Belgium has disolved! Dutch half has declared independance!!

[TCO]

Insert Watcher troll...

[Adalbertus]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
So why did northern Belgium go with Belgium instead of the Netherlands in the 19th century?

In ye goode olde tymes (before the 1477), what now is Belgium and Netherlands were part of the Holy Roman Empire (HRR), and to a greater part ruled by the dukes of Burgundy. After the fall of the house of Burgundy, the Burgundian possessions were split and fell to a greater part to the husband of Charles the Bold's daughter Maria, Maximilan von Habsburg. Their eldest son Philipp inherited the region, and also became King of Spain (split "Austrian Habsburgians" and "Spanish Habsburgians") - the region remained part of the HRR.

Until that time, the Netherlands wasn't so much a political but a somewhat unprecise geographical term, which also included more or less what is now Rhenania in Germany.
One should also note that languages weren't an issue in defining empires - at that time, there were at least three major languages spoken in the HRR - German, French, and Italian (Dutch was considered a German dialect until around 1900 - and the formation of a "standard German" was a process which took place between the 16th and 18th century).


So, around 1580, the wealty Netherlands (in historic terms) was extremely discontent with the rule of the spanish kings, and uprisings soon became a civil war, which later became part of the Thirty Years' war (in the Netherlands, this is still the Eighty Years' war). In the end the region was split into an independent (also from the HRR) and mostly protestant North and a spanish and catholic South which still was in the (after 1948 considerably smaller) HRR. The language border between German/Dutch and French was inside the southern Part.

The next major change came during the French Revolutionary Wars. After the dust has settled in the Congress of Vienna, the South was united with the North. During the time between, some cultural and religious differences have been developped, which were completely neglected by the centralist government. In this 19th century context, language as well as religion played a role.

In the result, there was a revolution in 1830, which formed Belgium as we know it now (for most of it).