Could the United Netherlands have survived 1830? What impact might it have had on Europe?

[Parma]

I am skeptical about this. Unless we are going to assume a complete marginalization of Francophones—something that I think we may not be able to have, at least if we are to keep the industrialization of Wallonia on track—you would still have south of the language frontier a situation where the local population was almost wholly Romance-speaking and where French had been the established prestige language since the immemorial. There is too much momentum to easily overcome, and even larger Dutch-speaking minorities moving to predominantly Francophone communities would still be minorities.



That would be a lot of Dutch-speakers, IIRC well over a million, with more than a million migrants coming. Is that likely? And why would they not assimilate, as individuals, in much the same way that (say) native speakers of Swiss German did into French Switzerland?

You could make things worse, but that would need a decidedly anti-Francophone shift. Is that necessarily likely, especially if the Dutch monarchical state does.not try to overthrow the established and largely Francophone elites of the south?



What mechanism do you suggest for this?

The industralisation of Wallonia will continue, no matter what, this is an economic factor not a matter of language.
Francophones will not be marginalized, this is not possible since it is the language of the upper class, also in the North in the first halve of the 19th century and beyond. However it will get out of fashion during this century and in the South possible faster as in OTL.

During the 19th century there was a very large migration from the rural area's to the industrializing cities. In this united Kingdom where in the South the Dutch language is NOT marginalized as in OTL the origin of the migrants will not only be the Flemish provinces but also the rural provinces of the North like North Brabant, Gelderland, Zeeland and Overijsel.
In the South the industry was not only concentrated in cities like Mons, Liege and Charleroi but also in small existing hamlets or new villages close to the coal pits. This will turn small mining communities faster in Dutch speaking towns, if the majority of the inhabitants will be Dutch speakers, combined with Dutch speaking Clergy. And yes this migration will be very large.

The early industrialization of Belgium in OTL was impressive but it will have a multiplying factor in an United Netherlands. Nearly every thing would have a multiplying factor in a United Netherlands compared to individual nations of Belgium and Netherland.

Any how there will be no marginalization of Wallon in a United Netherlands since there are no suppressing language rules or laws as in OTL Belgium with Dutch.
Brussel will remain a Dutch speaking city, no marginalization of Dutch. Brussel will grow over time as the main capital city.
Several factor will contribute to this; Willem II preferred Brussel over the Hague, and a growing and more complexing State apparatus.
A Dutch speaking Brussel in combination with a migration from North to South where the migrants can keep there language will gradually shift the language border. Even this will not be a clear line , over time cities as Mons and Charleroi could become cities were Dutch will be more dominant, more or less as happend in OTL with Brussel. A city as Liege and Namur on the other hand would most likely remain Waloon.

 

[Parma]

More interesting question will be, what impact would a United Netherlands have on Europe.
- 1840 Rhine Crisses
- 1848 First German- Danish war (Schleswig war)
- 1853 Crimenian war
- 1864 Second Schleswig war
- 1866 Prussian-Austrian war
- German unification under Prussia
- Italian unification
- Emperor Napoleon III ( NO Luxembourg crisis since Luxembourg is undivided and connected with the Kingdom, contrary OTL)
- Numerous small, local, colonial wars
- Dutch attempt to buy parts of Portuguese possessions in Africa, Mozambique and Angola
- Dutch mingling in Boer Republics
- Growing naval fleet and army in the second halve of the 19th century

 

[Sarthak]

Luxembourg is bigger. Belgium doesn't take a good bite out of it.

 

[Thomas1195]

No, not going to happen. Liberal and moderate protestants yes, but the straight forward Calvinist will not allying with liberals in the 19th century.
Moderate Catholics and moderate Protestant are more likely to support each other in mutual religious questions.

In Germany, Liberals and Protestants did ally with each other in the early phases of Kulturkampf IOTL. But maybe the relations between Dutch Catholics and Protestants were different.

