Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of Belgium

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Located in Northern Europe, along the Atlantic coast, is the relatively small nation of Belgium.  Belgium is like other countries in most ways, but its history and founding are very different from those of its neighbors.  How it was founded had important implications for all over Europe and may still impact the country's future.  Learn more about the history of Belgium, how and why it was formed, and what its future may hold on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Located in Northern Europe along the Atlantic coast is the relatively small nation of Belgium. Belgium is like other countries in most ways, but its history and founding are very different from those of its neighbors. How it was found that had important implications for all of Europe and may still have importance in the country's future. Learn more about the history of Belgium, how and why it was formed and what its future may hold on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Many countries in Europe can trace their origins back hundreds of years. They have some sort of ethnic or linguistic. commonality that unifies them and is the basis for them being a country. Belgium is not such a country. Why, Belgium has a unique history. It isn't the same kind of history as other countries.

In fact, for centuries, there was really no such place as Belgium. To understand the history of Belgium, we have to go way back to ancient Rome. One of the tribes that Julius Caesar conquered was known as the Belgi. They lived roughly in the area of what is today, Belgium. These people were Celtic, and for the most part, not the direct ancestors of the people that live in Belgium today. Much of modern-day Belgium was part of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Germanic tribes, particularly the Franks, invaded and settled in the region. What is today, Belgium, was never really its own entity.

It was either part of some larger state or subdivided into autonomous units. In 843, in the Treaty of Verdun, the Carolingian Empire was split into three parts, placing what is Belgium into the region of Middle Francia and later West Francia. The land later became part of the Kingdom of Lothorindia. From 1384 to 1482, the region, along with Luxembourg, became part of the Duchy of Burgundy, which united the region under a single ruler. In 1482, the region along with the Netherlands became part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was then controlled by the House Hapsburg. And this region became known as the Spanish Netherlands. After the 80-year war, what was called the Northern provinces achieved independence from Spain

and became the United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the Dutch Republic. The southern provinces, which were most of what is today Belgium, remained under Spanish control. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht assigned the Spanish Netherlands to the Austrian Hapsburgs, creating the Austrian Netherlands. And finally, in 1794, after the French Revolution, the area was incorporated into the French Republic, and then it was part of the French Empire under Napoleon. Now, I'm actually rushing through a whole bunch of really important history here, but it's all a build-up to get to the point where modern Belgium becomes a thing. What you need to take away from all of the history prior to the 19th century,

is that there was never a thing called Belgium at any point. The areas that compromise Belgium were divided and unified under various kingdoms and empires for centuries. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated and the European powers met at the Congress of Vienna to decide the fate of post-Napoleonic Europe. The powers that be decided to put what is today Belgium with what is today the Netherlands in the kingdom of the Netherlands under King William I of Orange. The marriage of what was now known as the southern provinces of the Netherlands to the northern provinces wasn't one that people of the southern provinces wanted. The southern provinces consisted of two primary regions, Flanders and Wallonia. The people of Flanders spoke a Dutch dialect known as Flemish, and the people of Wallonia spoke French. However, what they both had in common was that they were predominantly Catholic, whereas

the northern provinces of the Netherlands were predominantly Protestant. The king and all of the important officials in the new country were Protestant, but the majority of the kingdom's population was Catholic. The king mandated that Catholic schools in the South stopped teaching Catholicism, and the French-speaking Wallonians were upset that the only official language of the government was Dutch. In addition, most of the seats in the National Legislature were held by people in the North, even though the South was industrializing faster and was more prosperous. This, unsurprisingly, led to unrest in the southern provinces. In 1830, a revolution broke out in France, known as the July Revolution, it overthrew the Burbon King, Carl's 10th, and replaced him with Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orlean.

Inspired by the events in France, it spurred the Belgians to overthrow their rulers. The Belgian Revolution began on August 25, 1830. The start of the Revolution was a very specific event. It began at an opera house in Brussels during a performance of Lerner, Lamuette de Portici, or the mute girl from Portici, an opera by the French composer Daniel Aubur. The opera is a romantic and political drama set in 17th century Naples during the Spanish occupation. The opera's dramatic portrayal of revolution in the fight for freedom stirred nationalistic sentiments amongst the audience. The final act of the opera culminates in a popular

uprising. The opera's final aria, Amour Sack de la Patri, or Sacred Love of the Fatherland, led to raucous applause in the theater and resulted in the energized crowd of French and Flemish-speaking elites to spill out into the streets of Brussels. Once on the streets, the crowd grew and they began singing patriotic songs. The crowd turned violent,

and after that night, it began to spread to other cities in Belgium starting a full-scale revolution. On October 4th, a provisional government declared the independence of the nation of Belgium from the Netherlands. On December 20th, the London Conference convened,

with five major European powers. Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia. The purpose of the conference was to determine what to do with Belgium. And you should pay note to the five countries that were in attendance. Those five countries that determined the fate of Belgium were the same five major belligerent powers of the First World War. While the London conference was debating Belgium's fate in the first months of 1831, a national Congress in Belgium was convened to create a new conference.

Constitution, which was adopted on February 7th. The European powers at the London Conference supported the idea of Belgian independence, which of course did not sit well with the Dutch. In June of 1831, the conference proposed what became known as the Treaty of 18 Articles, which they hoped that Belgium and the Netherlands would sign. Much of what the London Conference decided, however, was actually just in the best interest of the European powers. Needless to say, the Dutch rejected the treaty and attempted a military invasion of Belgium

in August. Known as the 10 Days campaign, it was an attempt by the Dutch King William I to bring Belgium back into the fold. However, the Belgians, with assistance from the French, beat back the invasion. There were several major points that the European powers agreed to that would be part of the creation of Belgium as a country. The first is that the territory of Belgium would consist of the southern provinces as of 1790. This meant that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg wound up losing two-thirds of its territory. At the time, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands were in personal union as they had the same person as a monarch. The second thing they determined was that Belgium would be a monarchy, not a republic.

