Low Countries
The Low Countries, the historical region of
de Nederlanden, are the countries on low-lying land around the
delta of the
Rhine,
Scheldt, and
Meuse rivers. The term is not particularly current in modern contexts because the region does not very exactly correspond with the sovereign states of
The Netherlands,
Belgium and
Luxembourg, for which an alternate term, the
Benelux was applied after
World War II.
Before early modern nation building, the Low Countries referred to a wide area of northern Europe roughly stretching from
Dunkirk at its southwestern point to the area of
Schleswig-Holstein at its northeastern point, from the
estuary of the
Scheldt in the south to
Frisia in the north.
Encyclopedia
The
Low Countries, the historical region of
de Nederlanden, are the countries on low-lying land around the
delta of the
Rhine,
Scheldt, and
Meuse rivers. The term is not particularly current in modern contexts because the region does not very exactly correspond with the sovereign states of
The Netherlands,
Belgium and
Luxembourg, for which an alternate term, the
Benelux was applied after
World War II.
Before early modern nation building, the Low Countries referred to a wide area of northern Europe roughly stretching from
Dunkirk at its southwestern point to the area of
Schleswig-Holstein at its northeastern point, from the
estuary of the
Scheldt in the south to
Frisia in the north. The Low Countries were the scene of the early northern towns, built from scratch rather than developed from ancient centres, that mark the reawakening of
Europe in the
12th century.
A collection of several regions rather than one homogeneous region, all of the low countries still shared a great number of similarities.
- Most were coastal regions bounded by the North Sea or the English Channel. The countries not having access to the sea politically and economically linked to the ones that had so as to form one union of port and hinterland. A poetic description also calls the region "the Low Countries by the Sea"
- Most spoke Middle Dutch out of which later would evolve Dutch. However some regions, such as the Bishopric of Liège or the Walloon Flanders around Cambrai, Lille, Mons and Namur
- Namur in a Belgian context:
...
, where French was the dominant language are often considered as part of the Low Countries as well.
- Most of them depended on a lord or count in name only, the cities effectively being ruled by guilds and councils and although in theory part of a kingdom, their interaction with their rulers was regulated by a strict set of liberties describing what the latter could and could not expect from them.
- All of them depended on trade and manufacturing and encouraging the free flow of goods and craftsmen.
Of particular importance for the cities was the manufacture and trade of woollen cloth, Europe's first industry. Cities that grew around this trade included Liège,
Leuven,
Mechelen,
Antwerp,
Brussels,
Ypres,
Ghent,
Leiden and Utrecht.
In 1477 the
Burgundian holdings in the area, the
Burgundian Netherlands passed through an heiress
Mary of Burgundy to the
Habsburgs. In the following century the "Low Countries" corresponded roughly to the
Seventeen Provinces covered by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 of
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which freed the provinces from their archaic feudal obligations. After the Seventeen Provinces declared their independence from
Habsburg Spain, the provinces of the
Southern Netherlands were recaptured and are sometimes called the
Spanish Netherlands.
In 1713, under the Treaty of Utrecht following the
War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to
Austria and thus became known as the
Austrian Netherlands. The
United Kingdom of the Netherlands temporarily united the Low Countries again.
In English, the plural form
Netherlands is used for the present-day country, but in Dutch that plural has been dropped, with the pleasant side-effect that one can thus distinguish between the older, larger Netherlands and the current country. So
Nederland is used for the modern nation and
de Nederlanden for the domains of Charles V. However, the plural term "Koninkrijk der Nederlanden" still is the official Dutch name of the realm.
See also
