Chapter 01 · c. 850 – 1384
The Medieval Low Countries: Flanders, Brabant and the Cloth Towns
Between the Rhine and the North Sea, a cluster of counties and duchies grew rich on cloth and trade, their burghers winning liberties unmatched in feudal Europe.
The lands that became Belgium lay on the fault line where the Romance and Germanic worlds met, divided after Charlemagne between the West Frankish kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire. Out of this patchwork emerged the powerful County of Flanders, nominally a French fief, and the Duchy of Brabant within the Empire, alongside smaller principalities such as the prince-bishopric of Liège, the County of Hainaut and the County of Namur. From the eleventh century these territories grew dense with towns whose wealth and self-government had few parallels north of Italy.
Flanders' fortune was built on cloth. Importing fine wool from England, the weavers of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres turned it into high-value textiles exported across Europe, and their towns became some of the largest and most productive urban centres in the medieval world. Bruges grew into the busiest port of northern Europe and a hub of the international banking and trade that linked the Hanseatic towns of the Baltic to the merchant galleys of Genoa and Venice. By 1400 the region rivalled northern Italy in prosperity, and its guilds and city militias were a political force in their own right.
That urban power repeatedly defied the feudal order. When the king of France tried to absorb Flanders, the towns rebelled, and on 11 July 1302 a militia of Flemish craftsmen annihilated a French army of mounted knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Courtrai, gathering hundreds of golden spurs from the dead nobles. The victory, shattering the myth of cavalry invincibility, became a lasting emblem of Flemish self-assertion. Yet the same towns were riven by feuds between guilds, patricians and counts, and by 1384 the County of Flanders passed by inheritance to the dukes of Burgundy.
“By 1400 the towns of Flanders, fed by English wool, rivalled northern Italy in wealth, and Bruges was the busiest port of northern Europe.”
— On the medieval cloth economy
Turning points
- 12th–14th c.Economy & Trade
The Flemish cloth boom
Importing English wool, Bruges, Ghent and Ypres became among the richest cloth-producing cities in Europe, with Bruges the leading port and financial centre of the north.
See the data - 1245Religion
Foundation of the beguinages
Communities of beguines, women living a religious life without taking monastic vows, established enclosed beguinages in the Flemish towns; thirteen survive as a UNESCO World Heritage site bearing witness to this medieval tradition.
- 11 Jul 1302War & Rupture
Battle of the Golden Spurs
A Flemish town militia, mostly craft guildsmen, destroyed a French army of knights near Courtrai, collecting the golden spurs of the slain nobles and asserting the independence of the Flemish towns.
See the data - 1384Politics & Power
Flanders passes to Burgundy
On the death of the last count, the County of Flanders was inherited by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, beginning the gathering of the Low Countries under a single dynasty.
Figures of the era
Jacob van Arteveldec. 1290 – 1345
Flemish statesman of Ghent
A wealthy Ghent burgher who led the Flemish towns during the early Hundred Years' War, steering Flanders toward neutrality and the English wool trade on which its prosperity depended, until he was killed in a riot in 1345.
Philip the Bold1342 – 1404
Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders
Through his marriage to the heiress of Flanders he acquired the county in 1384, beginning the Burgundian assembly of the Low Countries into a single, increasingly unified state.
Chapter sources: Battle of the Golden Spurs, Rise and Fall of the Medieval Flemish Cloth Industry, Flemish Béguinages, Belgium: History
Chapter 02 · 1384 – 1713
The Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands
United by the dukes of Burgundy and inherited by the Habsburgs, the Low Countries flourished, then split apart in the revolt against Spain into a Protestant north and a Catholic south.
Over the fifteenth century the dukes of Burgundy gathered Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, Holland and the other provinces into the Burgundian Netherlands, one of the wealthiest and most cultured realms in Europe, the age of Jan van Eyck and the Flemish primitives. The line ended in 1477 when Charles the Bold fell in battle and his daughter Mary married the Habsburg archduke Maximilian of Austria, drawing the Low Countries into the orbit of the Habsburg dynasty. Their grandson, the emperor Charles V, was born in Ghent in 1500 and ruled the seventeen provinces as the centre of a vast empire.
