The Low Countries are the region in northwest Europe lying on the coast of the North Sea between France and Germany. They now comprise the three countries of \TBelgium\t, the \TNetherlands\t, and \TLuxembourg\t. The name Netherlands, which is adapted from the Dutch form of Low Countries, was originally applied to the whole area, but in the last two centuries it has been restricted to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Belgium takes its name from the ancient Gallic tribe of the Belgae, who were conquered by the Romans; Renaissance humanists revived the name for the whole of the Low Countries, and it was adopted by the southern Netherlands when they declared their independence from Austria in 1789. The Low Countries were also often called Flanders, after the province of that name, until the 17th century. The Low Countries did not become a distinct political entity until late in the Middle Ages. The region was recognized as a geographical unit, often called Frisia (or Friesland), in the early Middle Ages, although it was always divided in its language and culture. North of a line stretching roughly west to east across modern Belgium, the people have spoken a Germanic language for more than 1,000 years. It was called Netherlandish (Nederlands), Hollandish (Hollands), or Flemish (Vlaams) by those who spoke it; but in England it was called Dutch (from Deutsch, meaning German), and this is still the English name. South of the line, the people spoke a French dialect called Walloon. The formation of the modern nations of the Netherlands and Belgium was not based on the separation of Dutch and Walloon, and there has been a sharp conflict between Dutch- and French-speakers in Belgium for more than a hundred years. EARLY HISTORY The once-fashionable theory that the distinction between the Dutch and the Belgians was a fundamental one, extending back to the beginning of the Middle Ages, has now been abandoned. The Romans, whose conquest of the area began with a victory by Julius \Tcaesar\t over the Belgae in 57 BC, established their military and political frontier along the line of the Rhine River. However, they made allies of the Germanic peoples--the Batavi and other tribes--who had recently settled to the north of the river. The principal Roman route to Britain, across the North Sea, passed through this region. When Roman power began to recede in the 3d and 4th centuries AD, another Germanic people, the \TFranks\t, moved into the Low Countries, settling south of the Rhine and to the south of the present language boundary. They began to penetrate into \TGaul\t early in the 5th century and under \TClovis\t (r. 481-511) established their rule over all of Gaul; the latter became known as Frank-land, from which comes the name of France. As part of the Frankish kingdom, the Low Countries were converted to Christianity in the 6th century. When the grandsons of the Frankish emperor \TCharlemagne\t divided his realm in 843, the Low Countries became part of the middle kingdom called \TLotharingia\t. However, that kingdom was soon partitioned into the East Frankish (German) and West Frankish (French) kingdoms. Thus, by the 10th century, the more northerly and easterly part of the Low Countries was incorporated into the \THoly Roman Empire\t, while the westerly and southerly part came under French rule. The Low Countries were far from the centers of power in both Germany and France, and the local potentates who arose were almost independent of their overlords. The development of wool manufacture made \TFlanders\t and \TBrabant\t the most important industrial districts in northern Europe, while \THolland\t, which then included Zeeland, developed large fishing and shipping industries. These provinces became densely populated, and numerous cities arose. The wealth created by industry and trade provided the base for the growth of political institutions within the provinces, sometimes in alliance with local rulers (as in Brabant) and sometimes in rebellion against them (as in Flanders). Most of the inland provinces remained primarily agricultural. Those in the southeast (Hainaut, Artois) saw the full development of feudalism and manorialism, but the peasantry in the far north (Friesland) remained free. Although marriage alliances occurred frequently among the ruling families, no general political unity developed in the region. It was deeply involved in the \THundred Years' War\t (1337-1453) between France and England, but different provinces were often on opposite sides. BURGUNDIAN AND HABSBURG RULE Political unification and centralization of the Low Countries began when \TPhilip the Bold\t, duke of Burgundy, who had married the heiress of Flanders, acquired Artois and became count of Flanders in 1384. Over the next century and a half the dukes of Burgundy acquired possession of all the northeastern lands of the Low Countries, some by dynastic marriage