The Flemish-Waloon Conflict in Belgium Historical Background of the conflict Long long time ago…
Belgium has existed essentially in its present form since 1830, when an uprising led to independence from The Netherlands. However, the country's name goes back to a Celtic tribe, the Belgae, whom Julius Caesar described as the most courageous tribe in all of Gaul. The Belgae were overwhelmed, however, by Caesar's legions around 50 BC, and for 300 years the area was a Roman province. Some scholars believe that the southern part of Belgium was the northernmost area of true Roman cultural penetration, beyond which Latin never really took hold. The proto-Dutch language, spoken by the Frankish invaders who swept through the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD, took hold north of that line168.
Throughout most of the Middle Ages, life in the area centered on the quasi-independent trading and manufacturing towns of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp and Liege. After centuries of war and many accidents of dynastic succession, the area that had come to be known as the Lowlands - comprising the approximate modern territories of Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg - came into the possession of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor in the early 1500s169.
Religion matters
The arrival of Protestantism polarized the Lowlands into two hostile camps. Religion has been another source of division in Belgium's history, with the people in the north of the country inclining towards Protestantism and the teachings of Luther. In the religious wars, the split became geographic and political as the Protestants succeeded in establishing the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the north. The remaining Catholic territory after these wars, which did not have the same incentive for revolt, is roughly equivalent to modern Belgium170.
The New Kingdom
After two centuries of Spanish rule, the Austrian Hapsburgs gained control of the country after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Napoleon annexed it to France in 1794. After his defeat in 1815, Belgium was awarded to The Netherlands.
However, after 15 years of chafing against Dutch administrative and economic reforms, the Belgian people revolted and declared the independent state of Belgium in 1830. A progressive, almost republican constitution, was created, and the state was successfully launched with Leopold I, a German prince, as the first King of the Belgians.
For 84 years, Belgium remained neutral in an era of intra-European wars until German troops overran the country during their attack on France in 1914. King Albert, the constitutional commander-in-chief of the armed forces, rallied what remained of his troops and, after joining the French Army, was able to retain a tiny corner of Flemish Belgium near the sea throughout the war. Some of the fiercest battles of World War I were fought on "Flanders' Fields.
The inter-war period
The inter-war years saw an unprecedented blooming of Flemish culture in northern Belgium and a sharpening of ethnic rivalry between the northern Dutch-speaking Flemings and the southern French-speaking Walloons171. In fact it weren't the Flemish but the French speaking Belgians who, in the 1930's, insisted on unilingual regions and rejected general bilingualism.
The reason? The French speaking bourgeoisie refused to be obliged to learn "Vlaams". From a feeling of superiority they didn't see why they should use a language of workmen, farmers and servants. For in 1830 they were misled. Belgium would be French-speaking or it wouldn't be at all.
The Flemish movement - that indeed was mostly a language movement - came to put a spoke in the wheel and shattered that dream. As early as 1912, the Walloon socialist Jules Destrée, got the message: "Ils nous ont volé la Flandre... ils nous ont volé notre langue", he wrote. ("They have stolen Flanders from us, they have stolen our language") Rather than be obliged to learn a language of little influence, they chose to withdraw into their own language region172.
2nd World war and post-war period
Belgium was occupied by the Germans in 1940. While the cabinet and other political leaders established a government-in-exile in London, the King remained in Belgium for the entire war. The King's controversial behavior during the German occupation forced him, in 1951, to abdicate in favor of his son, Baudouin, who reigned until his death in 1993. The current King is Baudouin's brother, Albert II173.
It was during the 1950s that new economic structures were established, which initially were to favour the Walloons. But by the end of the decade the reverse was increasingly the case. The Walloon mines began to close, related heavy industry suffered setbacks, regional development organisations were established and American industry began to get a stronger foothold on the Continent. Whilst in Flanders these developments were greeted enthusiastically, as the port of Antwerp boomed, in Wallonia they mapped the beginnings of a cycle of decline174.
In 1962-1963, a democratic majority laid down the language boundary and established unilingual regions. The same democratic majority - sometimes even a two-thirds majority and a majority in each language group - granted limited language facilities to the French-speaking and entrusted the official guardianship to the Flemish government. The constitutional revisions of the 1970s and 1980s, and the accompanying legislation, were all designed to preserve the language, culture, lifestyle and spiritual beliefs of the different groups within the country175.
Peaceful “conflicts” between Flemish and Walloon politicians are part of Belgium’s history. They regularly break out on various grounds and sometimes bring the government to the edge of the precipice but since the birth of the Belgian state, there have never been any confrontations between the populations and not a single drop of blood has ever been shed.
All the problems involving Belgium’s linguistic communities have always been solved through political negotiations and compromises. Due to the complexity of the political and linguistic landscape, the Belgian governments of the past few decades have had to show ingenuity in the elaboration of the institutional engineering and safety mechanisms meant to protect linguistic minorities against majorities at various places in the country and at different levels of the Belgian political institutions. Conflict solving mechanisms have also had to be worked out.
The main characteristic of the Belgian solutions to language and community problems is the concern for the protection of linguistic minorities. This dimension of the “Belgian model” and the basic components of the reform of the institutional architecture can certainly be a source of inspiration to solve peacefully local conflicts between linguistic communities in other parts of the world.
Several reforms of the state and of the constitution have transformed Belgium into a federal state. Territorial federalism has solved most linguistic problems. The Flemish and Walloon regions are monolingual, Dutch-speaking and French-speaking respectively, while the Brussels-Capital Region is bilingual176.
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