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1 Too much on their minds
Impediments and limitations of the national cultural project in nineteenth-century Belgium
Be reassured on my account, all this foolishness does not concern us too much, us painters. Our exhibition opens on Friday.
– Gustave Courbet, letter to his father, June 1849
After gaining independence, as the result of a revolution and secession from the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830, the agents of official Belgian culture felt the urge to create a national identity and a national culture to legitimize the existence of the Belgian state. This goal, however, was difficult if not impossible to achieve. First of all, the material to work with – Belgium’s past and its cultural composition – seemed not very favourable or naturally suitable as a basis for nation-building – at least at first sight. Tara Zahra has mentioned bilingualism (or multilingualism) as one of the ‘other names’ of national indifference (Zahra, 2010: 98). Considering language as one of the core elements of a nation’s identity, nationalists have proclaimed unilingualism as the norm and multilingualism as a deviation and atavism of a ‘prenational’ condition. Belgium was – and always has been – multilingual, but this in fact has not prevented the development of a national consciousness among intellectuals in the later eighteenth century or the creation of a national culture and a patriotism based on a glorified national past. On the contrary, multilingualism was not seen as a problem but rather as a crucial part of the country’s specificity. Moreover, local and provincial identification was considered to be compatible with and supportive of the national cause. The limits of national identification were of another nature and related to the second argument I will develop. The national indifference perspective focuses on ‘ordinary people’ and questions the assumption that the intellectual vanguard set the nationalist goals and agenda with great success. In this chapter, however, I will argue that the agenda, intentions and actions of the intellectual elite were far from clear and may have been more inflected by national indifference than previously assumed. This chapter specifically deals with artists and writers who, in the nineteenth century, propagated patriotism and national consciousness in order to create a national culture and identity. Although their nationalism clearly coloured the cultural production of nineteenth-century Belgium, was promoted on a fairly large scale and was not disingenuous or fake, their national fervour covers only a (minor) part of their beliefs, motivations and considerations and explains only a (small) share of their activities and output. In the heads and the work of ‘nationalist’ authors and artists too, there was ‘national indifference’. They were engaged not only with the nation, driven not only by the urge to serve the national cause but, as I will argue, by a large variety of motives. Democratization led not only to mass politics but also to the commercialization of culture. Given the national indifference prevalent in a large part of their audience, these cultural agents were influenced by it as well. At best, artists and writers could focus only a minor part of their energy and attention on the national cause: they simply had too much else on their hands – and minds.
Dealing with a multilingual past and present
Belgium – or the Southern Netherlands, the Catholic Netherlands or the Austrian Netherlands as they were called in the eighteenth century (as part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire) – was fundamentally multilingual. This does not mean, however, that it was home to more than one ‘people’. Flemings and Walloons, as different ‘ethnies’ with a long life and history, are inventions of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Deprez and Vos, 1998; Wils, 2005; Draye, 2009). Neither was the newborn Belgian state divided into two monolingual parts. Until the eighteenth century, the Southern Netherlands consisted of principalities, like the duchy of Brabant, the counties of Flanders, Hainaut, Luxemburg, and the like, but in most of them more than one language was used. In some parts of the country, roughly the northern half, bordering the Dutch Republic, the vernacular was Nederduytsch (Lower German) – in fact Dutch or, to be more accurate, a series of Brabantine and Flemish dialects. In the southern parts of the country, bordering France, Walloon dialects were spoken, which were varieties of a romance language, linked to French, which was used as the standard written language. Even setting aside the wide range of these dialects (they often diverged among neighbouring villages), the Dutch-speaking and Walloon-speaking parts of the country were not unilingual, as French and Latin were also used by the educated and social elites.
Written culture in eighteenth-century Belgium was trilingual. Higher education (at the University of Louvain) was in Latin, which was also used in religious contexts. In the Dutch-speaking regions, a more or less standardized Dutch was used, slightly different from the written language used in the Dutch Republic (Van der Sijs and Willemyns, 2009; Vosters, Rutten and Van der Wal, 2010; Rutten and Vosters, 2011). But the main cultural language, also in the Dutch-speaking parts of the country, was French, used by social and cultural elites. This implies that most members of these elites were in fact bi- or even trilingual and used different languages depending on circumstances. This also goes for the cultural agents and writers, who often created an oeuvre consisting of publications in more than one language. If they wanted to write and publish, they chose a language according to the audience they aimed for and the goals they wanted to achieve. French was used for an international public or to address readers interested in ‘higher culture’. With Dutch, one could reach a socially broader but local public, implying that it was mainly fit for theatre, poetry to be read in public, devotional and educational reading, and religious and political propaganda. If writers wanted to optimize their reach, as was the case in the political struggle between the democrats and the traditionalists around the Brabant Revolution (1789), they did so in both languages at the same time. A number of pamphlets and the basic programmatic texts by the leaders of the political parties were published both in French and Dutch (Verschaffel, 2017: 27–32).
