Belgian Revolution against the Netherlands
Belgium separated from the Netherlands in 1830 after a riot that began at the opera. The Congress of Vienna had joined the Austrian Netherlands to the Dutch Republic in 1815 to make a buffer against France, without asking anyone in either half. The union was mismatched from the start. The south was Catholic, more populous, and industrialising fast around Liège and Charleroi; the north was Protestant and commercial. William I made Dutch the official language in Flanders, funded state schools that the Catholic clergy regarded as an attack, taxed in ways that fell on the south, and gave both halves equal representation in a parliament despite the south having half again as many people. Catholics and liberals in the south, who agreed on nothing else, formed a union of opposition in 1828. The rising began on 25 August 1830 after a performance of an opera about a Neapolitan revolt, and the crowd went from the theatre to the streets. Dutch troops entered Brussels in September and were driven out after four days of street fighting. A provisional government declared independence on 4 October and a national congress wrote a constitution — for its time among the most liberal in Europe, with ministerial responsibility, jury trial and freedom of press, education and worship. The powers accepted it at London, on condition of permanent neutrality guaranteed by all of them. A German prince became Leopold I. That neutrality guarantee is the treaty Britain cited when Germany invaded in 1914. The new state also carried its own unresolved question from the beginning. It was governed in French by a francophone elite while the majority of its people spoke Dutch, and the language politics that followed have restructured the Belgian constitution repeatedly since 1970.
- Year: 1830 CE
- Category: Political
