History of Belgium Totally Explained

Everything about History Of Belgium totally explained

The history of Belgium, from pre-history to the present day, is intertwined with the histories of its European neighbours, in particular those of the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Before independence

Prehistory

The oldest primitive stone instruments found on the area of today's Belgium date 800,000 BC. Circa 400,000 BC, Neanderthals are claimed to be living on the edge of the Meuse river, near the village of Spy. From 30,000 BC onwards the inhabitants were Homo sapiens. Neolithic remains can be found today at Spiennes where there was a flint mine. The first signs of Bronze age activity in Belgium date from around 1750 BC. From 500 BC Celtic tribes settled in the region and traded with the Mediterranean world. From c. 150 BC, the first coins came into use.
The earliest named inhabitants of Belgium were the Belgae (after whom modern Belgium is named). The population covered a significant area of Gaulish or Celtic Europe, living in northern Gaul at the time of the Roman occupation. The distinction between the Belgae to the North and the Gauls to the south of them is disputed, but it seems clear that the Gauls were the dominant group in the area until the Roman and Germanic influence came to dominate. The arrival of Germanic tribes from the north and east, is cited by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico. Linguists have proposed that there's evidence that the Belgae had previously spoken an Indo European language intermediate between Celtic and Germanic. This language or group of languages is sometimes referred to as the Nordwestblock.

Antiquity

By 51BC, the Belgae were overrun by the armies of Julius Caesar, as described in his chronicle De Bello Gallico.
   In this same work Julius Caesar referred to the Belgae as "the bravest of all the Gauls" ("horum omnium fortissimi sunt belgae").
   What is now Belgium flourished as a province of Rome. This province was much larger than the modern Belgium and included five cities: Nemetacum (Arras), Divodurum (Metz), Bagacum (Bavay), Aduatuca (Tongeren), Durocorturum (Reims).
   At the northeast was the neighbouring province of Germania Inferior. Its cities were Traiectum ad Mosam (Maastricht), Ulpia Noviomagus (Nijmegen), Colonia Ulpia Trajana (Xanten) and Colonia Agrippina (Cologne). Both provinces include what are now known as the Low Countries.

Early Middle Ages

After the Roman Empire collapsed (9th century), Germanic tribes invaded the Roman province of "Gallia". One of these peoples, the Franks, eventually managed to install a new kingdom under the rule of the Merovingian Dynasty. Clovis I was the best-known king of this dynasty. He ruled from his base in northern France, but his empire included today's Belgium. He converted to Christianity. Christian scholars, mostly Irish monks, preached Christianity to the populace and started a wave of conversion (Saint Servatius, Saint Remacle, Saint Hadelin).
   The Merovingians were short-lived and were succeeded by the Carolingian Dynasty. After Charles Martel countered the Moorish invasion from Spain (732 — Poitiers), the King Charlemagne (born close to Liège in Herstal or Jupille) brought a huge part of Europe under his rule and was crowned the "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" by the Pope Leo III (800 in Aachen).
   The Vikings were defeated in 981 by Arnulf of Carinthia near Leuven. The Frankish lands were divided and reunified several times under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, but eventually were firmly divided into France and the Holy Roman Empire. The parts of the County of Flanders stretching out west of the river Scheldt (Schelde in Dutch, Escaut in French) became part of France during the Middle Ages, but the remainders of the County of Flanders and the Low Countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire.
   As the Holy Roman Emperors lost effective control of their domains in the 11th and 12th centuries, the territory more or less corresponding to the present Belgium was divided into mostly independent feudal states:

During the 11th and 12th centuries, the Rheno-Mosan or Mosan art movement flourished in the region moving its centre from Cologne and Trier to Liège, Maastricht and Aachen. Some masterpieces of this Romanesque art are the shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, the baptistry of Renier de Huy in Liège, the shrine of Saint Remacle in Stavelot, the shrine of Saint Servatius in Maastricht or, Notger's gospel in Liège. 13th and 14th centuries

Many cities gained their independence from their heirs.

Huge trade within the Hanseatic League.

Building of huge gothic cathedrals and city halls.

