A Short History of Belgium

The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, where one finds the genius of two races – the Romance and the Germanic – mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively Belgian. It is in that very receptivity – the fact that it has absorbed and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization – that the originality of the Belgian national culture resides. These distinctive marks of national culture, denoting the unity of a people, and serving, both in the Middle Ages and today, to distinguish the Belgian nation from the other nations of Europe, may be described as a common desire for independence and freedom, a jealous regard for those popular rights which serve as a guaranty of the continuance of independence and freedom, and a deeply religious spirit. In the course of their history the Belgians have always cast off the yoke of those princes who, like Philip II, Joseph II, and William I of Holland, attacked their liberties and privileges, or who, like Joseph II and William I of Holland, tried to impose their own religious beliefs on them.
The history of Belgium may be divided into the following periods: (1) the formative period, including the time of the Roman occupation, the invasion of the Franks, and the reign of Charles the Great and his immediate heirs (57 B.C. to 843 A.D.); (2) the period of feudalism; (3) the rise of the communes (eleventh to fourteenth century); (4) the political centralization of the dukes of Burgundy (fifteenth century); (5) the Spanish rule (sixteenth to seventeenth century); (6) the Austrian rule (eighteenth century); (7) the French régime (1792-1815); (8) the Dutch rule and the revolution of 1830; (9) the period of national independence.