Chapter 02 - The Evolution of Belgium

CHAPTER II

THE EVOLUTION OF BELGIUM

THERE is no country in Europe where the old and the new are brought into closer juxtaposition than in Belgium. Perhaps it is due to its compactness, to its manifest limitations in size, that the student seems to find there set out under his eyes for close examination a microcosm of European history - on one side the well-preserved relics, not merely in art, but in social customs, of the Middle Ages, and on the other the fierce activities of this twentieth century. Its civilization might be called a product of Medievalism molded by modern influences. It is scarcely more than a generation of time since Belgium came into her own; yet behind the Revolution of 1830 lay ten centuries of recorded history. There are dark periods in that record when it looked on the surface as if the nationality that owed its name to Caesar had expired ; but a little research suffices to show that below the surface, whatever the ruler's name on the current coin, there survived the pride of race which is the surest foundation of independence, and that in the darkest hours of subjugation the cities and the provinces of Belgium knew how to retain, or if lost for brief periods to recover, their civic and constitutional privileges. To those who admire the display of courage and fortitude under difficulties, the tenacity of the Belgians throughout their chequered history should survive as a model of an arduous fight for all that men hold most dear may be won in the teeth of adversity and against seemingly hopeless odds.

Belgium is divided into nine provinces. Each of their names recalls, and indeed represents, the oldest and most famous titles on the roll of European chivalry. They are (1 and 2) Flanders (now divided into East and West to separate the spheres of Ghent and Bruges, rival though, as the poet Ledeganck well called them, "Sister Cities") which is but the countdom created by Charlemagne, oldest of hereditary titles, the holder of which stood first among the Twelve Peers of the ancient kingdom of France ;

(3) Hainaut, another countdom little junior to its neighbor, and known to every English schoolboy as the home of the good Queen Philippa, savior of the citizens of Calais;

(4) Brabant, a Duchy from the ninth century, whose dukes were long regarded as the mirror of Western chivalry;

(5) Limburg, another Duchy, connected with the House of Geuldres, of which the famous Egmont was a scion;

(6) Luxemburg, the countdom of the illustrious blind King of Bohemia, killed at Crecy;

(7) Antwerp, a Marquisate held by the sage Godfrey of Bouillon, Lord and Protector of Jerusalem;

(8) Namur, a countdom once possessed by the Courtenay family, Emperors of the East; and

(9) Liege, the seat of a long line of prince bishops, who held their own for a thousand years among emperors and kings.

These provinces remain as separate entities, each preserving the crest and coat of arms borne by their feudal owners, but are all now merged in the modern constitutional Kingdom of Belgium. Before passing on it may interest the inquiring reader to state that the seven hereditary titles just recapitulated belong by descent to the Emperor of Austria, as Head of the Houses of Hapsburg and Burgundy; but it is the present practice in Belgium to call the heir apparent Duke of Brabant, his brother, the Count of Flanders, and if the Duke of Brabant should chance to have a son in the King's lifetime, he is called the Count of Hainaut. Better proof could scarcely be furnished as to Belgium love for antiquity.

Side by side with the feudal dignities of which we have been speaking there sprang up in Belgium another institution that is scarcely less ancient than they are. The civic dignities won by the people themselves are almost as old as those conferred by Emperor and King. In the year 960 cloth markets were recognized by law at Ghent, Courtrai, and Ypres; and in 1068 the city of Grammont received the first charter granted by any of the Counts to the people of the towns. This charter established a new law for the citizens, making them secure against the tyranny of Feudal and Clerical Courts. It will be interesting to trace the development of civic liberty in the history of the great cities. For the purpose of this general survey it is only necessary to note that the ancient glories of Belgium are as much civic and communal as noble, feudal, and chivalric. It was from Flanders that England borrowed her own civic institutions. The order of the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Jury, the great City Companies, the social splendors of the Guildhall, the excellent system of apprenticeship, were all based on the Flemish model, and originated in English emulation of Belgian prosperity and enterprise. The connection and resemblance are all closer because there as in Belgium civic magnificence and independence were regarded as entirely independent of and separate from the State and political power.

In the fourteenth century James van Artevelde sought to convert the Communes into a solid political confederacy. The attempt was renewed by his son Philip, but they both failed of success. The citizens did not want political influence or to be troubled about high affairs of State. They desired local liberty and freedom to attend to their own business. For external questions they were content that the Counts of Flanders should have their own way, and they were willing to provide them even generously with subsidies for the purpose. But this was always on the assumption that the civic privileges remained intact, and when Ghent incurred, at the hands of the Emperor Charles V, the humiliation which its insolence fully deserved, the rights and statutes of the other cities remained undisturbed.

