Belgium
Historie
On Belgian territory Neanderthal fossils were discovered at Engis and elsewhere, some dating back to at least
100.000 BC.
The earliest Neolithic farming technology of northern Europe, the so-called Linear Pottery culture (55004500 BC),
reached the east of Belgium and is notable for its use of defensive walls around villages.
The Michelsberg culture (44003500 BC) emerges in northeastern France and expands rapidly throughout
central Germany, eastern Belgium, and the southwestern Netherlands.
The Seine-Oise-Marne culture (3100 to 2000 BC) spread into the Ardennes, and is associated with megalithic sites
there, but did not disperse over all of Belgium.
The population of Belgium started to increase permanently with the late Bronze Age from around 1750 BC. Three possibly
related European cultures arrived in sequence. First the Urnfield culture (1300750 BC) arrived. Then, coming into
the Iron Age, the Hallstatt culture (1200 450 BC), and from about 450 BC the La T่ne culture.
In 57 BC, Julius Caesar led the conquest of northern Gaul, and already specified that the part to the north of
the Seine and Marne rivers was inhabited by a people or alliance known as the Belgae. (after whom modern Belgium
is named)
As the Western Roman Empire lost power, Germanic tribes came to dominate the military, and then form kingdoms. Coastal
Flanders, became part of the "Saxon Shore". In inland northern Belgium, Franks were allowed to re-settle
in the 4th century.
Franks remained important in the Roman military, and the Merovingian Dynasty eventually took over northern France.
Clovis I (481-509), the best-known king of this dynasty, first conquered northern France, then turned north to the
Frankish lands later referred to as Austrasia, which included all or most of Belgium.
The Merovingian dynasty was succeeded by the Carolingian dynasty, whose family power base was in and around the
eastern part of modern Belgium. The Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne
as the first Emperor of the Romans in the West. His death in 814 began an extended period of fragmentation of
the Carolingian Empire and decline that would eventually lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France
(with included parts of the County of Flanders) and the Holy Roman Empire.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the cloth industry and commerce boomed especially in the County of Flanders and it
became one of the richest areas in Europe. This prosperity played a role in conflicts between Flanders and the king of
France. Famously, Flemish militias scored a surprise victory at the Battle of the Golden Spurs against a strong
force of mounted knights in 1302, but France soon regained control of the rebellious province.
By 1433 most of the Belgian and Luxembourgish territory along with much of the rest of the Low Countries became part of
Burgundy under Philip the Good.
Born in Belgium, the Habsburg Emperor Charles V (1519 to 1556) was heir of the Burgundians, but also of the
royal families of Austria, Castile and Aragon. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 he gave the
Seventeen Provinces more legitimacy as a stable entity, rather than just a temporary personal union. This comprised
all of Belgium, present-day north-western France, present-day Luxembourg, and present-day Netherlands.
The northern part, comprising seven provinces and eventually forming the Dutch Republic, became increasingly
Protestant (specifically, Calvinist), while the larger part, called 't Hof van Brabant and comprising the
ten southern provinces, remained primarily Catholic.
When Philip II, son of Charles V, ascended the Spanish throne he tried to abolish all Protestantism. Portions
of the Seventeen provinces revolted, eventually resulting in the Eighty Years' War (15681648) between Spain
and the Dutch Republic.
Under Louis XIV (16431715), France pursued an expansionist policy, particularly affecting Belgium. France frequently
held control of territories in the Southern Netherlands, confronted by various opponents including the Netherlands and
Austria.
After the victory of Austria and its allies, under the 1714 Treaty of Rastatt, the Belgian and present-day Luxembourg
territories were transferred to the Austrian Habsburgs, thus forming the Austrian Netherlands (17141797).
Following the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries were annexed by the French First
Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region. A reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the
Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1814, after the abdication of Napoleon.
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution led to the re-separation of the Southern Provinces from the Netherlands and to
the establishment of a Catholic and bourgeois, officially French-speaking and neutral, independent Belgium under
a provisional government and a national congress. Since the installation of Leopold I as king on 21 July 1831,
Belgium has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy.
King Leopold II of Belgium had been the principal shareholder in the Belgian trading company which established
trading stations on the lower Congo between 1879 and 1884. At the Berlin Conference of 18841885 the future
Congo was personally assigned to Leopold, who named the territory the Congo Free State. Leopold's personal
fortune was greatly increased through the proceeds of selling Congolese rubber, which had never previously been
mass-produced in such surplus quantities, to the growing market for tyres.
Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 as part of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France, and much of the Western
Front fighting of World War I occurred in western parts of the country. Belgium assumed control of the German
colonies of Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day Rwanda and Burundi) during the war, and in 1924 the League of Nations
mandated them to Belgium. In the aftermath of the First World War, Belgium annexed the Prussian districts of Eupen and
Malmedy in 1925, thereby causing the presence of a German-speaking minority.
German forces again invaded the country in May 1940, and 40.690 Belgians, over half of them Jews, were killed during
the subsequent occupation and the Holocaust. From September 1944 to February 1945 the Allies liberated Belgium.
After World War II, a general strike forced King Leopold III to abdicate in 1951 in favour of his son,
Prince Baudouin, since many Belgians felt he had collaborated with Germany during the war.
The Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960 during the Congo Crisis; Ruanda-Urundi followed with its independence
two years later.
The successive linguistic disputes have made the successive Belgian governments very unstable. The three major
parties (Liberal -right wing-, Catholic -center- and, Socialist -left wing-) all split in two according to their
French- or Dutch-speaking electorate. A language border was determined by the first Gilson Act of November 8, 1962.
In 1970, there was a state reform, which resulted in the establishment of three cultural communities: the Dutch
Cultural Community, the French Cultural Community and the German Cultural Community. This reform was a
response to the Flemish demand for cultural autonomy. The constitutional revision of 1970 also laid the foundations for
the establishment of three Regions, which was a response to the demand of the Walloons and the French-speaking
inhabitants of Brussels for economic autonomy.
The second state reform took place in 1980, when the cultural communities became Communities. The Communities assumed
the competencies of the cultural communities with regard to cultural matters, and became responsible for the 'matters
relating to the person', such as health and youth policy. From then on, these three Communities were known as the
Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community. Two Regions were established as
well in 1980: the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. However, in Flanders it was decided in 1980 to
immediately merge the institutions of the Community and the Region. Although the creation of a Brussels Region was
provided for in 1970, the Brussels-Capital Region was not established until the third state reform.
Environmental concerns came to a head in the Dioxin affair (1999), bringing down the Belgian government of Jean-Luc
Dehaene's premiership. Since then, the Belgian political landscape has become increasingly politically fragmented;
the notorious 2010 Belgian federal election, it took nearly a year to form a government, in more recent elections
a growing right-wing Flemish nationalist movement has had a strong influence over domestic politics.