The multilingual character of the country was reinforced – unintentionally and paradoxically – by the successive regimes that had different and sometimes contradictory language policies. From the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, Belgium was under Austrian rule (1715–1789), independent very briefly in 1790 (as the Etats Belgiques Unis), Austrian again (1790–1792), French (1792–1793), Austrian again (1793–1794), French again (1794–1814) and finally Dutch (1815–1830), before becoming independent in 1830. The Austrian Habsburgs never aimed at a Germanification of the Southern Netherlands. In fact, they implemented a cultural policy that stimulated the ‘Belgian’ national consciousness (of the Southern Netherlands as a whole). That may seem paradoxical, but it is not in the light of the enlightened policy of Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and her son and successor Joseph II (1780–1790). They contested traditionalism and particularism in their Netherlands territories by fighting the old principalities as relics of feudalism and tried to modernize and standardize the country’s administration. These goals did not dovetail with an outspoken language policy. German was not used at all in the Southern Netherlands. In fact, the Austrian authorities in Belgium were francophone, and under the Austrian rule, the ongoing Frenchification of the social elite continued and even accelerated not because this was an objective of the government but as the more or less spontaneous result of French’s status as the language of the central administration and of the (international) République des Lettres. This stimulated the elites to use French.
The French regime and the Dutch King William I, by contrast, did indeed implement a premeditated language policy and tried to Frenchify respectively Dutchify the schooling system and to stymie the use of the other language. They did so, to be clear, only to a certain extent. It was obvious that large parts of the population did not speak or understand either French or Dutch and that the administration could not function without addressing the people in their own vernacular. Moreover, King William I’s Dutchification of the schools was confined to the Dutch-speaking parts of the country. Yet even that policy, which went against the will and the practices of the social elite in the Dutch-speaking regions, aroused opposition and resistance. Later on, the Flemish Movement would honour the Dutch king for his efforts, but he did not succeed in turning back the Frenchification of the elites. Anyway, the contradictory policies of the subsequent French and Dutch regimes did not contribute to the linguistic uniformity of the country.
The Belgian state after 1830 pursued a language policy that reinforced Frenchification, as it established French as the official language, to be used in the administration, in the judiciary and in secondary and higher education. The cultural use of Dutch (in literature and theatre) was, to some extent and somewhat reluctantly, supported by the government (Verschaffel, 2001). In the eighteenth century, Dutch had not been fully accepted as a language of culture, but in the nineteenth century this changed. This process was largely driven by the Flemish Movement, which throughout the nineteenth century was mainly cultural in scope and objectives. Even though the government was unwilling to promote Dutch as such and to accept it as an official language, it cautiously supported its cultural claims. The logic behind this was the affirmation of Belgian identity as distinct from France, the country’s politically and culturally most influential neighbour. The multilingual character of the country, its Flemish history (the glorious past of late mediaeval Flanders as the backbone and golden age of national history), and the combination of Germanic and Romance elements justified the existence and the uniqueness of Belgium. In the national grand narrative, France, much more than the weakened and harmless Netherlands, was cast in the role of the archenemy (Verschaffel, 2012). To create this story, Belgian historians appropriated the history of (the mediaeval county of ) Flanders. The Battle of the Gulden Spurs of July 11, 1302, the mythic victory of Flanders (and its allies) over France, was a powerful symbol of Belgian courage and freedom before it became an exclusively Flemish and ultimately anti-Belgian symbol (July 11 now being Flanders’ official holiday) (Tollebeek, 1995; Nörtemann, 2002; Tollebeek, 2002).
The Belgian national project had to take this history and multilingualism into account. By the end of the nineteenth century, this would be linked to the ‘crossroads myth’: the idea that Belgian identity and soul (l’âme belge) derive from its position as a crossroads of cultures – “situated at the confluence of France and Germany, in their zone of reciprocal penetration” – (Picard, 1897: 93) – and as a small-scale model of Europe as a whole. Henri Pirenne, Belgium’s most famous national historian, described Belgian culture as “a fusion of Romanism and Germanism. It is neither French nor German, but it derives from the civilization of France and that of Germany. It is independent of them, but incomplete without them” (Pirenne, 1899: 105). The country’s bilingualism was not an anomaly but precisely the expression of its very soul and therefore of its identity and unity. It was the project of the Flemish sub-nation later on that would initiate the evolution towards the division of the country in monolingual regions and finally sub-states. In accordance with the nationalist strategies revealed by the national indifference literature, unilingualism was imposed as the core of (sub)national identity and the country’s bilingualism dismissed as ‘proof’ of Belgium’s weakness as a nation state. This has remained an argument of Flemish nationalists to this day.