The influence of these civic traditions has not disappeared from Belgian life today. The Belgian describes himself by the name of his city rather than by his country, and if he happens to be of Brussels, he will even be so precise as to cite the name of his commune. For instance, it is quite usual to hear a person reply, instead of "I am a native of Brussels," "I am of Scserbeek," or "I am of Ixelles." The explanation of this local pride is to be found in the fact that whereas the Belgian sometimes lost his country, he never lost his commune, and that he also found consolation in local liberty for the loss of national independence.

There is no doubt that Belgian life and character were greatly modified by the events of the sixteenth century. It does not seem an exaggeration to say that from the time of the Arteveldes to the abdication of Charles V the Belgian provinces formed the richest state in Europe. When that Emperor was chatting and joking with his rival, Francis I, he boasted not of his Indian argosies, but of his Flemish possessions. "I could put your Paris in my Gand," punning on the word "gant" or glove. Belgian prosperity was greatly diminished during the troubled reign of Philip II, but the emigration of the weavers to England and Holland dealt a ruder and more lasting blow than the executions ordered by the Blood Council. The emigrants not merely impoverished the country they quitted, but they enriched that which they made their new home, by bringing to its industry the methods devised by their own skill and experience.

After the sixteenth century, then, Belgian prosperity declined, and the life of the nation passed under a cloud which was not dispelled until the country acquired its independence three centuries later. It declined not merely in itself, but by comparison with the increased prosperity of its neighbors. In Bruges and Ghent, once the centers of world-wide activity, grass grew in the stone-flagged streets. Antwerp fared no better, for its trade was strangled by the Dutch who closed the Scheldt, and got the Powers to endorse the closure by a long succession of treaties. Trading ships could not get into or out of Antwerp because the door of the port was shut and barred. Nor had Belgium to struggle only against Dutch jealousy. When the Emperor Charles VI took up the development of his Belgian provinces, and endeavored to make Ostend the base of a trade with India, he roused the apprehensions of England, whose price for assenting to the Pragmatic Sanction in favor of the succession of his daughter, Maria Theresa, was the cancelling of the Charter of the Ostend Company. In interesting himself in colonial matters like that of the Congo the late King Leopold II took up the thread that was dropped in 1731.

The self-repression, and even suspended national vitality, to which the Belgians found themselves consigned after the Treaty of Munster, served to intensify the feeling that they had to live a life apart from their rulers, and that in the careful preservation of inherited custom they had the sole means of showing that they were still a nation. To the neglect of their foreign rulers were long added the horrors of the wars waged by rival nations on their soil. In the seventy years that closed with the Treaty of Utrecht, scarcely a city escaped pillage once if not twice, many thousands of soldiers had to be fed, the most sanguinary battles of the period were fought in Belgium. War was a curse, all the greater because peace brought no blessing.

Despite the rude trials of this long period of adversity the Belgians clung to their own way of living, and carried on the national traditions notwithstanding the presence of foreign hosts and indifferent rulers. When Villeroi, in 1895, laid half Brussels in ashes, and its civic life seemed ended with the destruction of the Hotel de Ville and Guild houses on the Grande Place, the citizens, regardless of international storms sweeping across the country, set themselves to the task of reconstructing what they loved with patience and persistency. Twenty years after the bombardment the Grande Place had resumed its normal appearance; the Austrian rulers, on assuming the government of the country, found the civic life of the capital full of vigor. It took the Austrians imbued with the spirit of absolutism a generation to discover that the subject people, of whose very existence the Imperial Chancery affected to be ignorant, had a constitution of their own. The Count de Neny, Austrian by service but Irish in blood, reported to his sovereign, "These people have a constitution," and the English traveler, Shaw, declared the Belgians to be "the freest people on the continent of Europe."

It is necessary to remember these things if we are to understand how it was that the Belgians so easily, and as it were naturally, made for themselves a new constitution and system of government in 1830. They had merely to borrow from the old charters the ordinances that had prescribed the freedom of the people from the times of the Baldwins of Flanders and Wenceslas of Brabant. The Belgian Revolution did not introduce a new system, it merely revived and nationalized what had already been cherished as its ideal by the Belgian people under every form of foreign tyranny. There was greater difficulty in providing for the future than in extracting wisdom from the past.