Battle of the Golden Spurs

Bruges

Antwerp

Hanseatic League

Ypres

Burgundian and Habsbourgian Netherlands

By 1433 most of the Belgian and Luxembourgian territory along with much of the rest of the Low Countries became part of Burgundy under Philip the Good. When Mary of Burgundy, granddaughter of Philip the Good married Maximilian I, the Low Countries became Habsburg territory. Their son, Philip I of Castile (Philip the Handsome) was the father of the later Charles V. The Holy Roman Empire was unified with Spain under the Habsburg Dynasty after Charles V inherited several domains.
Especially during the Burgundy period (the 15th and 16th centuries), Ypres, Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, and Antwerp took turns at being major European centers for commerce, industry (especially textiles) and art. The Flemish Primitives were a group of painters active primarily in the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and early 16th centuries (for example, Van Eyck and van der Weyden). Flemish tapestries hung on the walls of castles throughout Europe.

Early Renaissance painting

Charles the Good

Charles the Bold The Pragmatic Sanction of 1549, issued by Charles V, established the Seventeen Provinces (or Spanish Netherlands in its broad sense) as an entity separate from the Empire and from France. This comprised all of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg except for the lands of the Bishopric of Liège.
However, the northern region now known as the Netherlands became increasingly Protestant (for example Calvinistic), while the south remained primarily Catholic. The schism resulted in the Union of Atrecht and the Union of Utrecht. When Philip II, son of Charles ascended the Spanish throne, he tried to abolish all Protestantism. Portions of the Netherlands revolted, beginning the Eighty Years' War between the Netherlands and Spain. For the conquered Southern Netherlands the war ended in 1585 with the Fall of Antwerp. This can be seen as the start of Belgium as one region. That same year, the northern Low Countries (for example the Netherlands proper) seized independence in the Oath of Abjuration (Plakkaat van Verlatinghe) and started the United Provinces and the Dutch Golden Age. For them, the war lasted until 1648 (the Peace of Westphalia), when Spain recognized the independence of the Netherlands, but held onto the loyal and Catholic region of modern-day Belgium which was all that remained of the Spanish Netherlands.

Battle of Turnhout (1597)

Battle of Nieuwpoort

Battle of Gibraltar

Battle of the Downs

Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain While the United Provinces gained independence, the Southern Netherlands remained under the rule of the Spanish Hapsburgs (1519–1713).
Until 1581 the history of Belgium (except the Bishopric of Liège), the grand duchy of Luxembourg and the country the Netherlands is the same: they formed the country/region of the Netherlands or the Low Countries. In Dutch, a distinction still exists between on the one hand 'de Nederlanden' (plural, the Low Countries) and 'Nederland' (singular, the present-day state of the Netherlands) that's a consequence of this separation in the 17th century. Before 1581, the Netherlands refers to the Lowlands (De Nederlanden).
During the 17th century, Antwerp was still a major European center for commerce, industry and art. The Brueghels, Peter Paul Rubens and Van Dyck's baroque paintings were created during this period.

Gerardus Mercator

Jodocus Hondius

War of Devolution, Franco-Dutch War, War of the Reunions, Nine Years War, War of the Spanish Succession The Belgian and Luxemburgian territories except the Bishopric of Liège were transferred to the Austrian Hapsburgs (1713–1794) after the War of the Spanish Succession when the French Bourbon Dynasty inherited Spain at the price of abandoning many Spanish possessions.

War of the Austrian Succession

Barrier Treaty which excluded the Flemings to use the Scheldt

Ostend Company

Battle of Turnhout (1789)

United States of Belgium of 1790

French period

Following the, the Southern Netherlands were invaded and annexed by the First French Republic in 1795, they were divided into nine united départements and became an integral part of France. The Bishopric of Liège was dissolved. Its territory was divided over the départements Meuse-Inférieure and Ourte. Austria confirmed the loss of the Austrian Netherlands by the Treaty of Campo Formio, in 1797.
   In 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to abdicate by the Allies and was exiled to Elba, ending the French period. However, Napoleon managed to escape from Elba and quickly returned to power during the Hundred Days. Napoleon knew that his only chance of remaining in power was to attack the existing Allied forces in Belgium before they were reinforced. He crossed the Belgian frontier with two armies and attacked the Prussians under the command of General Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Ligny on June 16, 1815. Meanwhile, Ney engaged the forces of the Duke of Wellington and the Prince of Orange in the Battle of Quatre Bras on the same day.
   Napoleon was finally defeated by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at Waterloo in present-day Belgium on 18 June 1815. Napoleon's strategy failed and his army was driven from the field in confusion, by a combined Allied general advance. The next morning the Battle of Wavre ended in a hollow French victory. Napoleon was forced to surrender and was exiled to Saint Helena.
   King William I of the Netherlands had the Butte du Lion erected on the battlefield of Waterloo to commemorate the location where his son, William II of the Netherlands (the Prince of Orange), was knocked from his horse by a musket ball to the shoulder and as a tribute to his courage. It was completed in 1826. The younger William had fought as commander of combined Dutch and Belgian forces at the Battle of Quatre Bras and the Battle of Waterloo.

