MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Belgium

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Belgium, on the map of history

What was Belgium before it was Belgium? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Belgica (mod. Belgium) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

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Flanders & Lorraine (mod. Belgium) · The Crusades, 1095–1291

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Austrian Netherlands (mod. Belgium) · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

The Austrian Netherlands rehearsed revolution in 1789, spent the age annexed to France (learning its Code and its industry — the continent’s first industrial economy), was assigned to Holland at Vienna, and seceded by revolution in 1830. Its 1831 constitution became continental liberalism’s model text, and its guaranteed neutrality a famous scrap of paper.

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Belgium · The Great War, 1914–1918

The neutral whose invasion defined the war’s morality tale. Its army held the Yser corner of unoccupied Belgium for four years while the rest lived under an occupation of requisition, forced labor deportations and the atrocities of 1914 (Louvain, Ch. 2). Its African colony, the Congo, fought too — and took German East Africa’s Ruanda-Urundi at the peace.

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Belgium · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Belgium · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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