Belgium

What's now Belgium was part of France until 1815 when that little führer called Napoleon lost all at Waterloo.

Then our regions were lumped together with the protestant Dutch Kingdom.  But in September 1830 volunteers from all over the country and from abroad fought the Dutch and Belgium won its independance.

Some years later a Peace Treaty was signed between the Netherlands and the new Belgian kingdom.  By that treaty a part of Limburg was ceded to the Netherlands in exchange for the Province of Luxemburg.  We can readily imagine what those people of Limburg who fought for Belgium's independance thought about that.

For a long time Belgium was composed of 9 provinces.  The province of Brabant (South Brabant in 1815) was split in two parts in 1995: a Flemish and a French speaking part.  On the eastern Belgian-German border there is also a German speaking community: a small part of Germany that was annexed after WW I.

The northern provinces of Belgium were mostly agricultural.  Here we have pictures of a few beautiful Belgian farms.  In the south there was more industry: they made steel in Liège and in La Louvière.  Now they still make steel in Zelzate.  How much longer ?  Who knows ?  The unions pretend they can run factories better than the "Capitalist bosses" and they demand ever more say in these matters.  And far too many war weary businessmen abandonned their Belgian sites and now produce their goods much cheaper elsewhere.  Could Côte d'Or, Renault, Ford Motor Co. and Caterpillar be considered good examples ?

One of the northern provinces is East-Flanders with the ever so proud city of Ghent as its capital.  The Meetjesland is in the northern part of this province.  Its capital is Eeklo.

We have on this website the genealogy of quite a few families whose roots are in the Meetjesland.  But we also have the genealogy of one or two families such as the Broucke tribe that came from a beautiful West-Flanders region called Bachten de Kupe.

We will not repeat here so many things that have been explained very well (and of course always very truthfully) on many other websites.  We here concentrate on the Meetjesland but for lots of goodies and beautiful pictures of our country we can recommand BelgiumView.  They are working hard to translate their entire site in English.

Anyone ready to help us to translate for instance the periodical "Ons Meetjesland" (Our Meetjesland) ?  Into English or any other language for that matter ?  A good translator is worth his weight in gold but this here website is not a commercial effort and, needless to say, we have no budget for translators.  No, we're not ready to accept ads on this website.  Ads pay well ?  Are banks and casinos there to make money for their customers or does the lions share of the profits go elsewhere ?  Asking a question like that is tantamount to answering it.

We also have a few pages on Brussels, Belgium's and Europe's capital: for instance on its folklore and of course about its oldest citizen Manneken Pis.  What a life he lives !  He now has more than 1,000 suits in his wardrobe. How many do you have ?

MijnPlatteLand Home Page
Meetjesland - Genealogy



Meest recente bijwerking: 21 April 2021