When Charles V abdicated in Brussels in 1555 he handed the Netherlands to his son Philip II of Spain, and the provinces became the Spanish Netherlands. Philip's centralising rule, heavy taxation and persecution of Protestants provoked the revolt that became the Eighty Years' War. The conflict split the Low Countries: in 1579 the northern, increasingly Calvinist provinces formed the Union of Utrecht and went on to become the independent Dutch Republic, while the southern, Catholic provinces remained loyal to Spain, a division sealed when Spanish forces under Alessandro Farnese retook Antwerp in 1585.
The southern provinces, henceforth the core of modern Belgium, stayed under Spanish Habsburg rule through the seventeenth century, even as they suffered repeatedly from the wars of Louis XIV's France along their borders. The closure of the river Scheldt by the victorious Dutch strangled Antwerp's trade and shifted prosperity northward. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Netherlands were transferred to the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs, becoming the Austrian Netherlands.
“The revolt against Spain tore the Low Countries in two: a Protestant Dutch Republic in the north, a Catholic Spanish Netherlands in the south.”
— On the Eighty Years' War
Turning points
- 1477Politics & Power
The Habsburg inheritance
After Charles the Bold of Burgundy was killed, his daughter Mary married the Habsburg archduke Maximilian of Austria, passing the Low Countries to the Habsburg dynasty.
- 1555Politics & Power
Abdication of Charles V in Brussels
The emperor Charles V, born in Ghent, abdicated the Netherlands to his son Philip II in Brussels in 1555, and the provinces passed under the rule of Habsburg Spain.
- 1579Religion
Union of Arras and the split of the Low Countries
The Catholic southern provinces reaffirmed loyalty to Spain in the Union of Arras while the northern provinces formed the Union of Utrecht, beginning the permanent division of the Low Countries into Belgium and the Netherlands.
- 17 Aug 1585War & Rupture
Fall of Antwerp
After a siege of over a year, the Spanish commander Alessandro Farnese took the great Protestant port of Antwerp, confirming Spanish control of the southern Netherlands and driving its merchants and craftsmen north.
See the data - 1713Politics & Power
From Spanish to Austrian Netherlands
By the Treaty of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession, the southern Netherlands passed from Spain to the Austrian Habsburgs, becoming the Austrian Netherlands.
Figures of the era
Charles V1500 – 1558
Holy Roman Emperor, lord of the Netherlands
Born in Ghent, Charles V ruled the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries at the heart of a global empire before abdicating in Brussels in 1555 and dividing his dominions, leaving the Netherlands to Spain.
Peter Paul Rubens1577 – 1640
Painter of the Spanish Netherlands
The towering figure of Baroque art in the southern Netherlands, Rubens worked from Antwerp as both painter and diplomat, his vast output making the city a centre of Counter-Reformation culture under Spanish rule.
Chapter sources: Belgium: History, Fall of Antwerp (1585)
Chapter 03 · 1713 – 1865
Revolution, Independence and the Guaranteed Neutral Kingdom
After French annexation and an unhappy union with the Dutch, the southern provinces rose in 1830 and won independence as a neutral kingdom guaranteed by the powers of Europe.
Austrian rule was interrupted in 1789 by a short-lived rebellion, then swept away when revolutionary France annexed the Austrian Netherlands and the prince-bishopric of Liège in 1795; for twenty years the region was ruled directly from Paris. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, fought on Belgian soil in 1815, the Congress of Vienna joined the southern provinces to the former Dutch Republic in a new United Kingdom of the Netherlands under King William I, intended as a barrier against France. The union was unhappy from the start: the Catholic, partly French-speaking southerners resented Dutch Protestant dominance, the privileging of the Dutch language and their under-representation in government.
Discontent erupted into revolution in August 1830, sparked in Brussels after a performance of the opera La Muette de Portici. Fighting drove out the Dutch garrison, a provisional government proclaimed independence, and a National Congress adopted one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe. The great powers, meeting in London, accepted the new state rather than risk a wider war, and in 1831 they offered the throne to the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who was sworn in as Leopold I, King of the Belgians, on 21 July 1831.
