Southern Netherlands
| History of Belgium |
|---|
 |
The Southern Netherlands,[note 1] also called the Catholic Netherlands, were the parts of the Low Countries belonging to the Holy Roman Empire which were at first largely controlled by Habsburg Spain (Spanish Netherlands, 1556–1714) and later by the Austrian Habsburgs (Austrian Netherlands, 1714–1794) until occupied and annexed by Revolutionary France (1794–1815).
The region also included a number of smaller states that were never ruled by Spain or Austria: the
Note that 'Upper Guelders' (south of the main area of Guelders in Netherlands, and east of the Duchy of Brabant, in light yellow) was mistakenly left white on this map!
The Southern Netherlands comprised most of modern-day Belgium and Luxembourg, small parts of the modern Netherlands and Germany (the Upper Guelders region, as well as the Bitburg area in Germany, then part of Luxembourg), in addition to (until 1678) most of the present Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, and Longwy area in northern France. The (southern) Upper Guelders region consisted of what is now divided between Germany and the modern Dutch Province of Limburg (in 1713 largely ceded to Prussia).
Place in the broader Netherlands
As they were very wealthy, the Netherlands in general were an important territory of the Habsburg crown which also ruled Spain and Austria among other places. But unlike the other Habsburg dominions, they were led by a merchant class. It was the merchant economy which made them wealthy, and the Habsburg attempts at increasing taxation to finance their wars[note 2] was a major factor in the Dutch (merchants') efforts to defend their privileges. This, added to resistance to penal laws enforced by the Habsburg monarchy that made heresy a capital crime, led to a general rebellion of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule towards 1570 (protests and hostilities started the Dutch Eighty Years' War for independence c. 1566–1568). Although the northern seven provinces, led by Holland and Zeeland, established their independence as the United Provinces after 1581, the ten southern Netherlands were reconquered by the Spanish general Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. Liège, Stavelot-Malmédy and Bouillon maintained their independence.
The Habsburg Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs after the
In 1830 the predominantly Roman Catholic southern half became independent as the
Spanish Netherlands
The
When part of the Netherlands separated from Spanish rule and became the United Provinces in 1581 the remainder of the area became known as the Spanish Netherlands and remained under Spanish control. This region comprised modern Belgium, Luxembourg as well as part of northern France.
The Spanish Netherlands originally consisted of:
- County of Flanders, including Walloon Flanders
- County of Artois
- City of Tournai
- Nord and the northern half of Pas-de-Calaisin modern France)
- Duchy of Luxembourg
- Duchy of Limburg
- County of Hainaut
- County of Namur
- Lordship of Mechelen[note 3] (officially a county since 1490)
- Duchy of Brabant, including the Margraviate of Antwerp
- the )
The capital,
The failing wars intended to regain the 'heretical' northern Netherlands meant significant loss of (still mainly Catholic) territories in the north, which was consolidated in 1648 in the Peace of Westphalia, and given the peculiar, inferior status of Generality Lands (jointly ruled by the United Republic, not admitted as member provinces): Zeelandic Flanders (south of the river Scheldt), the present Dutch province of North Brabant and Maastricht (in the present Dutch province of Limburg).
As Spanish power waned in the latter decades of the 17th century, the territory of the Spanish Netherlands was repeatedly invaded by the French and an increasing portion of the territory came under French control in successive wars. By the
Austrian Netherlands
Under the Treaty of Rastatt (1714), following the War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria and thus became known as the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium Austriacum. However, the Austrians themselves generally had little interest in the region (aside from a short-lived attempt by Emperor Charles VI to compete with British and Dutch trade through the Ostend Company), and the fortresses along the border (the Barrier Fortresses) were, by treaty, garrisoned with Dutch troops. The area had, in fact, been given to Austria largely at British and Dutch insistence, as these powers feared potential French domination of the region.
Throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century, the principal foreign policy goal of the
In 1784, its ruler, Emperor Joseph II, took up the long-standing grudge of Antwerp, whose once-flourishing trade was destroyed by the permanent closing of the Scheldt, and he demanded for the Dutch Republic to open the river to navigation. However, his stance was far from militant, and he called off hostilities after the so-called Kettle War, so called because its only "casualty" was a kettle. Though Joseph secured in the 1785 Treaty of Fontainebleau that the territory's rulers would be compensated by the Dutch Republic for the continued closing the Scheldt, this failed to gain him much popularity.
The people of the Austrian Netherlands rebelled against Austria in 1788 as a result of Joseph II's centralizing policies. The different provinces established the
French annexation
.svg){kind=small}
In the course of the
Only a minority of the population – mostly the local
In anticipation of Napoleon's defeat in 1814, it was hotly debated inside Austrian ruling circles whether Austria should get the Southern Netherlands back or, in view of the experience gained after the War of the Spanish Succession about the difficulty of defending non contiguous possessions, whether she should not instead obtain contiguous territorial compensations in Northern Italy.[2] This latter viewpoint won and the Congress of Vienna allotted the Southern Netherlands to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands. After the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the region separated to become the independent Kingdom of Belgium.
See also
- Catholic Church in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in Luxembourg
- Habsburg monarchy
- History of Belgium
- List of governors of the Habsburg Netherlands
- List of plenipotentiaries of Austrian Netherlands
- Seventeen Provinces
- Spanish Armada
- Union of Atrecht(Including map, 1579)
Notes
- ^ Dutch: Zuidelijke Nederlanden; Spanish: Países Bajos del Sur; French: Pays-Bas méridionaux.
- ^ The example of these expensive wars which is best known to English-speaking people is that of the Spanish Armada. However, that came in 1588, a little after the Dutch had become exasperated to the extent of signing the Union of Utrecht in 1579.
- Dukes of Brabantalso exercised or claimed separate feudal rights.
References
- ^ Bitsch 1992, p. 73-75.
- ^ Kann 1974, pp. 229–230.
Sources
- Bitsch, Marie-Thérèse (1992), Histoire de la Belgique (in French), Hatier, pp. 73–75
- Kann, Robert A. (1974), A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1918, University of California Press, pp. 229–230
Further reading
- Blom, J. C. H. and E. Lamberts, eds. History of the Low Countries (2006) 504pp excerpt and text search; also complete edition online
- Cammaerts, Émile. A History of Belgium from the Roman Invasion to the Present Day (1921) 357 pages; complete text online
- Cook, Bernard A. Belgium: a history, 3rd ed. New York, 2004 ISBN 0-8204-5824-4
- Kossmann, E. H. The Low Countries 1780–1940 (1978) excerpt and text search
External links
Media related to Southern Netherlands at Wikimedia Commons
