Flanders
- This article is about a region of Western-Europe and of Belgium, and its people. For other meanings, see Flanders (disambiguation).
Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen, French: Flandre or Flandres) is the northern part of Belgium, covering 13,522 km² and containing over six million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants. Its capital is Brussels, a city the Flemings share with the French-speaking Belgians. The official language of Flanders is Dutch. Small minorities also speak French, Yiddish, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Berber, Arabic and other languages.
Historically, Flanders is an area in Western-Europe, spread over what's now part of northern France (French-Flanders or ’Frans-Vlaanderen’ in Dutch), Belgium and south-west Netherlands ("Sealandic Flanders" or ‘Zeeuws-Vlaanderen’ in Dutch). The French city of Lille claims to be the capital of this French-Flanders area. Ghent was the historic capital of the county of Flanders; Bruges was the dominant city in the Middle Ages (14th century).
Flanders is also used as a metonym for both the Flemish people, the Flemings, being the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium, and for the political institutions of 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 mainly to 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 area is divided into 5 provincess that form the official Flemish region and Brussels where Flanders has its own community institutions (alongside French-speaking ones):
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 Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium are often referred to as Flemish (Vlaams in Dutch), although the standard language used in Flanders is the same as in the Netherlands, Dutch. Using ‘Flemish’ to refer to dialectic language is also confusing as there are many different Flemish dialects that are sometimes even mutually incomprehensible.
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 sovereign 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
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.
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.
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 Dutch. 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.
Although the majority of Belgium was and 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 (Walloons and just 30.000 ‘census-voters’ for around 3 millions Belgians in 1830, all 30.000 being French-speakers), 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 group. In the middle of the 20th century, French became numercally the majority language in brussels.
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 (and soon 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.
Emancipation of Flemings in Brussels happened much later. Only in the 60’s, legislation was established on correct and equal treatment of both Flemings and French-speakers in brussels, but today, the implementation of these laws is still a major problem. Analogously, around 1990, the Brussels regional governement had to officially acknowledge that untill then, social housing in the Brussels region was reserved exclusively for French-speakers (or sometimes, anybody submitting an application in French).
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 (which never happened as the struggle for Flemish emancipation is an example of peacefull battle). In fact, during 15 centuries of history there has never been any armed conflict between the North and the South. One might say there are today from sociological and ethnic point of view 5 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 nor as Flemish, (4) a tiny German-speaking minority near the German border, in territories added to Belgium after the World Wars, and (5) various migrant groups (‘ethnic-cultural minorities’) with widely varying degree of attachment to their countries of origing, and to the Belgian communities, the Belgian state and European Union.
2. "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.
3. 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 the Netherlands (or the ‘Northern Netherlands’) are one and the same. Historically and politically, the term "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.
4. 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 official public life (although poets and authors published their highly-qualified work in Dutch, and as all ordinary Flemings used it as their daily ‘language’, or even more its dialects, in this period). Moreover, the ruling French-speaking minority preferred to call the language of mostly poorly educated people "Flemish", in an attempt to drive a wedge between the language spoken by the Dutch and the Flemings. During the 19th century, many leading Belgian figures, and even in the 1920s the archbishop of Belgium, enraged by the then new tendency to switch to Dutch in Flemish schools, called 'Flemish' "unfit as a vehicle for scientific, religious, cultural and artistic values." Even as late as around the year 2000, some French-speaking nationalists and also the controversial Flemish writer Marc Reynebeau used this reasonning in their writings in order to try to justify the gross and unnecessary discriminations imposed by Belgian governments during the first century of Belgian history.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, the European integration became gradually more and more important. In 2004, it is estimated around 40% of Flemish and Belgian legislation is just implementation of the European Union law. European law is still a rather complicated lot. However, the project for a European Constitution, started end 2003, should remediate about this.
The influence of European Union law on Flanders is quite substantial, and politically relevant. It can be felt, among others, trough:
Contemporary Flanders
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. 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
Dutch Period
Belgian Period
Intermezzo: Flemish emancipation movement
World War I significance
Flanders saw some of the greatest losses of life of the First World War including the battles of Ypres and the Somme. Due to the hundreds of thousands of casualties and the poppies that sprang up on Flanders Fields, they have both become an emblem of human life lost in war.European integration and Flanders
Among the results with a particular relevance for Flanders (or wider), we may note, without attempting any exhaustiveness:
Contemporary institutional challenges for Flanders
(to be added)See also
External links