Belgium was never relevant, it was built by European great powers to form a buffer state (or punching ball) in case of wars (see the 2 world wars).

hey belgium's cool

they got good waffles

From what I know: Flanders are nice and warm people, and there economy is good. Wallonia has arrogant people and bad economy. Walloons also don't want to learn Dutch, but the Flanders do want to learn France.
Mathematical:
Flanders(positive)+ Wallonia(negative)=Belgium(irrelevant)

From a Dutch speaker's perspective, may I say your view is quite biased here? Walloons more arrogant than the Flemish people? Did you ever go there? Well Wallonia has many flaws but they aren't cold people, not at all, I got friends who settled in Belgium and the whole mentality in Wallonia is quite different compared to many places in France and Europe, on the other hand in Flanders, I heard of tourists speaking French (not even Walloons), beaten up because their only sin was to speak French in the street. So unless you prove me I'm wrong, Flemings aren't warmer than the Walloons. In Wallonia, people remained warm there, and an old French song illustrates this better:

"Les gens du Nord
Ont dans leurs yeux le bleu qui manqu' à leur décor.
Les gens du Nord
Ont dans le coeur le soleil qu'ils n'ont pas dehors.
Les gens du Nord
Ouvrent toujours leurs portes à ceux qui ont souffert.
(...)

(The Northerners have the blue in their eyes lacking in the sky, The Northerners always open their doors to those who suffered)

I know the language injustice that the Flemings endured, let me say that my grand parents were also forced to speak French, but this has nothing to do with the Walloons, but the Belgian and French state that forced their citizens to communicate in French, as the main language. Blame the Belgian state, not the Walloons.
Furthermore do you think that the Flemish people were alone to learn French? The Walloons had their own language before the 20th century, but their ancestors had to learn French too.

Edited 3/21/2016 11:34:41

MakeBelgiumSpanishAgain

Koala get out of my thread already.

From a Dutch speaker's perspective, may I say your view is quite biased here?

My view is quite biased on on there history here:

The Belgian revolution of 1830 was the work of French republican and napoleonist exiles living in Brussels, and rebels from Liege. Together they succeeded in driving the Dutch army from Wallonia and subjugating Flanders by force. Though the revolutionaries wanted the annexation of Belgium by France, this was vetoed by Britain and the country became an independent state run by an establishment of French immigrants and Liegeois.

They eradicated the decentralised Netherlandish political traditions of the country and ran Belgium as a centralised copy of France. If Belgium had been established as a second Netherlandish state, it could probably have become a viable entity. As it was, however, the project to turn it into a second France was doomed from the beginning.

Although the majority of its people speak Dutch, Belgium has throughout its history been dominated by a French-speaking establishment. Throughout its entire history Brussels was a Dutch-speaking town, until the middle of the last century, when the deliberate “frenchification” policy of the Belgian authorities succeeded in turning it into a predominantly French-speaking city. When in the early 20th century the country gradually began to democratise, this establishment feared that the Flemings would become the rulers of the state. Hence, Belgium was federalised giving Wallonia a constitutionally guaranteed veto over all major decisions and a guaranteed share of half the seats in government and major administrations. The conservative, free-market oriented Flemings have been complaining for decades that they are forced to subsidize tens of billions every year to the Socialist south, while no improvement of the economic situation of the Walloons has been visible. On the contrary, Wallonia has become one of the most corrupt regions in Europe with hardly any economic growth.

Though Wallonia has 33% of Belgium’s population, it has 46% of its unemployed and it accounts for only 24% of Belgian GDP and 13% of its exports. 20% of the Walloons are unemployed and 40% work for the government. The only regions of Wallonia where there is an entrepreneurial spirit are the regions bordering Flanders just south of Brussels, the provinces of Namur and Luxemburg and the German municipalities (GM).

Stop saying the truth. As a Belgian, this hurts.

I kinda feel bad for Belgium. It's like the nerdy kid of Europe who gets beat up by all the bullies at some point or another.

The main incentives of the Belgian revolution was based on motivations for more freedom as well as religious motivations as Flanders and Wallonia were both mainly catholic regions, opposed to the rest of the Netherlands.