Securing the kingdom took nearly a decade of negotiation, as William I refused to recognise the loss of his southern provinces and Dutch troops invaded in 1831. The settlement was finally sealed in the Treaty of London of 19 April 1839, signed by Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia and the Netherlands, which recognised Belgium 'an independent and perpetually neutral State' and committed the powers to guarantee that neutrality. Under Leopold I the young constitutional monarchy stabilised, industrialised early, with the first railway on the Continent in 1835, and became one of the more prosperous states of Europe.
“Belgium, within the limits specified, shall form an independent and perpetually neutral State.”
— Treaty of London, 19 April 1839
Turning points
- 1795War & Rupture
French annexation of the southern Netherlands
Revolutionary France annexed the Austrian Netherlands and the prince-bishopric of Liège, ending Habsburg rule and governing the region directly from Paris for twenty years.
See the data - 1815Politics & Power
- Aug–Sep 1830Independence
The Belgian Revolution
Rebellion in Brussels drove out the Dutch garrison; a National Congress proclaimed independence and adopted a liberal constitution, breaking the southern provinces away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
See the data - 21 Jul 1831Formation
- 19 Apr 1839Independence
Treaty of London guarantees Belgian neutrality
Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia and the Netherlands recognised Belgium as an independent and perpetually neutral state and guaranteed its neutrality, the treaty later cited by Britain to enter the First World War.
See the data
Figures of the era
Leopold I1790 – 1865
First King of the Belgians
A prince of Saxe-Coburg and widower of the British heir Princess Charlotte, Leopold accepted the Belgian crown in 1831 and ruled as a shrewd constitutional monarch, anchoring the new kingdom's stability and its place in European diplomacy.
William I of the Netherlands1772 – 1843
King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
The Dutch king whose centralising rule and favouring of the north provoked the Belgian Revolution; he refused for years to accept the loss of the southern provinces, recognising Belgian independence only in 1839.
Chapter sources: Belgium: History, The Treaty of London, 1839 (primary text), Leopold I, king of Belgium
Chapter 04 · 1865 – 1914
Leopold II, the Congo, and the Curiosities of the Border
An industrial kingdom acquired a vast and brutal private empire in Africa, while its own frontier sprouted some of Europe's strangest scraps of disputed sovereignty.
Leopold II, who succeeded his father in 1865, presided over a wealthy, fast-industrialising kingdom but is remembered above all for the Congo. Acting as a private individual rather than as Belgium's monarch, he won international recognition at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 of a personal domain in central Africa, which he proclaimed the Congo Free State in 1885. Run as a commercial concession built on forced labour and the extraction of rubber and ivory, the state became infamous for atrocities, mutilation, killing and famine, that caused enormous loss of life. Mounting international outrage forced Leopold to surrender his private colony to the Belgian state in 1908, when it became the Belgian Congo.
Along Belgium's own eastern edge lay one of Europe's true geographical oddities. When the powers redrew the border in 1816, they could not agree who should hold the village of Moresnet and its valuable calamine (zinc) mine, so a tiny sliver of land was set aside as Neutral Moresnet, a condominium jointly administered first by Prussia and the Netherlands and, after 1830, by Prussia and Belgium. Barely three and a half square kilometres, neutral, lightly taxed and never formally annexed, it endured for over a century before being absorbed by Belgium under the Treaty of Versailles.
To the north, the frontier with the Netherlands produced a different curiosity: the tangle of enclaves at Baarle, where the Belgian municipality of Baarle-Hertog consists of more than twenty parcels scattered inside Dutch territory, some of them in turn containing Dutch counter-enclaves. The pattern grew out of medieval land deals between the lords of Breda and the dukes of Brabant from the end of the twelfth century, was frozen by the religious frontier of 1648, and was formalised parcel by parcel after Belgian independence. The Baarle enclaves and Neutral Moresnet would each play a curious role in the First World War.
“Neutral Moresnet, barely three and a half square kilometres, was governed jointly by two powers and belonged fully to neither for more than a century.”
— On a sovereign curiosity of the border
Turning points
- from the 12th c.Politics & Power
The Baarle enclaves take shape
Medieval land deals between the lords of Breda and the dukes of Brabant scattered sovereignty across Baarle, leaving the Belgian Baarle-Hertog as a cluster of enclaves inside the Netherlands, some containing Dutch counter-enclaves.
