Ranked Lists of Belgian Provinces - History

History

Further information: State reform in Belgium

At the time of the independence of Belgium from the Netherlands in 1830, its territory simply consisted of the existing nine Belgian provinces. The first article of the Belgian Constitution said: "Belgium is divided into provinces. These provinces are Antwerp, Brabant, West Flanders, East Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Limburg, Luxembourg, Namur, except for the relations of Luxembourg with the German Confederation."

Several years later, half of the province of Limburg became part of the Netherlands, which consequently has its own province of Limburg.

In 1920, following the First World War, the Eupen-Malmedy territory was annexed to Belgium and became part of the province of Liège.

During the second half of the 20th century, Belgium was transformed from a unitary state to a federal state with three Communities and three Regions. As part of the state reforms, the (bilingual) province of Brabant was split in 1995 into two (unilingual) provinces, Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant, and the (bilingual) Brussels-Capital Region. The Brussels-Capital Region does not belong to any province, is not a province, and does not contain any. The two provinces became part of the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region respectively. The remaining eight provinces became part of these regions as well, so

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