Flanders

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The Flemish region, the major part of Flanders in red (northern half of Belgium).

Flag of Flanders

Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen (help·info), French: Flandre) is the (political) community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Over the course of history, the geographical territory that was called "Flanders" has varied.

In contemporary Belgium, Flanders might be understood as the 'country of the Flemings'. This covers the north of Belgium Flemish Region and includes the Brussels Capital Region, the latter being shared with French speakers.

For the last few decades, with the legal establishment of the Flemish Community (Dutch: de Vlaamse Gemeenschap), the Flemings have their own political institutions. The parliament and government are the governing institutions of Flanders. There is also a geographical, political and administrative entity called the Flemish Region (Dutch: het Vlaams Gewest) but it has ceded all its competencies to the Flemish Community. Thus, the institutions of the Community govern both the Community and the Region. The capital city of Flanders is Brussels.

Previously, Flanders formed a county, the County of Flanders, which extended over:

• The Belgian provinces of West Flanders and East Flanders
• The French region French Flanders in the department Nord-Pas de Calais
• The Dutch region Zeelandic Flanders (Zeeuws-Vlaanderen) in the province of Zeeland

Related to these geographical or political uses of the noun 'Flanders', and the adjective 'Flemish', they may also be used to describe several other distinct (but inter-connected) cultural, geographical, historical, linguistic or political items or entities.

The term "Flanders"

The northern part of Belgium

The term "Flanders" has several main meanings:

• the social, cultural and linguistic, scientific and educational, economical and political community of the Flemings; generally called the "Flemish community" (small "c") (others refer to this as the "Flemish nation"). It has over 6 million inhabitants, or about 60% of the population of Belgium.
• the constituent governing institution of the federal Belgian state through the institutions named the Flemish Community (capital "C"), exercising the powers in most of those domains for the aforementioned community, and the officially Dutch-speaking Flemish Region which has powers mainly on economical matters. The Community absorbed the Region, leading to a single operative body: the Flemish government and a single legislative organ: the Flemish parliament;
• the geographical region in the north of Belgium coinciding with the federal Belgian state's Flemish Region but excluding the bilingual Capital Region;
• the geographical area comprising the two westernmost provinces of the Flemish Region, West Flanders and East Flanders, parts of a former county named Flanders.

The historical parts of the County of Flanders

• In Belgium: When Flandria appeared in the 8th century, it was a Frankisch fief containing Bruges and environs. Probably, it is derived from the German wort flauma, which means Flooded Land^{[citation needed]}. That should refer to the polders surrounding Bruges before the counts of Flanders expanded this area in all directions. It became the most important region of the Seventeen Provinces. In the 14th century the county reached her maximum size. In Belgium, it extended over the provinces of East Flanders, West Flanders (Dutch; Flemish) and Hainaut (French; Walloon).

• In France: In 14th century the French kings involved Picardy. That's why French was spoken there. The area was called la Flandre romane (Romance Flanders) or la Flandre gallicante (Gallic Flanders), or incorrectly Flandre-wallonne (Walloon Flanders) though its language was not Walloon but Picard. In 16th century, also Artois has been involved by the French. In 17th and 18th century, king Louis XIV of France conquerred more French areas in the south, still named French Flanders or la Flandre Lilloise. French Flanders contains the departements Nord and Pas de Calais), comprising the arrondissements of Lille and Douai. Originally Dutch was spoken there; there is still spoken a Flemish dialect, le Ch'tis. The city of Lille manifests itself as "Flemish", for instance by the large TGV station Lille-Flandres.

• In the Netherlands: At the same time, the United Provinces took some area in the north. This area is known as Zeelandic Flanders (Zeeuws-Vlaanderen) and is part of the province of Zeeland.

The Dutch-speaking part of Belgium

The significance of the County and its counts eroded through time, but the designation remained in a very broad sense. In the Early Modern, the term Flanders was associated with the southern part of the Low Countries, the Southern Netherlands. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it became increasingly commonplace to refer to the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium as "Flanders". The linguistic limit between French and Dutch was recorded in the early '60's, from Kortrijk to Maastricht. Now, Flanders extends over the northern part of Belgium, including the Belgian parts of the Duchy of Brabant and Limburg.

The ambiguity between this eastwardly much wider area and that of the Countship (or the Belgian parts thereof), still remains. In most present-day contexts however, the term Flanders is generally taken to refer to either the political, social, cultural and linguistic community (and the corresponding official institution, the Flemish Community), or the geographical area, one of the three institutional regions in Belgium, namely the Flemish Region.

In history of art and other fields, the adjectives Flemish and Netherlandish are commonly used to designate all the artistic production in this area before about 1580, after which it refers specifically to the southern Netherlands. For example the term Flemish Primitives, now outdated in English but used in French, Flemish and other languages, is a synonym for Early Netherlandish painting, and it is not uncommon to see Mosan art categorized as Flemish art. In music the Franco-Flemish School is also known as the Dutch School.

The description of Flanders as the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium is, nevertheless, fundamentally flawed as Flanders includes many permanent minorities. For many centuries, the Jewish groups of Antwerp have spoken Yiddish. There are also sizable minorities speaking French, Berber, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Italian and Polish. There are residents from 170 nationalities in Flanders. Typically, in each of those minority groups, some people switch to using Dutch in their daily life, while others maintain their language of origin. Especially among the Flemish from Moroccan and Turkish origin, there is an extremely high tendency for marriage with partners from the country of origin. This permanent influx of new migrants significantly hinders the integration of these groups.

History

Early history

The area, roughly encompassing the later geographical meanings of Flanders, had been inhabited by Celts until Germanic people began immigrating by crossing the Rhine, either gradually driving them south- or westwards, or rather merging with them. By the first century BC Germanic languages had become prevalent, and the inhabitants were called Belgæ while the area was the coastal district of Gallia Belgica, the most northeastern province of the Roman Empire at its height. The boundaries were the Marne and Seine in the West, with Armorica (Brittany), and the Rhine in the East, with Frisia. This changed upon the Count of Rouen's settlement with the King of France, which made a cession of western Flanders and eastern Armorica to the Normans.

Historical Flanders: County of Flanders

Created in the year 862 as a feudal fief in West Francia, the County of Flanders was divided when its western districts fell under French rule in the late 12th century. The remaining parts of Flanders came under the rule of the counts of neighbouring Hainaut in 1191. The entire area passed in 1384 to the dukes of Burgundy, in 1477 to the Habsburg dynasty, and in 1556 to the kings of Spain. The western districts of Flanders came finally under French rule under successive treaties of 1659 (Artois), 1668, and 1678.

During the late Middle Ages Flanders' trading towns (notably Ghent, Bruges and Ypres) made it one of the richest and most urbanized parts of Europe, weaving the wool of neighbouring lands into cloth for both domestic use and export. As a consequence, a very sophisticated culture developed, with impressive achievements in the arts and architecture, rivaling those of Northern Italy.