (Brugge) and Ypres (Ieper) made it one of the most urbanised parts of Europe, weaving the wool of neighbouring lands into cloth for home consumption and export.

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, in 1302, near Kortrijk. Flemish prosperity waned in the following century, however, owing to widespread European population decline following the Black Death of 1348, the disruption of trade during the Anglo-French Hundred Years' War (1338-1453), and increased English cloth production. Flemish weavers had come over to Worstead and North Walsham in Norfolk in the 12th century and established the wool industry.

Burgundy

Created in the year 862, the county was divided by the incorporation of the western districts into France in the late 12th century. The remainder of Flanders came under the rule of the counts of neighbouring Hainaut in 1191. The entire area passed in 1384 to the dukes of Burgundy, in 1477 to the Habsburg dynasty and in 1556 to the kings of Spain. The western districts of Flanders came finally under French rule under successive treaties of 1659 (Artois), 1668 and 1678.

Spanish regime

The remaining Spanish half passed to the Austrian Habsburgs in 1714 as the price of their acceptance of a Bourbon succession to the Spanish throne following the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg line. Conquered by revolutionary France in 1794 and annexed the following year as the départements of Lys and Scheldt, it was attached to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 but became a part of the kingdom of Belgium in 1831 following the revolution of the previous year.

Austrian and French Occupation

Although arts remained for another century at an impressive level with Rubens (1577-1640, returned to Antwerp at age 6), the decline of Flanders, deprived from its intellectual and economic power, and heavily taxed and rigidly controlled by Spain, Austria (1713-1792) and France (1792-1814), seemed inevitable.

Dutch Period

After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814 at Waterloo near Brussels, the Southern Netherlands -- Belgium -- were re-united to the Northern provinces of the 'Low Counties' by the Congress of Vienna (1815). The protestant King of Holland succeeded in rapidly starting industrialisation of the Southern Netherlands, but failed in maintaining good relations with the bigger and rebellious Catholic provinces. The Belgian bourgeoisie was not only Cathonlic, instead of protestant, but they also spoke French, instead of Durch. Resentment grew both among Catholics and among the powerful liberal bourgeoisie. In 1830, a street revolution in Brussels provoked a splitting up of both countries. Belgium was confirmed as a buffer state by the Vienna Congress, but deprived from its military strongholds, including Maastricht and Givet (explaining those surprising indentations in the Belgian border), and its bordering to the Scheldt river, transferred to Holland, that closed this river for half a century.

Belgian Period

Although the majority of Belgium was and still is Dutch speaking, the process of Francofication of public life, initiated during the French occupation, was intensified in the early Belgian period. Ruled by a French-speaking minority, all schools and universities in Flanders had to switch to French, leading to paradoxes as Dutch-speaking teachers speaking French to Dutch-speaking pupils, or Dutch-speaking teachers around Brussels being replaced on short notice with French-speaking teachers who then were unable to communicate with their Dutch-speaking pupils. Moreover, pupils were punished when they spoke their native language. The administrative capital of Brussels, lying entirely within Flanders, became inhabited by a an increasing French-speaking majority. However, a cultural and political movement of a revival of thousand years of Flemish culture and identity emerged during the 19th century, leading first to the option (but yet the obligation) of using Dutch in public life in Flanders by the end of the 19th century; the reintroduction of Dutch in schools and universities in the 1930s; the relocation of the biggest French speaking university (the French speaking section of Louvain University) from Flanders into Wallonia in 1968; and the installation of a federal state structure with a Flemish government during the last quarter of the 20th century.

Intermezzo: Flemish belgian emancipation movement

Strangers to Flanders may find some facts highly difficult to understand:

1. The differentiation of the emancipatory cultural and political struggle of Flemish people against a French-speaking ruling minority, from a so-called "war" between Flanders and Wallonia. In fact, during 15 centuries of history there has never been any armed conflict between the North and the South. There are 4 kinds of Belgians: (1) The Dutch speaking majority in the North ("Flanders"), (2) the French speaking in the South ("Wallonia"), (3) French speaking people, mostly from Flemish origin, in Brussels and some around Brussels and some important Flemish cities, who do not consider themselves as Walloon or as Flemish; (4) a German-speaking minority near the German border, in territories added to Belgium after the World Wars.

"Language struggles in Belgium" always refer to cultural and social emancipatory struggles of Flemish people within Flanders against the French-speaking minority in Flanders, including Brussels (and more recently, of German-speakers who want to rid thenselves of the Walloon stranglehold). Those struggles only sought to allow Flemish people to use, within Flanders, their own Dutch language in education, justice, social life and politics. Wallonia was never involved in this social and cultural emancipative struggle.

2. The difference between 'Dutch' and 'Flemish'. In some modern reference works published outside of Belgium, the language of the Flemish people is often identified as a separate language akin to Dutch. The fact is, however, that the languages of Flanders (the Southern Netherlands) and Holland (the Northern Netherlands) have identical roots. Historically and politically, the "Netherlands" referred to the 17 Provinces of contemporary Benelux, including the Lille Region in the North of France. There exist, as everywhere, some dialectic differences, but they are considered by some - mostly citizens of the Netherlands - minimal and localized (just as the differences between American and english accents) and are not considered significant. However, to the Flemish population the difference is all to obvious, especially in intonation. Moreover, the official Dutch Language is closer to the southern than to the northern dialects, due to the fact that the Christian Bible (the basis of the official language) was translated mainly by southern immigrants to the North.

Part of the confusion between "Flemish" and Dutch may stem from the fact that Dutch was banned from official life in Belgium during the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. As a consequence, it was not often heard in public life (although poets and authors published their highly-qualified work in Dutch). Moreover, the ruling French-speaking minority preferred to call the language of uneducated people "Flemish". Even as late as the 1920s, the archbishop of Belgium, enraged by the legal obligation to switch to Dutch in Flemish schools and universities, called 'Flemish' "unfit as a vehicle for scientific, religious, cultural and artistic values."

See also

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