On several occasions, Belgian general strikes escalated into violence. In , soldiers fired on the striking crowd, killing several. Karl Marx wrote, "There exists but one country in the civilised world where every strike is eagerly and joyously turned into a pretext for the official massacre of the Working Class. That country of single blessedness is Belgium! Nevertheless, Belgium created a welfare net particularly early, thanks in part to the trade unions. Sickness compensation was established in , voluntary old-age insurance in and unemployment insurance in , achieving good coverage nationwide much more quickly than its neighbours.
In the government rejected a proposal for universal male suffrage. Violent confrontations broke out with the Garde Civique the Civil Guard or militia around the country, as in Mons , where several strikers were killed. Violence escalated. The government soon backed down, and passed male universal suffrage but reduced its impact by creating plural votes based on wealth, education and age. Again in and there were general strikes aimed at forcing electoral reform and ending the system of plural voting.
After the strike a commission was created and was expected to remove plural voting — but implementation was delayed by the German invasion of Belgium. In , King Albert forged a post-war "Government of National Union" and brought about one man, one vote universal male suffrage. The last restrictions on women's voting were only lifted in Artistic and literary culture in Belgium began a revival towards the late 19th century. Particularly, among Walloons with the new French language literary and artistic review La Jeune Belgique. A core element of Belgian nationalism was the scientific study of its national history.
The movement was led by Godefroid Kurth — , a student of the German historian Ranke. The most prominent Belgian historian was Henri Pirenne — , who was influenced by this method during his period as a student of Kurth. At the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, monumental Historicism and Neoclassicism dominated the urban Belgian landscape, particularly in government buildings, between the s and s. Nevertheless, Brussels became one of the major European cities for the development of the Art Nouveau style in the late s.
The architects Victor Horta , Paul Hankar , and Henry van de Velde became particularly famous for their designs, many of which survive today in Brussels. Horta's largest work, the Maison du Peuple was demolished in Stanard rejects the widely held notion that Belgians were "reluctant imperialists. Belgians not only sustained the empire in significant ways, but many became convinced imperialists, evidenced by the widespread, enduring and eagerly embraced propaganda in favor of the Congo.
King Leopold II of Belgium had been the principal shareholder in the Belgian trading company which established trading stations on the lower Congo between and It was originally intended to be an international Free Trade zone, open to all European traders. The era of the Congo Free State is most infamous for the large number of atrocities committed under it.
Since it was, in effect, a business venture, run by a private company headed by Leopold himself, it aimed to gain as much money as possible from primary exports from the territory. Leopold's personal fortune was greatly increased through the proceeds of selling Congolese rubber, which had never previously been mass-produced in such surplus quantities, to the growing market for tyres.
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During the period between and , as many as eight million Congolese died of exploitation and disease while the birth rate dropped. To enforce the rubber quotas, the Force Publique FP was created. While the Force Publique was nominally a military force — it would later fight during both the First and Second World Wars -during the Congo Free State period its primary duties involved enforcing rubber quotas in rural areas.
If a village did not meet the rubber quota which had been set, soldiers were often sent to the respective village, and numerous measures could be adopted to enforce the taxes: rape, abduction, forced labor, executions.
Imprisonment and summary executions were common. Severing of limbs was sometimes used by the Force Publique as a method of enforcing the quotas. Following reports from missionaries, there was growing moral outrage, particularly in Britain and the United States. The Congo Reform Association , led by Edmund Dene Morel , was particularly important in this campaign, and published numerous best-selling tracts and pamphlets including Red Rubber which reached a vast public. King Leopold appointed and financed his own commission to put these accusations to rest, but it too confirmed the atrocities.
The Belgian parliament long refused to take over the colony, which was considered a financial burden. In , the Belgian parliament responded to the international pressure, annexing the Free State, as the campaigners had argued for. After World War II, Belgium was criticized by the United Nations for making no progress on the political front, in contrast with other contemporary colonial states.
Despite propaganda campaigns within Belgium, few Belgians showed much interest in the colony; very few went there, and imperial enthusiasm was never widespread. Also, the government limited the possibility of Congolese settling inside Belgium. At the Round Table Talks on independence , Belgium requested a process of gradual independence over 4 years, [84] but following a series of riots in , the decision was made to bring forward independence in matter of months. The chaos in which Belgium departed the Congo caused [85] the secession of rich Western-backed province Katanga and the prolonged civil war known as the Congo Crisis.
The Belgian Tianjin Concession in China was established in There was little investment and no settlement.
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However it led to a contract to supply an electric light and trolley system. In , Tianjin became the first city in China with a modern public transportation system. The supply of electricity and lighting and the trolley business were profitable ventures. All the rolling stock was supplied by Belgian industries and by , the network also reached nearby Austrian, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian concessions. The colony was administered in a similar way as by the former German administrators, continuing policies such as ethnic identity cards.
