Early settlement to the sixteenth century
Brussels takes its name from Broekzele, or "village of the marsh", the community which grew up beside the wide and shallow River Senne in the sixth century, reputedly around a chapel built here by St Géry, a French bishop sent here to...
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The Reformation and the Revolt against Spain
The Reformation was a religious revolt that stood sixteenth-century Europe on its head. The first stirrings were in the welter of debate that spread across much of western Europe under the auspices of theologians like Erasmus , who...
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The Spanish Netherlands
Parma was surprisingly generous in victory, but the city's weavers, apprentices and skilled workers - the bedrock of Calvinism - still fled north to escape the new Catholic regime, fuelling an economic boom in the province of Holland. The migration badly...
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The Austrian Netherlands
The transfer of the country from Spanish to Austrian control made little appreciable difference: a remote imperial authority continued to operate through an appointed governor in Brussels and the country as a whole remained poor and backward....
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French occupation and the Kingdom of the Netherlands
The new and repressive Habsburg regime was short-lived. French Republican armies brushed the imperial forces aside in 1794, and the Austrian Netherlands were annexed the following year, an annexation that was to last until 1814. The French ...
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Independent Belgium
Léopold I (1830-65) was careful to maintain his country's neutrality and encouraged an industrial boom that saw coal mines developed, iron-making factories established and the rapid expansion of the railway system. His successor, Léopold II ...
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The twentieth century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Brussels was a thriving metropolis which took a progressive lead in a country that was determined to keep on good terms with all the great powers. Nonetheless, Belgium could not prevent getting caught up in ...
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