The author of the Geocurrents article comes across to me as (like most non-Belgian commentators and, for all I know, many Belgian ones) someone who has only a superficial knowledge of the pre-1830 history of what became Belgium – and, as usual, totally fails to explain why the country has split along a fault-line that corresponds to nothing in the political history of the area before the 20th century.
As I understand it, the use of “Belgian” in roughly its current sense goes back to the rebellion against the attempted reforms of Joseph II in the 1780s, and a sense of common identity among at least the (admittedly almost entirely Francophone) aristocracy of the southern Netherlands, as against their French and Dutch neighbours at least as much as their Hapsburg rulers, is evident back to the early 17th century – and, on somewhat wider boundaries, to the 15th century or even before.
The author of the Geocurrents article comes across to me as (like most non-Belgian commentators and, for all I know, many Belgian ones) someone who has only a superficial knowledge of the pre-1830 history of what became Belgium – and, as usual, totally fails to explain why the country has split along a fault-line that corresponds to nothing in the political history of the area before the 20th century.
As I understand it, the use of “Belgian” in roughly its current sense goes back to the rebellion against the attempted reforms of Joseph II in the 1780s, and a sense of common identity among at least the (admittedly almost entirely Francophone) aristocracy of the southern Netherlands, as against their French and Dutch neighbours at least as much as their Hapsburg rulers, is evident back to the early 17th century – and, on somewhat wider boundaries, to the 15th century or even before.