Austrian Netherlands

The Belgian and Luxemburgian territories except the Bishopric of Liege were transferred to the Austrian Habsburgs (1713-1794) after the War of the Spanish Succession when the French Bourbon Dynasty inherited Spain at the price of abandoning many Spanish possessions.

French period

Following the Campaigns of 1794 of the French Revolutionary Wars the Southern Netherlands were invaded and annexed by the First French Republic in 1795. The bishopric of Liege was dissolved. Its territory was divided over the departements Meuse-Inferieure and Ourte.

United Kingdom of the Netherlands

After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the major victorious powers (England, Austria, Prussia, Russia) agreed at Congress of Vienna on reuniting the southern Netherlands with the northern, creating the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was to serve as a bufferstate against any future French invasions. This was under the rule of a protestant king, namely William I of Orange. Most of the small and ecclesiastical states in the Holy Roman Empire were given to larger states at this time, and this included the Bishopric of Liege which became now formally part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Independence

 
In August 1830, stirred by a performance of Auber's La Muette de Portici at the Brussels opera house La Monnaie (Dutch: De Munt), the Belgian Revolution broke out, and the country wrested its independence from the Dutch, aided by French intellectuals and French armed forces. The real political forces behind this were the Catholic clergy, which was against the protestant Dutch king, William I, and the equally strong liberals, who opposed the royal authoritarianism, and the fact that the Belgians were not represented proportionally in the national assemblies at all. At first, the Revolution was merely a call for greater autonomy, but due to the clumsy responses of the Dutch king to the problem, and his unwillingness to meet the demands of the revolutionaries, the Revolution quickly escalated into a fight for full independence.

Among the revolutionaries, there was an idea to join France, but after international pressure, Belgium became an independent state. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1831, with a monarch invited in from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Germany by the British. The major powers in Europe agreed, and on July 21 1831, the first king of Belgium, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was inaugurated. This day is still the Belgian national holiday. The reason why the Belgian Revolution succeeded, even though it violated the accords made in 1815, is mainly that France was sympathetic to it, after it had had a new liberal government installed in the same year as the Belgian Revolution (see July monarchy or Louis-Philippe). In particular, the French troops "helped" the Belgians to maintain Antwerp inside their new country. One easily understands how important is was for both Britain and France to keep Antwerp and Rotterdam harbours located in two distinct enemy countries. The other major powers were, at that time, too much occupied with their own wars and problems.

The Netherlands still fought on for 8 years, but in 1839 a treaty was signed between the two countries. Belgium thus started life as an independent state, equipped with a very liberal constitution (constitutional monarchy), but with suffrage restricted to the haute-bourgeoisie and the clergy, all together less than 1% of the adult population, and fully French-speaking in a country where French was not the majority language.

By the treaty of 1839, Luxemburg did not fully join Belgium, and remained a possession of the Netherlands until different inheritance laws caused it to separate as an independent Grand Duchy. Belgium also lost Eastern Limburg, Zeeuws Vlaanderen and French Flanders (Dutch: Frans Vlaanderen) and Eupen, four territories which it had all claimed on historical grounds. The Netherlands retained the former two while French Flanders, which had been annexed at the time of Louis XIV remained in French possession, and Eupen remained within the German Confederation, although it would pass to Belgium after World War I as compensation for the war.

The Belgian Revolution had many causes:

    * At the political level:
          o The Belgians felt significantly under-represented in the Netherlands' elected Lower Assembly.
          o The low popularity of Prince William, later King William II, representative of the King William I in Brussels.
          o The treatment of the French-speaking Catholic Walloons in the Dutch-dominated United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
    * At the religious level:
          o The difference of religion between the Belgians and their Dutch king.
    * At the economic level:
          o The Belgians had little influence over the traditional economy of trade centred in Amsterdam.
          o The Dutch were for free trade, while industries in Belgium called for the protection of tariffs.
          o Low-taxed imports from the Baltic depressed agriculture in Belgian grain-growing regions.
    * At the international level:
          o French July Monarchy's support.
          o The passive agreement of the British.