United Kingdom of the Netherlands

After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the major victorious powers (Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia) agreed at Congress of Vienna on reuniting the former Austrian Netherlands and the former Dutch Republic, creating the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was to serve as a buffer state against any future French invasions. This was under the rule of a Protestant king, namely William I of Orange. Most of the small and ecclesiastical states in the Holy Roman Empire were given to larger states at this time, and this included the Prince-Bishopric of Liège which became now formally part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Independence

In August 1830, stirred by a performance of Auber's La Muette de Portici at the Brussels opera house La Monnaie (Dutch: De Munt), the Belgian Revolution broke out, and the country wrested its independence from the Dutch, aided by French intellectuals and French armed forces. The real political forces behind this were the Catholic clergy, which was against the Protestant Dutch king, William I, and the equally strong liberals, who opposed the royal authoritarianism, and the fact that the Belgians were not represented proportionally in the national assemblies at all. At first, the Revolution was merely a call for greater autonomy, but due to the clumsy responses of the Dutch king to the problem, and his unwillingness to meet the demands of the revolutionaries, the Revolution quickly escalated into a fight for full independence.
   Among the revolutionaries, there was an idea to rejoin France, but after international pressure, Belgium became an independent state. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1831, with a monarch invited in from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Germany by the British. The major powers in Europe agreed, and on July 21 1831, the first king of Belgium, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was inaugurated. This day is still the Belgian national holiday. The reason why the Belgian Revolution succeeded, even though it violated the accords made in 1815, is mainly that France was sympathetic to it, after it had had a new liberal government installed in the same year as the Belgian Revolution (see July monarchy or Louis-Philippe). In particular, the French troops "helped" the Belgians to maintain Antwerp inside their new country. One easily understands how important this was for both Britain and France to keep Antwerp and Rotterdam harbours located in two distinct enemy countries. The other major powers were, at that time, too much occupied with their own wars and problems.
   The Netherlands still fought on for 8 years, but in 1839 a treaty was signed between the two countries. Belgium thus became a sovereign, independent state, equipped with a very liberal constitution (constitutional monarchy), but with suffrage restricted to the haute-bourgeoisie and the clergy, all together less than 1% of the adult population, and fully French speaking in a country where French wasn't the majority language.
   By the treaty of 1839, Luxembourg didn't fully join Belgium, and remained a possession of the Netherlands until different inheritance laws caused it to separate as an independent Grand Duchy. Belgium also lost Eastern Limburg, Zeeuws Vlaanderen and French Flanders (Dutch: Frans Vlaanderen) and Eupen, four territories which it had all claimed on historical grounds. The Netherlands retained the former two while French Flanders, which had been annexed at the time of Louis XIV remained in French possession, and Eupen remained within the German Confederation, although it would pass to Belgium after World War I as compensation for the war.
   The Belgian Revolution had many causes:

At the political level:

The Belgians felt significantly under-represented in the Netherlands' elected Lower Assembly.
The low popularity of Prince William, later King William II was representative of the King William I in Brussels.
The treatment of the French-speaking Catholic Walloons in the Dutch dominated United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

At the religious level:

The difference of religion between the Catholics Belgians and their Protestant Dutch king.

At the economic level:

The Belgians had little influence over the traditional economy of trade centered in Amsterdam.
The Dutch were for free trade, while industries in Belgium called for the protection of tariffs.
Low-taxed imports from the Baltic depressed agriculture in Belgian grain-growing regions.

At the international level:

French July Monarchy's support.
The passive agreement of the British.

From the independence to WWI

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