The construction of compatibility
From the 1830s on, an ambitious cultural, nation-building project was set up, based on a well established national narrative (Tollebeek, 1998; Tollebeek, 2010). It was popularized by means of a large-scale campaign of national history books, statues, historical theatre, history painting in public buildings, and mass events like historical pageants, which were typical for the country and a popular part of national and local public celebrations (Viaene, 1959; Hartmann, 1976; Verschaffel, 1996). The study of nineteenth-century Belgian culture and cultural nationalism has very much focused on this campaign and its expressions and has probably overrated its influence or at least neglected to question its impact, as the recent literature on national has done. The national project was meant to foster national identification and to supersede older loyalties to the old principalities and local entities, but the question remains open as to what extent this actually happened.
The authorities and intellectuals were aware of the persistence of these older affinities. They did not contest or ignore them but tried to incorporate them in order to secure and amplify national loyalty. Local, regional and national identifications were not treated as contradictory but as compatible and complementary. The French regime had dismantled the old principalities and replaced them by départements named after rivers. The Dutch regime and the Belgian state accepted the new divisions (as provinces) but renamed them by recuperating the former names of the old principalities, thus constructing historical continuity. The past of these old provinces was considered as a part of and a contribution to the national story as a whole. A shining example of that was the historical pageant that marched through the streets of Brussels in 1856, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the state’s independence or, to be more precise, of the enthronement of King Leopold I (Conscience, 1856; Verschaffel, 1996; Janssens, 2001). The pageant consisted of a series of impressive floats, each of which was organized and paid for by one of the nine provinces. Each section thus presented one episode of national history, which at the same time was linked to the specific past of the province. Thus every province honoured its own specific history, representing this as a contribution to and an essential part of national history. To a large extent this national history was an aggregate of the provincial heritages.
Statues too appealed to several levels of collective identity at once. They were erected in large numbers throughout the country (Van Lennep, 1990; Van Lennep and Derom, 2000; Seberechts, 2003; Tollebeek and Verschaffel, 2004). Belgium’s ‘statuomania’ was the result of an intentional national policy, more precisely of a royal decree of 1835, instructing the erection of monuments to bring the national past literally to the streets and squares. The government did not pay for these statues. Generally, they were commissioned by local authorities and local cultural associations. Most of the statues were dedicated to figures from the cultural past (mostly painters, as the country glorified them more than others) and heroes who were remembered for having fought for freedom. They all were honoured as forefathers of the Belgians and as glorious protagonists of the national story, but, of course, their monuments were situated in the cities where they had been born or had lived. Again, they celebrated the national as well as the local past, and cities prided themselves on the fact that they had made a significant contribution to the national past.
Not much more than a touch of nationalism?
How public opinion and the population handled the confrontation with these expressions of national pride, how they reacted, and to what extent they were indeed affected or did hold on to local and provincial affinities largely remains to be studied (see Van Ginderachter, 2018). Indications can be found in the (relatively limited) space of nationalist cultural propaganda and in the works of cultural agents, more precisely those who were popular or addressed a popular audience. The best known and most obvious example is Hendrik Conscience (1812–1883), the most prolific and popular novelist writing in Dutch in nineteenth-century Belgium. Even though his work is hardly read today, he is still considered an important writer mainly because he was the first Flemish novelist to write systematically in Dutch, and he was thus the founder of Flemish literature. He is also the author of The Lion of Flanders (1839), a romantic novel in the vein of Walter Scott that founded the popularity of the Battle of the Golden Spurs (the Battle of Courtrai of July 11, 1302), the central historic myth of Flanders. For these reasons, Conscience has long been considered (and by some still is) as a pivotal figure in the rise of Flemish ethnic awareness, even though for him (as was the case for all Flemish militants of his generation), the cult of Flemish history and language supported his Belgian patriotism (Gobbers, 1990; Nörtemann, 2001; Leerssen, 2012: 122–4).
What is of relevance here, though, is that the focus on Conscience as a founder of national self-consciousness and identity (be it Belgian and/or Flemish), provides a highly reduced and distorted image of his work and public activity. The literature on national indifference has tended to concentrate on ‘ordinary people’, thus neglecting the fact that national indifference was also an attribute of middle-class people and even of nationalist militants. Above all, Conscience was a prolific, popular and bestselling author. He was one of the few nineteenth-century Belgians, if not the only one, who got a statue while s...
