“The diversion of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century is the biggest disaster that has ever happened to us.” That said Bart De Wever, Prime Minister of Belgium, this week. For years he has been dreaming aloud of a reunification of Belgium and the Netherlands. And then our province is the center of that dream country. An idea that sounds like a history book full of nostalgia. But what would we get along with that? “If you had held Antwerp, Amsterdam and Brussels together, we could have really been a world power.”
We presented it to historian Judith Pollmann (Leiden University) and writer Bart van Loo, author of the bestseller De Burgundians. They know better than anyone how we ever were together and why that changed.
Brabant is a good example of how history still works. After it had been conquered by the Republic in 1629, it no longer had an independent input. “Brabant became a kind of colony,” says Pollmann. “That has left deep marks. Many people from Brabant have a sense of distance to The Hague – we would rather do things in our own way here.”
Although Noord-Brabant has been part of the Netherlands for centuries, some people still live the idea that they ‘do not belong completely’. “Brabant came between two stools. It is fascinating that such incredibly old decisions still have influence,” says Pollmann.
Bart van Loo sees a geopolitical masterpiece in the medieval Netherlands. “The origin of those Netherlands – yes, that has become my thing,” he laughs. “In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a unique whole emerged between France and the Holy Roman Empire. The Low Countries as part of the Burgundian Empire. A cultural, economic and intellectual superpower.”
He regrets the disintegration of that whole. “If you had held Antwerp, Amsterdam and Brussels together, we could have really been a world power.” And yes, he also sees benefits if we ever went together again. “Gastronomically it would at least be a step forward. Belgian beer, Dutch buttermilk and Liège waffles. I can only think of benefits for the Netherlands.”
We have already been reunited. In 1815, after the fall of Napoleon, North and South were merged into one kingdom. But in 1830 it went wrong again. The south rebelled and Belgium was born. King William I would rather have stayed together, “says Van Loo.” We had that Burgundian dream derailed together. ”
According to Judith Pollmann, some people from Brabant stood sympathetic to the Belgian business at the time and they preferred to be in Belgium than in the Netherlands. “There were pretty much in favor of Brabanders. But they lost that match at the time.”
Yet both experts are sober. “You don’t just solder that back to each other,” says Pollmann. “It is the outcome of a struggle and a peace process. And for centuries of differences have grown in. Language, religion, political culture.” Van Loo agrees with her: “I feel like a foreigner in the Netherlands, I feel a Belgian in Wallonia. The differences have just become too big.”
“We could be more proud of our past.”
And yet … fantasizing is allowed. “We are two different countries. What we share is a common story,” says Van Loo. “We are all children of that Burgundian past. We can be a bit more proud of that.”
And if we are allowed to day dream about a reunification, then we would immediately solve one of the most stubborn border issues: Is Mathieu van der Poel a Belgian or Dutchman?
Born in Kapellen near Antwerp, trained partly in Belgium, but coming out for the Netherlands. The discussion has been dragging on for years in cafes and cycling ora. In a Burgundian reunited country, the question would be superfluous: then he is just of all of us – just like cycling itself, the stew fries and the Brabant sausage roll.
“AI am convinced that the divorce of the Netherlands is the biggest disaster that has ever happened to us, “said Prime Minister De Wever on NPO Radio 1:
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