and some by military conquest. During the 15th century the key provinces were already in their hands, and they not only followed the same policies in all of them but also began to form common political institutions over them, notably the \TStates-General\t. Resistance to loss of local autonomy was strong, however, and rebellions recurred, especially in the Flemish city of \TGhent\t. Nonetheless the immense economic resources of the Low Countries enabled them to play a major independent role in European affairs. Since the dukes of Burgundy were also leading political figures in France, the Low Countries were involved in French civil wars as well as in the second phase (1415-53) of the Hundred Years' War. Duke \TCharles the Bold\t attempted to create a new independent middle kingdom between France and Germany, but he was killed in battle with the Swiss in 1477. His heiress, \TMary of Burgundy\t, married (1477) the future Holy Roman emperor \TMaximilian I\t, thereby combining the Burgundian inheritance with that of the Austrian \LHabsburg\ls. Their son, Philip the Handsome (see \TPhilip I\t of Castile), married the Spanish princess \TJoan the Mad\t, and the eldest son of this marriage became both king of Spain (1516) and Holy Roman emperor (1519) as \TCharles V\t. The Low Countries were thus incorporated again in an immense empire. Although Charles was born in Flanders, he subordinated the interests of the Low Countries to the general interests of his dynasty and especially to the political needs of Spain. This policy was continued by his son, \TPhilip II\t, who received the Low Countries along with Spain on his father's abdication in 1555-56. Philip's effort to govern the Low Countries from Spain, to intensify centralization of power, and to persecute the Protestants led to the \TDutch Revolt\t. The insurrection began in 1566 in the southern provinces, Flanders in particular, and spread throughout the north only after the rebels' capture of Brielle (Brill) in 1572. Efforts at suppression by the Spanish armies had only limited success until the Calvinists became the driving force of the rebellion and began to alienate the Walloon provinces. \TWilliam I\t, prince of Orange (William the Silent), was the leader of the rebels, and he sought to maintain the unity of the Low Countries against Spanish domination. He failed because of religious differences between the Calvinist north and the Roman Catholic south. The rebellion began to turn into a Dutch war of independence, directed against both Spain and the southern provinces of the Netherlands, with the arrival of a new Spanish commander, Alessandro \TFarnese\t, duke of Parma, in 1578. A gifted military and political leader, he turned the situation to Spain's favor for a decade. In 1579 two unions, or leagues, of provinces were established that laid the basis for the separate political development of north and south. The first, the Union of Arras, brought about the reconciliation of the southern provinces with Spain, while the second, the Union of Utrecht, became the basis for an independent Dutch Republic, which renounced allegiance to Philip II in 1581. The surrender of \TAntwerp\t to Spanish besiegers under Parma in 1585 marked the end of effective resistance to Spain in the south. In the north, however, the rebellion continued under the leadership of \TMaurice of Nassau\t, son of the assassinated William the Silent, and Johan van \TOldenbarnevelt\t. Spain gave temporary recognition to Dutch independence during the Twelve Years' Truce (1609-21) and then final recognition in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). THE UNITED PROVINCES The Dutch Republic, known formally as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, took shape as a federal state of seven provinces--Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht, and Zeeland--but it was dominated by the merchants of Holland. It was able to continue the fight against Spain both because of its highly defensible position behind the mouths of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Maas and because of the immense wealth provided by the commerce and industry that continued in Holland in the midst of war. The 17th century became the Golden Age of the Dutch. The Dutch \TEast India Company\t, founded in 1602, and the \TDutch West India Company\t, founded in 1621, established colonies and trading posts in Asia, Africa, and America, and Dutch shipping carried a major portion of the world's trade. \TAmsterdam\t became the financial center of Europe and the United Provinces one of the great European powers. All this was accompanied by a remarkable cultural flowering. Earlier, Flanders had been preeminent in the arts of the Low Countries; now the northern provinces, with political independence, developed their own distinctive Dutch styles (see \TDutch art and architecture\t; \TFlemish art and architecture\t). From