Charlemagne ruled Belgium as part of his Holy Roman Empire around AD 800, but squabbles among grandsons following his death divided the country into separate regions: Flanders , the Flemish-speaking province in the north, and Wallonie , the French-speaking province in the south. From the 15th century on, conquering powers—including Austria, Denmark, and France—attempted to unite and rule Belgium, but none could quell the area’s aversion to foreign occupation. In the early 1800s, the people of the north and south provinces cooperated to launch a rebellion against the Dutch king who controlled the country. They cited religious differences between Protestant rulers and the Catholic population as well as competing economic ideologies regarding trade to support their coup. In 1831, the Belgians emerged victorious as rulers of a new, independent country committed to tariff-protected trade, albeit certainly one with intact regional divisions.
The new constitutional monarchy, under the reign of Belgian Leopold I, spent its first year fending off Dutch invaders craving a rematch. However, France stepped in, forcing the Dutch to back off. By 1839, all major European powers recognized Belgium as sovereign and neutral, the latter becoming crucial to its history. Under the rule of Leopold I and Leopold II, who rose to power in 1865, Belgium became a major industrial power as well as an imperial international player. In 1885, Belgium acquired the Congo Free State, which Leopold II governed as personal property. He proved a grossly negligent ruler, brutally oppressing and slaughtering the native Congolese. Conversely, in Europe, Leopold instituted progressive reforms by introducing universal male suffrage.
German armies invaded Belgium during both World Wars, upsetting the country’s neutrality. During WWI, King Albert I and his army spent four years in the trenches trying to repel the invaders. The town of Ypres memorializes Belgium’s sacrifices in that war. When the Nazis invaded in 1940, King Leopold III surrendered almost immediately. Post-war criticism of this move made Leopold unpopular, forcing him to hand power to his son Baudouin in 1951. Following WWII, Belgium shed much of its former neutrality by joining NATO, which is headquartered in Brussels, and the Benelux economic union with the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Baudouin, who ruled until 1993, continued this trend with Belgium’s entrance into the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor to the European Union.
Under the Belgian Constitution of 1831, the Belgian king, currently Albert II, is the official head of state, accountable to the democratically elected parliament. The prime minister, currently Yves Leterme, conducts day-to-day affairs. He is appointed by the monarch but must come from the majority party, which currently is the Christian Democratic and Flemish party. Leterme attempted to resign on July 14, 2008, but his resignation was rejected by Albert II. Internal divisions fall along language lines: constitutional amendments in 1994 made Belgium a federal state with local governments centered in Flemish-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonie, and bilingual Brussels . Even the powerful political parties, the Socialists on the left, the Christian Democrats in the center, and the Liberals on the right, organize through separate Flemish- and French-speaking branches. Since the late 1970s, Belgium’s far-right parties have won votes on nationalist and anti-immigrant platforms.
Language. Belgium’s three official languages are each associated with a particular region and a fierce regional sentiment. The 60% of Belgians who speak Flemish—a variation of Dutch—live in Flanders, the northern part of the country, while the 31% of citizens conversing in French dialects, like Walloon Brabant, make their home in Wallonie, the southern region. German, the third official language, is the mother tongue of fewer than 1% of Belgians and is heard only in a few districts east of Liège. Brussels, officially bilingual, is home to nearly 10% of the population. Though many Flemish speak some English, knowledge of French is helpful in Wallonie.
Novels And Poetry. Wedged between the literary traditions of France and the Netherlands, Belgian writers have characteristically grappled with questions of language, identity, and nationhood. In 1867, Charles de Coster published The Legend of Ulenspiegel, an allegorical tale of a Flemish prankster trying to free himself from the control of a Spanish king. The book became a rallying cry for Flemish regionalism, although no one missed the irony that the tale was written in French. In 1937, the Monday Group of Surrealist authors proclaimed that Belgian literature did not exist, and that Francophone Belgian writers should embrace the French canon. Francophonie—French literature outside France—has become a theme of Belgian literature, and many Belgian writers are expatriates. Surrealist poet Henri Michaux traveled in Africa, even becoming a French citizen at the end of his life. Fictionalized versions of her own forays into Asia pervade young novelist Amélie Nothomb’s satirical stories.
Comic Strips And Mysteries. In the 20th century, Belgian talent made its presence known in comic strips and detective novels. Perhaps it was British writer Agatha Christie’s tribute to this tradition that her famous moustached detective, Hercule Poirot, was Belgian. In Brussels, museums are dedicated to the history of cartooning, specifically to the work of Georges Remi, better known as Hergé, creator of Tintin, and to Peyo, papa of the Smurfs. The enigmatic Georges Simenon wrote a 76-novel mystery series on cunning Commissaire Maigret.
Architecture. The 14th-century cathedrals of Bruges and Ghent exemplify Gothic architecture. Belgium’s own contribution came much later, when Victor Horta, a native of Ghent, reacted against Classicism’s heavy formality to champion a lighter Art Nouveau style in the late 19th century. Enthusiasm for Horta’s trademark curvy, asymmetrical lines waned, however, by World War I, and many of his buildings were demolished. Exhibits at the Musée Horta in Brussels reflect Horta’s particular style.
On The Canvas. As a member of the Flemish Primitive school of painting, Jan van Eyck excelled beyond his peers and transformed the art of oil painting, lavishing minute detail on his canvases without sacrificing the tenderness of his presentation. His best-known painting, the 1432 Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, adorns the altarpiece of St-Baafskathedraal in Ghent . Pieter Bruegel the Elder is known as “peasant Bruegel” for his non-sacred works, as depicted in pieces like the 1567 Peasant Wedding Feast. Peter Paul Rubens remains Antwerp’s artistic hero. In the early 17th century, he represented the female body in his Italian Renaissance-style canvases, establishing a specific and enduring ideal of beauty. In the 20th century, René Magritte gained fame with his Surrealist paintings that portrayed jarring juxtapositions of everyday objects. His most famous painting, The Betrayal of Images (1929), pairs the image of a pipe with the caption, ceci n’est pas une pipe (“this is not a pipe”).
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For 52 years, we have published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.
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