In , the Rwandan Revolution occurred and Belgium changed the appointments of chiefs and vice-chiefs to promote Hutus into the posts. Ruanda-Urundi gained independence in and its two regions, Rwanda and Burundi , separated. The threat to France caused Britain to enter the war; it used the agreement as justification. The Belgian army is remembered for their stubborn resistance during the early days of the war, with the army — around a tenth the size of the Germany Army — holding up the German offensive for nearly a month, giving the French and British forces time to prepare for the Marne counteroffensive later in the year.
The German invaders treated any resistance—such as sabotaging rail lines—as illegal and subversive, and shot the offenders and burned buildings in retaliation. Belgium had a prosperous economy in at the start of the war but after four years of occupation, it emerged in a poor state; although Belgium itself had suffered few deaths. The Germans had "brutally and efficiently stripped the country bare. Machinery, spare parts, whole factories including the roofs, had disappeared eastward.
In , 80 percent of its workforce was unemployed. Belgian soldiers fought delaying actions in during the initial invasion. King Albert I stayed in the Yser as commander of the military to lead the army while Broqueville's government withdrew to nearby Le Havre in France. Belgian units continued to serve on the front until Forces from the Belgian Congo also played a major role in the African Campaign and a small unit of Belgian soldiers also served on the Eastern Front.
The Germans governed the occupied areas of Belgium through a General Governorate of Belgium , while a small area of the country remained unoccupied by the Germans. The whole country was ruled under martial law. The German army executed between 5, [87] and 6, [88] French and Belgian civilians between August and November , usually in near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German officers. Individuals suspected of partisan activities were summarily shot. Flemish feeling of identity and consciousness grew through the events and experiences of war. The German occupying authorities viewed the Flemish as an oppressed people and had taken several Flemish-friendly measures, known as Flamenpolitik.
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This included introducing Dutch as the language of instruction of all state-supported schools in Flanders in The Flemish Frontbeweging Soldiers' Movement was formed from Flemish soldiers in the Belgian army to campaign for greater use of Dutch language in education and government, though not separatist. The Germans left Belgium stripped and barren. Over a 1.
There was never a violent resistance movement, but there was a large-scale spontaneous passive resistance of refusal to work for the benefit of German victory. Belgium was heavily industrialized; while farms operated and small shops stayed open most large establishments shut down or drastically reduced their output. The faculty closed the universities; many publishers shut down their newspapers.
Most Belgians "turned the four war years into a long and extremely dull vacation," says Kossmann. Germany then stripped the factories of all useful machinery, and used the rest as scrap iron for its steel mills. Belgium faced a food crisis and an international response was organized by the American engineer Herbert Hoover. The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CN to distribute, and watched over the CN to make sure the German army didn't appropriate the food.
The CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads. At its peak, the American arm, the ARA fed Great Britain grew reluctant to support the CRB, preferring instead to emphasize Germany's obligation to supply the relief; Winston Churchill led a military faction that considered the Belgian relief effort "a positive military disaster.
King Albert returned as a war hero, leading the victorious army and acclaimed by the population. In contrast, the government and the exiles came back discreetly. Belgium had been devastated—not so much by combat, but rather by German seizure of valuable machinery. Only 81 operable locomotives remained, out of the 3, available in More than , houses had been destroyed, as well as more than , hectares , acres of farmland. Waves of popular violence accompanied liberation in November and December and the government responded through the judicial punishment of collaboration with the enemy conducted between and Shop windows were broken and houses sacked, men were harassed, and women's heads were shaved.
Manufacturers who had closed their businesses sought the severe repression of those who had pursued their activities. Journalists who had boycotted and stopped writing called for harsh treatment of the newspapers that submitted to German censorship. Many people stigmatized profiteers and demanded justice. Thus in , Belgium was already confronted with the problems associated with occupation that most European countries only discovered at the end of World War II. However, despite the status quo, Belgium recovered surprisingly quickly.
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The first postwar Olympic Games were held in Antwerp in In , Luxembourg formed a customs union with Belgium. An opportunity was given to the population to "oppose" against the transfer by signing a petition, which gathered few signatures, in large part thanks to intimidation by local authorities, and all regions remain part of Belgium today.
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Belgian requests to annex territory considered as historically theirs, from the Dutch, who were perceived as collaborators, was denied. Between and , Belgian and French soldiers were sent to the Ruhr in Germany to force the German government to agree to continue reparation payments. The Occupation of the Ruhr led the Dawes Plan which allowed the German government more leniency in paying reparations. As late as , when independence arrived, fewer than natives had gone beyond secondary school.
The policy was one of low-cost paternalism, as explained by Belgium's special representative to the Trusteeship Council: "The real work is to change the African in his essence, to transform his soul, [and] to do that one must love him and enjoy having daily contact with him. He must be cured of his thoughtlessness, he must accustom himself to living in society, he must overcome his inertia.
Belgian Surrealist art grew during the inter-war period. Paul Delvaux was also an extremely influential painter in this genre. Comic strips became extremely popular in Belgium during the s.