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The period of Spanish rule was marked by the division of the Low Countries between the northern United Provinces and the southern Netherlands, approximating to today's Belgium and including most of Flanders. The southern Spanish half passed to the Austrian Habsburgs in 1714 as a reward for their acceptance of a Bourbon succession to the Spanish throne following the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg line.
Although arts remained for another century at an impressive level with Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640, returned to Antwerp at age 6), Flanders experienced a loss of its former economic and intellectual power under Spanish, Austrian and French rule, with heavy taxation and rigid imperial political control compounding the effects of industrial stagnation and Spanish-Dutch and Franco-Austrian conflict.
Conquered by revolutionary France in 1794 and annexed the following year as the départements of Lys and Scheldt, Flanders was attached to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 but became a part of the kingdom of Belgium in 1831 following the revolution of the previous year.
After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814 (confirmed the following year at the Battle of Waterloo near Brussels), sovereignty over the Southern Netherlands -- Belgium -- was given by the Congress of Vienna ( 1815) to the rulers of the Northern provinces of the " Low Countries". The Protestant King of the Netherlands, William I succeeded in rapidly starting the industrialisation of the Southern Netherlands, but failed to maintain good relations with the larger and rebellious Catholic provinces. The Belgian bourgeoisie was not only Catholic, as opposed to the Protestant north, but they also spoke French, instead of Dutch. Resentment grew both among Catholics and among the powerful liberal bourgeoisie.
In 1830, a street revolution in Brussels led to the splitting up of the two countries. Belgium was confirmed as an independent state by the London Conference of 1831, but deprived of the military strongholds of Maastricht and Givet (explaining those surprising indentations in the Belgian border) Sovereignty over Zeeuws Vlaanderen, south of the Scheldt river delta, was left with the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which closed this river for any sea traffic to and from Antwerp harbour until 1863.
Although the majority of the population of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium was and is Dutch-speaking, French was imposed as the unique official language by its upper-class on administration, business, cultural and religious affairs. The Francofication of public life, started during the French occupation, was intensified in the early Belgian period. Ruled by a French-speaking minority (of just 30,000 census-voters for around 3 million Belgians in 1830, all 30,000 being French-speakers), all schools and universities in Flanders had to switch to French, leading to paradoxes as Dutch-speaking teachers speaking French to Dutch-speaking pupils, or Dutch-speaking teachers around Brussels being replaced on short notice with French-speaking teachers who then were unable to communicate with their Dutch-speaking pupils. Moreover, pupils were punished when they spoke their native language. The population of Brussels, a Flemish city by origin and the capital of Belgium, saw an increase in its French-speaking populace. During the 20th century, French became the language spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of Brussels.
However, a cultural and political movement claiming of a "revival of Flemish culture and identity" emerged during the 19th and 20th centuries (see also Flemish emancipation movement). This lead first to the option (and soon obligation) of using Dutch in public life in Flanders starting at the end of the 19th century; the reintroduction of Dutch in schools and universities in the 1930s; the University of Ghent adopted Dutch as language of instruction in 1930; the relocation of the biggest French-speaking university (the French-speaking part of University of Louvain) from Flanders into Wallonia in 1968; and the installation of a federal state structure with a Flemish government during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Emancipation of Flemings in Brussels happened much later. Only in the 60’s, legislation was established on correct and equal treatment of both Dutch-speakers and French-speakers in Brussels, but today, the implementation of these laws is still a major problem. As an illustration, around 1990 the Brussels regional government had to officially acknowledge that until then, social housing in the Brussels region was reserved exclusively for those submitting an application in French.
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