And this was no surprise, as all of the countries represented at the London Conference were monarchies. And the French Revolution was still fresh in everyone's mind. The British Foreign Secretary and representative to the conference, Lord Palmerston, initially wanted William Prince of Orange to become the King of Belgium. He was the heir apparent to the Dutch crown and the future King William II of the Netherlands. However, this idea was shot down by William I and by the French. None of the other powers wanted a French ruler in Belgium given the previous French involvement in the region. Palmerston's next choice was Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg,

a German. All of the conference attendees accepted this choice, and in July 21st, 1831, Leopold I was inaugurated as the first king of the Belgians. The other major point to come out of the London conference was that Belgium would be neutral. Each of the major powers pledged to protect Belgium's neutrality. Belgium served as a sort of buffer between France and Germany, so the hope was that a neutral Belgium could help avoid future conflicts. The Netherlands didn't accept the treaty or an independent Belgium, but eventually in 1839 they did sign a new treaty of London, which finalized the border between the Netherlands and Belgium, and finally gave an independent Belgium recognition from the Netherlands.

For the rest of the 19th century, Belgium had the good fortune of having a major source of coal, which allowed for rapid industrialization. At the same time, their neutrality kept them out of conflict such as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the Belgian Congo. King Leopold II established a colony in Africa in the late 19th century, which was 80 times larger than the size of Belgium itself. The Belgian Congo will be the subject of a future episode, as it was the site of some of the most horrific events during the entire European colonization of the continent. Fast forward to 1914, when the 1831 Treaty of 18 articles suddenly became extremely important.

The European powers that had come together decades before to establish Belgium and had pledged to protect its neutrality had now begun to choose sides in preparation for a future conflict. If you remember back to a previous episode, the Germans had a plan in their back pocket for decades known as the Schleifen plan. The Schlefen Plan was a plan for an invasion of France by Germany, which involved going through neutral Belgium. When Germany invaded Belgium and violated its neutrality, this was used as the reason for Britain's entry into the war. Belgium, despite having done nothing to provoke an attack, suffered more than almost any other country during the country. conflict. The German government, for its part, described Belgium neutrality as nothing more than a, quote, scrap of paper. After the war, Belgium found its economy devastated, not just because of the destruction from the war, but also because Germany had taken much of its heavy machinery.

Much of the German reparations after the war were earmarked for Belgium, and they also received some territory from Germany as well. Belgium repositioned itself as neutral in 1936, but just as in the First World War, it did not prevent another German invasion. King Leopold III surrendered to the Germans and was held in captivity for the entire war, even meeting with Adolf Hitler. There was a question of what to do with him after the war, and a referendum was held on his return in 1950. He won the referendum, but the vote showed some dramatic divisions in the country. French-speaking Wallonia voted against Leopold with 58% against. Flemish-speaking Flanders voted in favor of Leopold, and holds return by 70% and French-speaking Brussels, which is in the middle of Flanders, voted 51%

for his removal. He was restored as king but eventually abdicated in 1956. In the post-war world, Belgium found itself in a unique position. It had a central location in Western Europe and a tradition of neutrality then went back over a century. Both of these facts played a part in Belgium and Brussels in particular, becoming the location of the headquarters for NATO. and of the European Parliament. Some people, however, are questioning Belgium's future. The country was founded based on a shared religion between Flanders and Wallonia. However, the differences between the two regions have grown over time.

Belgium recently went 16 months without being able to form a government. The political lines were largely between Flanders and Wallonia. Much of the problem stems from the differences in population and economics and representation in government. There are some in the country that are actually calling for independence for Flanders and Wallonia. One of the biggest sticking points, if such a breakup were to occur, would be the status of Brussels. Brussels is a predominantly French-speaking city, like Wallonia, but it is completely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders. Belgium is unique amongst the countries of Europe and indeed the world.

It was created as the result of an international conference, and the terms laid down by that conference, although no one could have possibly predicted it at the time, ended up becoming the grounds for one of the greatest wars in history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. Today's rather lengthy review comes from listener Mazu Matt over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, An Amazing Pod.

I've been listening to this podcast for a long time now, and while I'm not in the Completionist Club yet, I hope to be soon. It's become common practice for me to play several shows back to back while on long car trips with my family. My kids are hooked and will ask me to play everything everywhere daily on the brief commute to school each morning. We have all enjoyed expanding our love of learning through these short podcasts every day. We recently got back from a Caribbean cruise. While in the cruise, one of our family's favorite activities was taking part in the theme trivia events hosted several times each day. But we were never any good at most of them due to the very niche trivia categories.

We still enjoyed it. We noticed that one man in particular seemed to have an extensive amount of knowledge on pretty much everything as he was routinely in the winter circle. When the time came for the general trivia, we felt like it might be our best chance to dethrone Darren from Dallas. As the questions were asked to the participants, I was able to impress my wife and kids with my understanding of the elements, New Zealand history, the Acadian expulsion, and much more. We did very well in the event and actually ended up going head to head with Darren and the tiebreaker. Lucky for us, I had recently listened to Gary's show on snow and knew that the record for the world's largest snowflake was in fact 15 inches. Thank you, Gary, for sharing your knowledge and love of learning with my family and me.

It made our long and short car rides much more enjoyable, and we now have a cheap plastic trophy of a cruise ship to display in our house. And do Darren from Dallas? Well played, sir. See you on the next cruise. I hope to be in the Completionist Club by then. Well, thanks, Matt. It just goes to show that you never know when having a broad base of general knowledge is going to come in handy. Remember that if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.