History and Belgian identity

Our intention has not been simply to retrace the history of this young country in its present form, but to attempt to grasp, via the past, the way in which Belgians understand their country.

History bears witness to the slow growth to maturity of a consciousness. It is important to trace the profile of this consciousness. Belgians give, first and foremost, the image of a national consciousness attached to a landscape -- the North Sea with its grays and ochres, or the dense forests of the Ardennes -- and to a certain way of life. Belgians remain unconcerned by the destiny of nations. A Belgian is more attached to his region, to the city which gives it its heartbeat, and to the countryside which gives it its colors. When describing his country, the Belgian will define it in negative terms, talking of the "Country where you never arrive" (Pierre Mertens), drawing a picture of what Belgium is not, as in Luc de Heusch's "This is not Belgium", or boasting, with a disillusioned pride, of the "Grief of the Belgians" (Hugo Claus).

What is essentially Belgian may well be this ability to affirm oneself by a summation of frustrations. In Belgium, tolerance takes this strange form of self-derision. Belgium's historic memory closely conditions its culture. This mechanism, in itself, has a symbolic value. It projects Belgium's historic destiny onto human beings: a country of "irregulars", which finds its shape only with the movement of the larger states enclosing it. Belgium's fate has never been the primary concern, it is settled in the final lines of a Treaty, providing the keystone of continuously changing balance, the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle which imposes on it its perpetual neutrality and its European destiny.

A country of memories which has long time dreamed of an Empire of the Center, a country of traditions, culture and craftsmanship, devoid of nationalist dreams and chauvinist ambitions; a country of the via media, a historic mirage which, scarcely formed, began to disintegrate ... like those sand castles which Flemish and Walloon children build between the sky and the sea to scan the horizon for a destiny which exchanges the weight of statehood for the adventure of a Europe of the regions.