For after Belgium had achieved her independence she was confronted with the necessity of adapting herself to the conditions of her new life. The old system to which under foreign tyranny she had clung, had totally disappeared from Western Europe; there remained the problem how would she adapt herself to the new exigencies of an age of mechanical development and social upheaval? It must be recorded that under the influence of her recent emancipation Belgium succumbed to modern influences. Veneration for the past was superseded by the need of providing for the future. An entirely new Belgium came into evidence. The intense conservatism of the people was modified by the struggle of life, now that it had become a matter of national existence. One common trait connected the men of the two epochs - the capacity for work. At all periods of his history the Belgian has been a hard worker - "Give me a Walloon for honest work," said a German manufacturer of Gladbach recently to the present writer. Before 1830 the Belgian worked under adverse circumstances, after that year he worked with hope. In the wake of work has come unexampled prosperity, and that explains why the Belgian character and mode of life have been modified of recent years.

When its industry was strangled in the sixteenth century, Belgium became essentially an agricultural country, and this remained the state of things until long after Waterloo. To the Dutch King William, I belongs, indeed, the credit of having initiated the industrial activity which is the characteristic feature of modern Belgium by associating himself with the Englishman, John Cockerill, in founding the great enterprise at Seraing. But it was not until after the substitution of national for Dutch rule that the coal mines of Hainaut and Liege were exploited to any extent. The introduction of railways in 1835 rendered a supply of home-produced coal necessary, and about the same time that the Hainaut coal-fields were brought into full activity the extensive iron-field between the Sambre and Meuse was discovered and turned to profit. The foundries of Charleroi and Seraing were thus provided with all they needed for immediate activity and future development.

The achievement of national independence was thus followed by a great outburst of industrial and mechanical activity which enormously increased the wealth of the country. The provinces continued the intensive agricultural production which had for centuries kept the people from starving when their land was overrun by foreign soldiers. But the towns, and especially those in the valleys of the Meuse and the Sambre. emerged from a provincial stage and became the head centers of the new national activity. The aspect of the country completely changed. Its rural character was modified and encroached upon by the excavation of mines and quarries, and the erection of factories. Those who knew Belgium at the time of the French Revolution, when much of it was virgin forest, would not have known it fifty years later when the State had executed the plan of main railways devised in 1835.

The change was not confined to the external aspect of the country. Increased prosperity altered the character of the people. The necessity of thinking out and carrying out a national policy introduced new views and stimulated larger ideas. Misfortune had made the Belgian secretive and reserved. The centuries of foreign subjection had taught him the wisdom of caution, and those who are always cautious must in the end become more timid. As a nation, the Belgians of the old days sought to efface themselves; and they succeeded in their object so well that no foreign observer, after the close of the Burgundian period, can be found who attempted to diagnose their character or to treat them seriously as a people differing in essential points from all their neighbors. A few writers during the Austrian occupation refer to "the good Belgians" as "humble, meek, and subservient." That was before the Brabant revolution which temporarily ended Austria's domination, but it would have been far nearer the truth to have selected as their chief national characteristic long-suffering pride. They might be imagined as apostrophising Fate in words like these: "Do your worst. You cannot make us suffer more than we have suffered; yet we survive!"

As great a change as has passed over the face of the country has modified and moulded anew the Belgian character. Prosperity, the remarkable national success, the feeling of independence have dispelled the timidity that used to color all the views of the Belgians. Those who described them as loath to accept responsibility and fearful of their capacity to retain what they have won are thinking of men of the last generation and not of the present day. Quiet but none the less resolute self-confidence is the basis of public opinion among Walloons and Flemings alike. The qualities that enable nations to bear adversity are not always those most suited for prosperity. Self-restraint, the suppression of natural emotion when withholding influence disappears, may easily become arrogance, and desire to browbeat those identified with former oppression may prove irresistible. But in the case of Belgium two circumstances have counteracted this natural revolution from one extreme to the other. There is the limitation to Belgian sovereignty in the imposition of permanent neutrality by the Treaty Powers which seemed to carry with it the assumption that Europe had recognized Belgium to a certain extent "on probation." It is scarcely necessary to say that that phase of her national life passed away long ago. Belgium can more or less work out her own destiny.

The second restraining circumstances is of a material order. To meet the increased financial burden imposed by the task of preserving what has been won under such difficult and perilous conditions attention has had to be concentrated on the development of the country's resources. All the greater effort has been needed because its population has increased at a greater rate than in any other part of Europe. With so much at stake, with such constant and continuous demands on the administrative and intellectual faculties of the nation, it is not surprising that the Belgian character has become one of an essentially practical order, and that it recognizes only the proved facts of the day.

Source:  Boulger, Demetrius C. Belgium. Detroit: Published for the Bay View Reading Club, 1913. Print.

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