Just on three-and-a-half years ago, a Belgian television station created a major stir by running a hoax news program reporting that Flanders, the Dutch-speaking half of Belgium, had declared its independence. This week, life moved a little closer to imitating art, as Sunday’s general election in Belgium gave a plurality to the Flemish separatist party, New Flemish Alliance.
This doesn’t mean Belgium is about to disappear from the map, or even that the nationalists will necessarily end up in government: there will be 12 parties represented in the new parliament (seven Dutch and five French), and putting together a majority coalition will take considerable time (official results here). But it does suggest that the nationalist, or ethno-linguistic issue has come to overshadow everything else in Belgium, and the country will remain politically deadlocked until it is somehow sorted out.
Looking at the map in the cold light of logic, there is no reason why Belgium should exist. There is nothing natural about its boundaries: the northern boundary (with the Netherlands) is the line held by the Spanish armies at the end of the Dutch war of independence in the 17th century; the southern boundary (with France) is the limit of French expansion in the 18th century. It would make sense for the north to join the Netherlands and the south to join France.
The past 20 years have unwound several of Europe’s more artificial territorial arrangements. The Flemings point particularly to Czechoslovakia, which in 1993 separated peacefully into its constituent parts. Czechs and Slovaks, moreover, are at least closely related, with languages that are more or less mutually comprehensible; French and Dutch sit on opposite sides of one of Europe’s major cultural divides.
But Czechoslovakia, like Yugoslavia, was a recent creation, whereas Belgium has been a distinct entity for 400 years. There could hardly be a more striking reminder of how deep ethnic differences run, and how central they are to people’s identity.
So far, separatism is mostly confined to the north. The French speakers, or Walloons, of the south — who represent only 40% of the country, but who for many years ran it as their own and relegated the Flemings to second-class status — still cling to the notion of a united Belgium and show no obvious desire for either independence or union with France.
But although the union may be patched together for a few more years, its long-term future looks decidedly grim.
This might all seem remote from Australian concerns, but it should actually be required study for our politicians and diplomats, who assume that soothing words and mutual assurance treaties can paper over separatist movements in our region. Hence they hope the world will forget about the Papuans of West Papua, the Malays of southern Thailand, the Melanesians of Bougainville, and many others.
But if prosperous, democratic Belgium still displays its ethnic fault lines after four centuries, it’s unlikely that the drive for national self-determination will be quite so easily halted.
strange as it might seem, i would like to see something similiar occur in australia, although how it could be achieved i do not know
my view is, i would like see the 40% of right wing voters have there own state ,call it what you like the hard right and the rednecks and racists could go there as well and run there own show as they wish.
and let the people of the centre, and those to the left have there own democratic state, and do things the way that they choose
Interesting enough article, though it might be worth mentioning that these issues arise every couple of years and thus far the country remains whole. A few points might help to explain this:
1. For better or worse, a key unifying factor in Belgium is the common respect on both sides of the linguistic border for the royal family. Noone knows, though some speculate, on which language the king dreams in.
2. The proportion of French vs Dutch vs other-speakers is contested. Only in officially bilingual Brussels and a small number of other localities do residents have the choice of which linguistic community they are considered to belong to. Indeed the spilling over of largely French-speaking Brussels into the surrounding Flemish towns is a sore point among both Flemish nationalists (for changing the linguistic make-up of those towns) and French-speakers (for obliging Francophones to be counted as Flemings).
3. While it is true that French was the language of the ruling class in Belgium until well into the 20th Century (every Fleming knows the meaning of the phrase ‘Pour les flamands c’est la même chose’ when French speaking officers during the First World War gave orders to Flemish farmers that the latter could not understand) this misses the point that the Flemish aristocracy also spoke French and neither Flemish nor Walloon peasants could be considered to run Belgium ‘as their own’.
4. As regards the various bits of Belgium being joined to their neighbours, it is worth mentioning that the province of Liège was briefly joined with France before being reunited with the rest of Belgium. And the province of Luxemburg would, given the choice, more likely join with the neighbouring Grand-Duchy than with France. That’s assuming, of course, that France, the Netherlands or Luxemburg would agree to such a move. Leaving only polyglot Brussels, which could then become a separate European capital territory, à la Canberra or Washington.
Whilst an interesting discussion on the Flemish/Walloon divide takes place, rarely are the original inhabitants of Australia whose mother tongue is one of the few remaining strong Aboriginal languages given such consideration.
One doesn’t dismiss the Belgians’ languages as “dialects” worthy of some token “preservation” efforts, nor are they as far as I’m aware under undue pressure to educate their children in English (or Dutch or French for that matter).They’re not being told that their language is “holding them back in the real world”. That their only chance to “succeed” is by embracing a language other than their own.
Charles Richardson mentions the Papuans, Malays & Melanesians. He needn’t have looked that far. Where I live the language is Warlpiri. It’s the language they dream in. English is the language of power, patronisation and condecension. It is the language of their nightmares. It is the language of the Intervention.
There is a different aspect to this issue, and which makes it completely different to Australia. The EU. The effective removal of border control (especially within the Schengen countries), the single currency shared with all its neighbours, the free trade in a market of 400 million people and an overlay of EU law has meant a flowering of “devolution”. Even in the UK there are regional parliaments for Scotland and Wales and some want to go further. Belgium is a very central place in Europe–already connected by TGVs to the two biggest cities (85 mins to Paris, 110 mins to London) and north (130 mins to Amsterdam–and on to Cologne)–and hosts the most significant EU institutions plus NATO.
In places where there is potential ethnic or cultural conflict the fact of the EU diffuses those centripetal forces–think Catalonia and the Basque territory (which actually traverses the French-Spain border). Even think norther versus southern Italy. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be such a big deal if Belgium devolved into a looser alliance of its two constituent parts.
There are in fact few if any borders in Europe which are ethnically or linguistically clear-cut.
And on a pedantic note, the “Papuans” are Melanesian too.