In the greater scheme of things, Belgium is a political newcomer to Europe. From its earliest history, the region known today as Belgium has been tied politically to the Dutch in the north and has borrowed culture from both the French, Dutch and German. Today, Belgium is a state consisting of citizens from these three national groups, a fact that is enshrined in the Belgian constitution which sets the kingdom up as a federated union of the three communities.
The Low Countries were first united politically by the House of Burgundy as the Burgundian Netherlands. In the 15th century, the provinces of the Burgundian Netherlands became the United Provinces of the Netherlands. However, from 1568 to 1648, the Eighty Years' War resulted in the creation of the United Provinces in what is today the Netherlands and the Southern Netherlands in what is today Belgium and Luxembourg. The Southern Netherlands were ruled by the Hapsburgs alternately from either their Spanish or their Austrian thrones. (Because of this, the Southern Netherlands were also variously known as either "Spanish Netherlands" or "Austrian Netherlands." Threatened by the power of the Hapsburgs, the French entered into the political scene as they consistently attempted to diminish the Hapsburg hold over a region that the French believed was rightly theirs (the first Frankish kingdoms of the Merovingians and the Carolingians were centered in Belgium). As a result, Belgium saw many invasions by the French. French influence in the Low Countries increased dramatically following the French Revolution and the imperial policies of Napaleon Bonaparte. The Branbantine Revolution of 1789 - during which the Belgians first rose up against the Hapsburgs in the Netherlands - was directly influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. However, the revolt failed and the Southern Netherlands remained in Hapsburg hands. Following the defeat of Napolean, the realignment of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 placed autonomous Southern Netherlands under the direct political control of Amsterdam under the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Political unrest simmered for 15 years until the Belgians once again rose up against the Dutch Hapsburgs. This time they succeeded and the Belgians declared their own independence and parliament in 1830. A year later, the Belgians chose to accept Leopold of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha - the up-and-coming "new royalty" of Europe - as their king.
During the 1789 uprising against the Hapsburgs, the Belgians rallied under a banner that was the prototype of the modern Belgian flag. This flag was a horizontal banner of red, black and yellow taken from the colors of Brabant from which a regiment of revoutionary guards came. Following the uprising's failure, the flag was strictly banned by Dutch authorities until the 1830 uprising. At this time, an alternative version of the flag, horizontal red, yellow, and black stripes appeared all over Belgium. After the creation of the modern Belgian state, the colors were altered vertically in honor of the French flag and the role that French revolutionary ideals played in the Belgian struggle for independence. The constitution of the new state implied that the order of the colors should be red, yellow,and black. However, that order never caught on and the reverse order has always been used. The Constitution also dictated that an unusual proportion of 13:15 should be used. Though these dimensions are the official size of the flag, used primarily by the king and parliament, the more popular size of 2:3 is used virtually exclusively by the citizenry and predominantly by most of the ministry offices of the government. |
