Partition of Belgium - Feudal Borders

Feudal Borders

The territory of Belgium is the southern part of the historical region called Low Countries. The Low Countries emerged at the end of the Middle Ages as a very loose political confederation of fiefdoms ruled in personal union by the House of Habsburg: the Seventeen Provinces. The largest components of this union were the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the County of Hainaut and the Duchy of Luxembourg. The Prince-Bishopric of Liège was almost an enclave within the Seventeen Provinces. The prince-bishopric was not formally included in the Habsburgs' dominion but was, since Emperor Charles V, strongly influenced by its Habsburg neighbors. The border which emerged after the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years' War split the Seventeen Provinces into the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. In particular Brabant and Flanders were divided into northern and southern components. Though the different fiefdoms building the Southern Netherlands were more or less ruled by one reigning House only, all of them were quite distinct of each other. Different traditions and dialects of Dutch and Walloon appeared. Within the largest fiefdoms like Liège, Flanders and Luxembourg, several distinct languages and dialects were in use.

The feudal borders partitioning Belgium during the Ancien Régime have nothing in common with the partitioning lines which currently separate the Belgian federal entities. The French disbanded these feudal entities and replaced them by departments during the French occupation from 1794 to 1815. The new entities or departments mirrored, approximately, the language border. For instance the new division separated the bilingual kernel of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège into two more or less monolingual regions. The only major exceptions were the bilingual Dyle and Forêts departments. The departments would eventually become the provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and later on of Belgium. The name of the provinces were inspired by the roughly corresponding medieval fiefdoms. In particular, the Dyle department became the province of Brabant, that is the most southern part of the older duchy of Brabant.

In 1815, the territory now constituting Belgium was incorporated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which had been created to rehabilitate and consolidate the former Seventeen Provinces and serve as a buffer against any expansionist ambitions of France. However, this placed the Catholic Belgian provinces, including French-speaking Wallonia, under Dutch-majority rule and a Calvinist Dutch king. The Belgians had little influence over their lives and resented Dutch control and domination over economic, political and social institutions, sentiment that culminated in revolution in 1830.

Major European powers (which included France, Prussia and the United Kingdom) were divided over their response to the revolution of the Belgian people against the Dutch royal authorities. France favored the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands, hoping to annex all or at least part of the area, which was also the aim of most of the Belgian insurgents. After this proposal had been rejected by the other European powers, which supported the continued union of the Netherlands, Talleyrand, the French ambassador to the United Kingdom, proposed a partition of the Southern Netherlands (most areas of modern Belgium). To this end, the parts of the provinces of Liège, of Limburg and of Namur east of the Meuse river as well as the cities of Maastricht and Liège and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg would go to Prussia. Part of the province of East Flanders, nearly all of the province of Brabant, the province of Hainaut and the province of Namur west of the Meuse would be assigned to France. The province of Antwerp — except the city of Antwerp itself — and the province of Limburg, west of the Meuse river — except Maastricht — would remain with the Netherlands, as would a small part of the province of Brabant, the former Oranje Lordship of Diest. West Flanders, most of East Flanders, including Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, and the city of Antwerp were to form the Free State of Antwerp, under British protection.

However, this plan was rejected and Belgium was established as an essential buffer state to check the ambitions of France. Wallonia and Flanders were unified as one state under a German prince, Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. A historian of the Belgian revolution said that "in Belgium, there are parties and provinces, but no nation. Like a tent erected for one night, the new monarchy, after sheltering us from the tempest, will disappear without a trace."