Unlike Scotland or Catalonia, Flanders has no history of independence. Belgium is itself a product of secession: in 1830 the Belgian provinces separated from the Kingdom of Netherlands and declared independence under the rule of Leopold of Saxe Coburg Gotha, the first King of the Belgians. Before 1830 there was no common sense of belonging to a “Belgian identity” and even after the independence it was difficult to foster a shared identity, especially because of the linguistic dispersion: the Dutch-speaking North (Flanders) and the French-speaking South (Wallonia). The German-speaking communities around Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith were administered by Belgium after the First World War and became fully part of Belgium in 1925, being incorporated in the Walloon Region, but maintaining their separate linguistic status. …show more content…
It has become dominant even in Brussels, the capital, despite the fact that it was located in Flanders. Wallonia became exponentially industrialised and wealthy, while Flanders remained agricultural and poor.
The origins of modern Flemish nationalism can be marked out to the “Flemish movement”, which during the 19th and 20th centuries sought political and cultural equality with the less-numerous but territorially larger Walloons. Under the pressure of the Flemish movement, the Belgian government gradually expanded the official use of Dutch in legal, educational and administrative affairs. Nevertheless, the language policy became one of dual monolingualism, based on the territorial location, not bilingualism. By 1963 “Belgium’s language border” was