If nationalism and internationalism were intertwined, how did these connections play out in the national arena? The Belgian case sheds a great deal of light on this question. The nature and force of Belgian nationalism have long been subjects of debate. Some people have questioned the extent to which Belgians truly experienced ‘nationhood’ and have pointed to rival identities based on language, class and religion.¹⁰ In contrast, the late historian Jean Stengers emphasised the strength of national sentiment as expressed in the Belgian Revolution of 1830.¹¹ Further studies have traced a common sense of identity back to earlier historical episodes, for instance the Brabant Revolution of 1789–90.¹² While independent statehood provided a focus for national feelings, divisions along cultural and linguistic lines were already apparent before the First World War. During the interwar years, the dominance of the French language in politics and education was a source of increasing tensions, as highlighted by the electoral performance of the radical Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Alliance) in 1936. However, these conflicts did not tear the country into two, as they were mediated by other dividing lines, notably the social question and the tensions between Catholics and liberals. Indeed, even in the period when language-based antagonism gained traction, socialists such as Hendrik de Man and Louis Piérard suggested that the underlying tensions were of a social, rather than national, nature; they pointed at divisions between the Flemish population and French-speaking elites in Antwerp and Ghent to support such arguments.¹³ This chapter shows how intellectuals redefined a potential source of instability – namely a population comprised of two major cultural groups – as an asset, engendering the notion of Belgians as a particularly ‘international’ people.

One way of tracing the development of these representations is through historiography: after all, national histories formed a cornerstone of nationbuilding, and Belgium was no exception.¹⁷ Owing to Belgium’s short history of independent statehood, such endeavours performed a legitimising role, seeking to demonstrate that Belgian statehood was more than a historical accident. In 1900, the doyen of Belgian historians, Henri Pirenne, published the first volume of his Histoire de Belgique. Its narrative began in medieval Europe; the Ghent historian thus sought to trace the emergence of a distinct ‘Belgian civilisation’ whose character derived from the unity of its social life. To Pirenne, ‘this Belgium, divided ethnographically between the Roman race and the Germanic race, in the same way as it is politically located between France and Germany’, appeared as a Western European ‘microccosm’.¹⁸ The country had emerged as a particularly suitable place for international encounters as the Belgians themselves combined ‘the spirit of two races’: