History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 246

Following the defeat of Napoleon by a coalition of European powers (the decisive
Battle of Waterloo was fought on Belgian soil), the Congress of Vienna (1815) joined
the southern “Belgian” provinces with the northern provinces to create the united
Kingdom of the Netherlands. This union soon foundered, however, because of
profound religious, socioeconomic, and political differences between the Flemings and
Walloons, on the one hand, and the Dutch of the northern provinces on the other.
A secessionist movement erupted in Brussels in August 1830 and soon spread quickly
throughout Flanders and Wallonia. The revolution was led primarily by the
bourgeoisie, which in Flanders as well as Wallonia was French-speaking and
enamoured of all things French. After dissolving the political union with the
Netherlands, the new kingdom of Belgium adopted French as its official language.
This move inaugurated a period during which Flemish culture and Dutch language
were reduced to second-class status, and during which Flemings increasingly
resented being subordinated to an officially francophone public environment.
Francophone Wallonia was assured a dominant political and social position in the
state, since it was in that region that Belgium’s rapid industrialization during the early
nineteenth century was concentrated. In Flanders, meanwhile, the bourgeoisie and
upper strata continued to speak French, leaving only the devoutly religious rural
inhabitants to preserve a traditional way of life that included use of the Flemish
dialects of Dutch. By mid-century, Flanders was further impoverished by a famine
caused by the failure of the potato crop (1847–50) and the decline of the linen industry
for which the region had been famous since the Middle Ages. The declining status of
Flanders was in part alleviated by a national revival during which standard Dutch
(instead of Flemish dialects) was adopted as a literary language (1844) and writers
became engaged in a literary movement that inspired a new sense of pride in Flemish
culture and identity during the decades before World War I.
In 1914 Germany invaded Belgium and occupied the country for the next four years.
On the one hand, the initial Belgian resistance and the occupation won the country
great sympathy in international circles. On the other hand, the country suffered
considerable material damage and human losses (more than 80,000 lives) as well as
new friction with the Flemings, whose leaders claimed that many of their own soldiers
had died in combat as a resu