1302 Mittelalter
Battle of the Golden Spurs
Flemish communal militias crush the French chivalry: an assertion of urban power.
Kingdom of Belgium
A crossroads of the Latin and Germanic worlds, Belgium hosts the Union's institutions and carries Europe's dividing line in its very languages.
Today's linguistic frontier roughly follows the old limit of Romanisation. The Flemish cities of Bruges and Ghent were, with northern Italy, the second urban heartland of medieval Christendom; the Flemish Primitives reinvented religious painting there.
A Roman province under the name Gallia Belgica, the region became in the Middle Ages a string of principalities and cloth towns among the richest in Europe. Burgundians then Habsburgs aggregated territories that the Reformation would durably split between a Protestant north and a Catholic south.
Independence in 1830 created a neutral buffer state guaranteed by the powers. Its neutrality was violated in 1914 and again in 1940, making the country twice the battlefield of Europe.
After 1945 Belgium made the opposite wager: Paul-Henri Spaak was one of the architects of the Treaty of Rome, and Brussels became the seat of the Commission, the Council and NATO. Six state reforms meanwhile turned the unitary country into a federation.
1302 Mittelalter
Flemish communal militias crush the French chivalry: an assertion of urban power.
1432 Renaissance und Reformationen
In Ghent Van Eyck completes the altarpiece that inaugurates oil painting and the Northern Renaissance.
1830 Frühe Neuzeit
The Brussels revolution creates a constitutional kingdom, neutral and guaranteed by the powers.
1914 Zeitgeschichte
The German invasion brings the United Kingdom into the war and freezes the Yser front.
1949 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
Ten states found in London the first European political organisation, matrix of the Convention on Human Rights.
1951 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
Six states create the European Coal and Steel Community, the continent’s first supranational institution.
1957 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
The EEC and Euratom are established; the common market and the four freedoms are laid down.
1957 Europäischer Aufbau
Belgian Paul-Henri Spaak drafts the preparatory text of the Treaties of Rome.
1968 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
Internal tariffs disappear eighteen months ahead of schedule.
1985 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
Five states sign on the Moselle an agreement progressively abolishing internal border controls.
1992 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
The European Union is created, with European citizenship and the timetable for the single currency.
1993 Zeitgeschichte
The fourth state reform enshrines in the Constitution a federal state of communities and regions.
1999 Europäischer Aufbau war beteiligt
Eleven currencies are irrevocably fixed; the European Central Bank takes up its functions.
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