- 1816–1920Politics & Power
Neutral Moresnet
Unable to agree on ownership of a village and its zinc mine, the powers created Neutral Moresnet, a tiny condominium of about 3.5 square kilometres jointly administered by Prussia and the Netherlands, then Prussia and Belgium, until the Treaty of Versailles awarded it to Belgium.
- 1865Politics & Power
Accession of Leopold II
Leopold II succeeded Leopold I as King of the Belgians, ruling an industrialising kingdom while pursuing his own colonial ambitions in central Africa.
- 1885Colonisation
Foundation of the Congo Free State
After winning recognition at the Berlin Conference, Leopold II proclaimed the Congo Free State as his private possession, a regime whose forced labour and atrocities caused massive loss of life.
See the data - 1908Colonisation
Annexation of the Congo by Belgium
Under international pressure over the atrocities, Leopold II was forced to cede his private colony to the Belgian state, which took it over as the Belgian Congo.
See the data
Figures of the era
Leopold II1835 – 1909
King of the Belgians, sovereign of the Congo Free State
King from 1865, Leopold II ruled a prosperous Belgium but acquired the Congo as a private domain in 1885; the brutal exploitation of the Congo Free State, which killed vast numbers of Africans, forced its transfer to Belgium in 1908 and remains his enduring infamy.
Albert I1875 – 1934
King of the Belgians
Nephew of Leopold II, Albert I came to the throne in 1909 and would soon lead Belgian resistance to the German invasion of 1914, becoming a national hero as the 'Soldier King' on the Yser front.
Chapter sources: Leopold II, king of Belgium, Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, 100 years ago Belgium annexed Europe's second smallest territory (Neutral Moresnet), Eupen-Malmedy (transfer to Belgium under the Treaty of Versailles), Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau: the enclave complex, Belgium: History
Chapter 05 · 1914 – 1945
The Two World Wars and the Gains of Versailles
Twice Germany violated Belgian neutrality and overran the country; out of the first war Belgium gained Eupen-Malmedy and a German-speaking minority of its own.
On 4 August 1914 Germany invaded neutral Belgium to outflank France under the Schlieffen Plan, demanding free passage that King Albert I refused. The German chancellor reportedly dismissed the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgian neutrality as a 'scrap of paper'; for Britain, the violation of that treaty was the trigger for entering the war. The Germans overran almost the whole country, but Belgian forces, falling back behind the river Yser, held a final sliver of unoccupied territory by deliberately flooding the polders in the Battle of the Yser in October 1914. The line stabilised around Ypres, which was reduced to ruins in years of trench warfare, while the rest of Belgium endured a harsh occupation.
The peace settlement rewarded and reshaped Belgium. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ended Belgium's enforced neutrality, abolished the anomaly of Neutral Moresnet, and transferred to Belgium the formerly German districts of Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith. The transfer was confirmed in 1920 after a 'popular consultation' so tightly controlled, only a tiny number of registered objections, that it was derided as a farce, and was ratified by the League of Nations. With these districts Belgium acquired a German-speaking population, the origin of the country's present-day German-speaking Community.
Belgium tried to return to neutrality in the 1930s, but on 10 May 1940 Germany invaded again, this time striking through the Ardennes and overwhelming the Belgian, French and British forces. After eighteen days King Leopold III surrendered the army on 28 May 1940 without consulting his ministers, a decision that triggered a lasting political crisis and would eventually cost him his throne. Belgium again fell under German occupation, during which most of the country's Jews were deported to be murdered, until it was liberated by the Western Allies from September 1944.
“Britain went to war in 1914 over the German chancellor's dismissal of the treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality as a mere 'scrap of paper'.”
— On the violation of Belgian neutrality
Turning points
- 4 Aug 1914War & Rupture
Germany invades neutral Belgium
Executing the Schlieffen Plan, Germany invaded Belgium after King Albert I refused free passage; the violation of the 1839 neutrality treaty, dismissed as a 'scrap of paper', brought Britain into the First World War.
See the data - Oct 1914War & Rupture
The Battle of the Yser
Falling back behind the river Yser, the Belgian army opened the sluices and flooded the polders to halt the German advance, holding a last strip of free Belgium around Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide for the rest of the war.