the mid-17th into the 18th century Dutch politics were dominated by a struggle for power between the merchant patricians of Holland and the princely house of \TOrange\t, which provided the elected stadholders (provincial governors). When \TWilliam II\t, prince of Orange, died in 1650, leadership passed to the merchants in the province of Holland, who gave (1653) effective control to Johan de \TWitt\t. Under de Witt, commercial rivalry led to two naval wars with England (1652-54, 1665-67; see \TAnglo-Dutch Wars\t). In a third war, beginning in 1672, \TLouis XIV\t of France allied with the English and overran much of the United Provinces. This debacle led to the murder (1672) of de Witt and the restoration of the stadholdership to the house of Orange. The new stadholder was William III, who in 1688-89 became King \TWilliam III\t of England and who was a major force in the European opposition to Louis XIV's expansionism (see \TAugsburg, League of\t; \TGrand Alliance, War of the\t; and \TSpanish Succession, War of the\t). When William died (1702) the stadholdership was again left vacant until 1747, when William IV of Orange-Nassau was recognized as stadholder by hereditary right. The republic was now in a period of decline, having lost commercial preeminence to England and France. Beginning about 1780, a new party called the Patriots arose; it combined traditional republicanism with the new ideas of the \TEnlightenment\t. It sought to displace both the patricians and the Orangists in favor of a wider democracy, and this action brought about a reconciliation of the former foes, especially after the Patriots seized power in 1785. The Patriots were turned out by a Prussian army of intervention 2 years later, but they returned to power in 1795 when a French revolutionary army invaded the country and the Republic of the United Provinces was replaced by the French-sponsored Batavian Republic (see \TFrench Revolutionary Wars\t). THE SPANISH AND AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS The southern Low Countries spent the two centuries after the Union of Arras under Habsburg rule, first of the Spanish and then of the Austrian branch. The Spanish kings accepted the basic compromise worked out in 1579 by the duke of Parma: Spanish sovereignty maintained in collaboration with the native nobility and the urban patricians and the religious monopoly of Catholicism without the rigors of the Inquisition. Any possibility of an attempt to seek reunification of the Low Countries by alliance with the Dutch against Spain was generally removed by the intolerance of the Dutch Calvinists. Economic prosperity returned to the rich southern provinces, although the base shifted from trade and industry to agriculture and the area was a major battleground in Louis XIV's wars. The southern Netherlands passed from Spanish to Austrian hands by the Peace of Utrecht (1713-14), which concluded the War of the Spanish Succession. However, the basic policy of collaboration between the foreign sovereign and the local nobility, who maintained their internal domination, remained unchanged until the reign (1765-90) of Holy Roman Emperor \TJoseph II\t. For his Low Countries territories, Joseph's enlightened despotism meant establishing effective control from Vienna, weakening the position of the Catholic church, and eliminating the dominance of the nobility. A rebellion--the so-called Brabant Revolution--against his authority broke out in 1789, when the States-General proclaimed a republic of the United States of Belgium. Emperor \TLeopold II\t reimposed Habsburg authority in 1790, but the country was annexed by revolutionary France in 1795. FRENCH DOMINATION AND LIBERATION French occupation brought profound changes in both parts of the Low Countries. The Batavian Republic, established in the north in 1795, replaced the antiquated Dutch political institutions with a unitary state. In 1806, Emperor \TNapoleon I\t placed his brother Louis Bonaparte (see \TBonaparte\t family) over the Dutch as king of Holland. When Louis proved too sympathetic with his subjects, Napoleon incorporated the country into the French Empire in 1810. Throughout this period Dutch economic activity declined disastrously. Not only did the French drain off resources through requisitions, but the Dutch lost most of their overseas trade as a result of the British blockade in retaliation against Napoleon's \TContinental System\t. The situation was different in Belgium, as the country was called after the Brabant Revolution, where incorporation into the French state brought a rapid rise of industry in the Walloon, or French-speaking provinces. Despite popular resistance, the middle classes gladly accepted French rule, and the French language became the language of the educated classes in Flanders, no less than in the Walloon provinces. The removal of French control brought a temporary political unification of the Low Countries. Dutch patriots seized power in the north in 1813 and brought the son of the last stadholder back as sovereign prince. