Belgium
A conquered land over and over again.
Wikipedia Information for:
History of Belgium
Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit,
the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts,
in ours Gauls, the third.
...Of all these, the Belgae are the strongest.
“
”
— Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, Book I, Ch. 1
The name 'Belgium' is derived from
Gallia Belgica, a
Roman province in the northernmost part of
Gaul that before Roman invasion in 100 BC, was inhabited by the
Belgae, a mix of
Celtic and
Germanic peoples.
[18][19] A
gradual immigration by Germanic
Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the
Merovingian kings. A gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the
Carolingian Empire.
[20]
The
Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into
Middle and
West Francia and therefore into a set of more or less independent
fiefdoms which, during the
Middle Ages, were
vassals either of the
King of France or of the
Holy Roman Emperor.
[20]
Many of these fiefdoms were united in the
Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries.
[21] Emperor Charles V extended the
personal union of the
Seventeen Provinces in the 1540s, making it far more than a personal union by the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 and increased his influence over the
Prince-Bishopric of Liège.
[22]
The
Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) divided the Low Countries into the northern
United Provinces (
Belgica Foederata in
Latin, the "Federated Netherlands") and the
Southern Netherlands (
Belgica Regia, the "Royal 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 most
Franco-Spanish and
Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Following the
campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars,
the Low Countries—including territories that were never nominally under
Habsburg rule, such as the Prince-Bishopric of Liège—were annexed by
the
French First Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region. The reunification of the Low Countries as the
United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the
First French Empire in 1815, after the defeat of Napoleon.
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.
[23][24] 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.
[25] Although the franchise was initially restricted,
universal suffrage for men was introduced after the
general strike of 1893 (with
plural voting until 1919) and for women in 1949.
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. This recognition became official in 1898 and in 1967 the
parliament accepted a Dutch version of the
Constitution.
[26]
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 (millions of whom are thought to have died) under
Leopold II, for whom the Congo was primarily a source of revenue from
ivory and rubber production.
[27] Many Congolese were killed by Leopold's agents for failing to meet production quotas for ivory and rubber.
[28]
It is estimated that nearly 10 million were killed during the Leopold
period. In 1908 this outcry led the Belgian state to assume
responsibility for the government of the colony, henceforth called the
Belgian Congo.
[29] A Belgian commission in 1919 estimated that Congo's population was half what it was in 1879.
[30]
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. The opening months of the war were known as the
Rape of Belgium due to German excesses. Belgium assumed control of the
German colonies of
Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day
Rwanda and
Burundi) during the war, and in 1924 the
League of Nations mandated them to Belgium. In the aftermath of the First World War, the
Prussian districts of
Eupen and Malmedy were annexed by Belgium in 1925, thereby causing the presence of a German-speaking minority.
German forces again invaded the country in May 1940 and 40,690 Belgians, over half of them Jews, were killed during the subsequent
occupation and
The Holocaust. From September 1944 to February 1945 Belgium was
liberated by the Allies. After World War II,
a general strike forced King
Leopold III, who
many Belgians felt had collaborated with Germany during the war, to abdicate in 1951.
[31] The Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960 during the
Congo Crisis;
[32] Ruanda-Urundi followed with its independence two years later. Belgium joined
NATO as a founding member and formed the Benelux group of nations with the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Belgium became one of the six founding members of the
European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and of the
European Atomic Energy Community and
European Economic Community,
established in 1957. The latter has now become the European Union, for
which Belgium hosts major administrations and institutions, including
the
European Commission, the
Council of the European Union and the extraordinary and committee sessions of the
European Parliament.
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