See the data - 1919–1920Politics & Power
Versailles: Eupen-Malmedy and the end of Moresnet
The Treaty of Versailles ended Belgian neutrality, abolished Neutral Moresnet and transferred Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith from Germany to Belgium, giving the kingdom a German-speaking minority after a much-criticised popular consultation in 1920.
- 10 May 1940War & Rupture
Second German invasion
Germany again invaded neutral Belgium on 10 May 1940, this time thrusting through the Ardennes, and rapidly overwhelmed the defending Belgian, French and British forces.
See the data - 28 May 1940War & Rupture
Surrender of King Leopold III
After eighteen days of fighting Leopold III surrendered the Belgian army without consulting his government, beginning four years of German occupation and a political crisis over the king's conduct.
See the data
Figures of the era
Albert I1875 – 1934
King of the Belgians, the 'Soldier King'
King Albert I personally led the Belgian army's resistance in 1914 and shared the Yser front with his troops, becoming a national hero of the First World War before dying in a mountaineering accident in 1934.
Chapter sources: The Treaty of London, 1839 (primary text), Belgium: History, Eupen-Malmedy (transfer to Belgium under the Treaty of Versailles), 100 years ago Belgium annexed Europe's second smallest territory (Neutral Moresnet), Eupen-et-Malmédy, German Invasion of Western Europe, May 1940
Chapter 06 · 1945 – present
A Federal Kingdom at the Heart of Europe
A founder of European integration and NATO, post-war Belgium remade itself from a unitary state into a federation of language communities and regions.
Post-war Belgium abandoned neutrality and threw itself into Western integration. It joined Britain and France in the 1948 Treaty of Brussels, was a founding member of NATO when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on 4 April 1949, and was one of the six states that launched European integration with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the European Economic Community by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Brussels became the de facto capital of the emerging European Community, and from 1967 the seat of NATO headquarters as well; the Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak was among the foremost architects of both projects. The Belgian Congo, meanwhile, became independent as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960.
At home the deepest fault line was language. The historic divide between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, with bilingual Brussels between them and a small German-speaking area in the east, hardened into politics. In 1962–63 a fixed linguistic frontier was drawn and four language regions established, freezing the boundary between the communities. Tension over language and economic divergence, as the old industrial heartland of Wallonia declined while Flanders rose, repeatedly destabilised national governments.
The response was a gradual federalisation that unmade the unitary state created in 1830. Through successive constitutional reforms from 1970 onward, power was devolved to three Communities (Flemish, French and German-speaking) and three Regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-Capital). The fourth reform of 1993 amended the constitution to declare that 'Belgium is a federal State composed of Communities and Regions', completing the transformation. Belgium today remains a constitutional monarchy and one of the most prosperous and internationally connected states in Europe, even as the relationship between its communities continues to shape its politics.
“Belgium is a federal State composed of Communities and Regions.”
— Article 1 of the Belgian Constitution, as amended in 1993
Turning points
- 4 Apr 1949Politics & Power
- 1951–1957Politics & Power
- 30 Jun 1960Independence
Independence of the Congo
The Belgian Congo became the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo, ending Belgium's central African colony amid turmoil and a swift descent into crisis.
See the data - 1962–1963Politics & Power
The linguistic frontier fixed
Language laws drew a fixed border between Dutch-, French- and German-speaking areas and created four language regions, entrenching the divide between Belgium's communities.
- 1993Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Paul-Henri Spaak1899 – 1972
Statesman, architect of European integration
Repeatedly Belgium's prime and foreign minister, Spaak was a leading founder of Benelux, the European Communities and NATO, serving as the alliance's secretary general, and is counted among the principal architects of post-war Western Europe.
Baudouin1930 – 1993
King of the Belgians
Coming to the throne in 1951 after the abdication of his father Leopold III, Baudouin reigned for over four decades, presiding over the decolonisation of the Congo and the long transformation of Belgium into a federal state.
Chapter sources: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO): Belgium, 75 years of NATO: An Alliance firmly rooted in Belgium, History of the European Union, 1945–59, Belgian Congo, Belgium: History, Eupen-et-Malmédy