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna (see \TVienna, Congress of\t) made him king, as \TWilliam I\t, of the United Netherlands, in which the Belgian provinces were joined with the Dutch. He also became grand duke of Luxembourg, which was a member of the German Confederation. William ruled as a constitutional monarch although the parliament's role was limited to lawmaking and some budgetary control. His efforts to unify the two regions did not win adequate support in the south, however, and the Belgian Revolution of 1830 broke the kingdom in two. The Belgians invited a German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, to become their king (as \TLeopold I\t) in a constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. William finally recognized the independence of Belgium in 1839, and he abdicated the following year. His successor, \TWilliam II\t, accepted constitutional reforms that made the Netherlands a parliamentary monarchy in 1848. Luxembourg also received a new constitution in 1848. After the collapse of the German Confederation in 1866, \TWilliam III\t of the Netherlands created a crisis (1867) by agreeing to sell Luxembourg to France. The Prussians, who garrisoned the duchy, threatened war, and a conference of the European powers made the grand duchy a neutral territory. The house of Orange continued to rule there until the accession (1890) in the Netherlands of Queen \TWilhelmina\t. Salic law prevented her from inheriting Luxembourg, which passed to a collateral line of the family. MODERN NATIONS Belgium and the Netherlands followed similar paths of development in the 19th and 20th centuries. Belgium became heavily industrialized, first in the Walloon provinces and later, after World War II, in Flanders. The Netherlands continued to concentrate on commerce and agriculture well into the 20th century, but then developed a large-scale industrial base, notably in electronics. Parliamentary authority was supreme in both countries, and the electorate was expanded by the introduction of universal manhood suffrage (Belgium, 1893; the Netherlands, 1917) and women's suffrage (after World War II). The Netherlands inherited colonies (in South America and the East Indies) from the republican period, while Belgium took over the Congo (now \TZaire\t) from the personal rule of King \TLeopold II\t in 1908. Belgium had been declared neutral by the European powers at its founding, but its neutrality was violated by Germany in 1914. Unable to halt the German advance, despite heroic resistance, the country was occupied throughout World War I. The Netherlands remained neutral during World War I. In World War II both countries were occupied by the Germans from 1940 until 1944-45. Governments-in-exile were established in London; the Dutch one was under Queen Wilhelmina, but the Belgians formed theirs without \TLeopold III\t, who chose to remain in his occupied country. After the war, both countries became firm members of NATO. As early as 1944, Belgium and the Netherlands joined with Luxembourg in forming a customs union called Benelux. Subsequently, all three became (1957) founding members of the \TEuropean Community\t. The postwar period also brought colonial divestment. After a bitter conflict the Dutch granted independence to Indonesia in 1949, and in 1963 the former Dutch New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) was joined to Indonesia. In the Western Hemisphere the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname became autonomous units of the Dutch state in 1954, and Suriname became independent in 1975. The Belgians relinquished their one colony, the Congo (now Zaire), suddenly in 1960, and chaos ensued (see \TCongo crisis\t). In Belgium, the wartime role of King Leopold III had caused controversy, and he was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, \TBaudouin I\t, in 1951. Belgium has also been torn by conflict between its Dutch- and French-speakers. To address this problem the government was federalized (1980), with regional assemblies for the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south. Beginning in the late 1960s, Amsterdam became a major center for Europe's counterculture. The increasing pace of Western European integration in the 1990s brought significant changes to the Low Countries, especially to Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is headquarters for most of the governing institutions of the European Community. Herbert H. Rowen Bibliography: Gutmann, Myron P., War and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (1980); Kossman, E.H., Low Countries 1780 to 1940 (1978); Parker, Geoffrey, The Dutch Revolt, rev. ed. (1989); Prevenier, W. and Blockmans, W.M., The Burgundian Netherlands (1986).