If Belgian provinces were separated from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it has nothing to do with Napoleonian exiles since in majority the Belgians from Wallonia and Flanders were against Napoleon's rule. The conspiracy theory with the French leading the revolution is wrong since the main people who revolted at the beginning were all Belgians mainly from Brabant and Brussels, places that were mainly Flemish speaking.

Another motivation was economical, because the provinces of the Netherlands were heavily indebted compared to the South or present day Belgium (1,25 billion florins debt for the North compared to 100 million for the South)

There was also a political motivation, as southern provinces were under represented in Dutch assemblies whereas demographically speaking Belgians were more numerous than the Dutch during this period (3,5million against 2million).

Some other reasons:
Lacks of freedom, particularly for the press and prohibition of all intelectual assemblies in the South as a way to control them.
Pressure by the north to have no Catholics in the government.

Wallonia is currently poorer than Flanders although this is currently changing, because it was a region dominated by industries, and greatly suffered as any European industrious region after the 70s due to mass layoffs and plant closures.
Nonetheless Wallonia was richer before this period than Flanders, that's also why you have many people with Dutch surnames in Wallonia because of immigration of Flemings looking for work in factories since the 19th century.

So of course if you do not take in count historical factors you cannot understand why Belgium was created and why French became the dominant language socially speaking in Belgium.

Edited 3/21/2016 13:07:35

why French became the dominant language socially speaking in Belgium

Has nothing to do with it. It was the Bourgeoisie responsible for this. Back in the day when Flemmish mayors spoke French in order to administrate their towns. The Flemmish Bourgeoisie spoke French to distinct them from the common men and to classify them as elite.

It was widely accepted that French was the language of the rich and Flemmish the language of the poor.

Edited 3/21/2016 14:09:35

Well by socially speaking I was talking about the elite too. The nobility and bourgeoisie were leading in the Francization of Belgium in a similar way in what happened in French regions such as Brittany or Occitania when the nobility and bourgeoisie chose French instead of their native language to be distinct from the people.

Edited 3/21/2016 13:33:29

Wallonia really is arrogant with their forced “frenchification” policy, thinking they are more elite as francophones and therefore not wanting to learn dutch. Next to that, they think there socialism is superior while there social system only exist on the grants of the Flemish economy.

Belgian Gentleman, defending Belgium is like defending this utterly wrong situation where Flanders is paying the social system of Wallonia and being Gallicised by them at the same time.

Wallonia fits better with france not only from a linguistic view, but also on political view, and Flanders would financially be better without Wallonia.

http://i.imgur.com/n62HkRt.png

Edited 3/21/2016 16:34:26

^
This is gold.

Orange did you pay attention to what I wrote? Walloons aren't responsible, the ones to blame is the Belgian state and its elites particularly the Flemish bourgeoisie who spoke French and despised Flemish. Again another Angry Dutch with truncated views. Instead of being arrogant and attacking the Walloons for no reason would you please open a history book?

Lol Clement I already saw this one, it perfectly illustrates the situation x)

Edited 3/21/2016 16:43:18

Well done, Tom Igodt, you created another topic full of prejudice. I'm failing to understand why you create lightning rods like this. Topics like these will only get you trolls and people full of prejudice. Even seemingly intelligent people made very onesided statements based on limited information, dragging everyone down into the swamps of useless internet banter.

Belgium's history and current system (including money flows) are awfully complicated and there are few black-or-white truths about the Flanders <-> Wallonia <-> Brussels interactions both current and in the past with many individual people from different communities to blame for some of it not working as it should in an ideal world while many others, from those same communities trying to work things out and often not agreeing with (some of) their political representatives. But hey, accepting a gray truth is difficult, isn't it?

In general:
(*) If one person does something wrong, it's so much easier to blame the complete ethnic, religious, linguistic, ... community they belong to, isn't it?
(*) But when someone does this, it's just so much easier defend the complete group, completely ignoring that this one person actually did something that may be unacceptable or unfair and that parts of the community may agree with this.
(*) It has been shown that, confronted with adverse opinions, people will cling to their opinion more strongly. This topic will therefore only serve its adverse effect: make people look even more negative on Belgium. So I'll finish like I started: great job creating another trainwreck, Tom Igodt.

Belgian, you're sounding like andreas now.

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/88174-buyling-warlight-against-greece?Offset=0

LOL

Thanks for this thread, Ox. Never seen it before and really should have had =)