Lynn Hunt

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Lynn Hunt | Reviews of Books: To Be or Not to Be a State | The William and Mary Quarterly, 65.2 | The History Cooperative

To Be or Not to Be a State

LAURENT Dubois's passing mention of the Belgians set me to thinking. Belgium's peculiar history raises some interesting issues about the nature of independence and statehood. It has been in the news recently because some observers fear that the tensions between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings might lead to a breakup of the Belgian state. Belgium was a fragile construction from the beginning. It gained independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 when the great powers agreed to its separation. In 1789–90, by contrast, an attempt to declare the United States of Belgium independent from the Austrians had failed. Unlike other emergent nineteenth-century states such as Germany or Italy, Belgium had no distinct language in which to develop a national literary or cultural tradition. A minor German prince was named king. Originally part of the Burgundian and then the Spanish Netherlands, Belgium never had much of a separate identity until 1830. The current unraveling of this identity shows that the declaration of state sovereignty often expresses a fervent hope rather than an established or enduring reality.

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