The name Low Countries may refer to the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but it also refers to the historical region de Nederlanden: those principalities located on and near the mostly low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers. Very roughly that region corresponds to all of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It was called Whole Netherlands by people who sought to unite it. This historical region also was referred to as the Netherlands in English.
Between 1579 and 1794 a region comprising present Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of northern France was called the Southern Netherlands (or the Spanish Netherlands between 1579 and 1713, the Austrian Netherlands after 1713, after the main possession of their Habsburg lord).
The region was united three times, in the Seventeen Provinces as a personal union during the 16th century, in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1830 under King William I, and as the Benelux customs union founded in 1948.
Read more about this topic: Netherlands (terminology)
Famous quotes containing the word countries:
“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper—just running down the edges of different countries and continents, “looking for something” ... having spent most of my life timorously seeking for subsistence along the coastlines of the world.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)