 

[Xavier]

I do not think that the Frenchification of Brussels will happen, not with Dutch becoming a language of power and prestige and not with Brussels becoming merely a regional centre. A Brussels that began the 19th century with Dutch being the native language of the population will likely end the century with Dutch being the main language of public life.

I am much more skeptical about the idea of the language frontier changing. It is very difficult to imagine French being displaced from the Walloon territories as a language of prestige. More, even if you do get larger numbers of Flemish moving south to industrial Wallonia, why would they not assimilate just as OTL? Belgian immigrants—probably mostly Flemish—formed local majorities in some cities in French Nord, but they failed utterly to reverse the decline of Dutch there.

Aye, you'd be surprised how many current Walloon politicians have Flemish surnames, but none of them ever spoke Dutch at home. I can't see the language borders move much here, except for Brussels.

I'm of the opinion that the rural lanjguage borders will likely stay pretty much as they are in 1830, meaning a Luxembourg German will be spoken slighly further west. Where we would see a difference is in urban areas The Walloons had a low birthrate compared to Dutch, Flemish anf Germans. In OTL the Flemish (and German) immigrants people migrating to them was assimilated into French language. But here the state would push against this plus the industry would be much bigger with a united Dutch-Belgian market which also include Indonesia and if the Dutch here establish border with the Boer Republics also they would likely also be part of their market.

We could very likely enter a 20th century where half the population of Wallonia speak Dutch as their main language and the language border pretty much look the same as in 1830, the major changes would be the growing urbanisation resulting in a increasing Dutch population.

Amnother important aspect is if the Dutch push Dutch as sole school language, we will likely see a greater survival of the Walloon language versus standard French.

The only way the decendants of Flemish/Dutch immigrants in Wallonia get to keep Dutch as their main language is to have Dutch primary and secondary schools in Wallonia. While OTL Belgium did have this the other way around (though not for internal immigrants, but for the French speaking, but natively Flemish bourgeoisie), it would take a few generations before the Dutch could safely try this, on a small scale, without risking a revolt. Making Dutch the sole school language, no matter how long after 1830, will lead to a revolt.

Moving on to other matters, the surviving Koninkrijk der Nederlanden will obviously not be treaty-bound to be neutral as was Belgium, nor have the same Belgium as a buffer like the OTL Dutch, so there will be no other choice but to spend much more on defence to make France/Prussia think twice about attacking.

More money and manpower from the North, the Luxemburghian iron being within the same borders, plus less resistance against German immigration, should indeed also mean an even more industrialised South than OTL

OTOH, by 1914 the population will be ~15 million, maybe 16 and a bit if there is a lot of French/German immigration, whle France is somewhere around 42M IIRC, and Germany is at 65M, so no Great Power ambitions. Most likely, the Dutch will either play the big two off against each other, or feel more comfortable with one of them and ally against the other. The odds are thus pretty good for a Dutch-Prussian alliance at some point. Once that happens, France is pretty much toast in the next war, though the Dutch will really, really, really not want the British to intervene on the French side. The diplomatic dance of alliances would be interesting to watch TTL.

 

[Volpij]

Wouldn't the dutch try to conquer some of the eastern neighbours trying to get the dutch areas, probably lose them when Prussia is showing off their muscles demaning those areas back.

 

[Wendell]

Colonial consequences could be interesting too.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Would any united netherlands ATL government do much to protect the Walloonian language, for example schooling/universities?

 

[Volpij]

Would any united netherlands ATL government do much to protect the Walloonian language, for example schooling/universities?

I really doubt that, I sooner see them trying to kill it off like they tried with Frissian and other smaller languages

 

[Parma]

Would any united netherlands ATL government do much to protect the Walloonian language, for example schooling/universities?

Not encouraged but also not sppressed. It would an official language in several parts of the country. The language question was more or less done in the 1820ties
Willem I envisioned one kingdom, one language, butvreverted this partial after resistance of the Southern elire and higher clergy

 

[Xavier]

Not encouraged but also not sppressed. It would an official language in several parts of the country. The language question was more or less done in the 1820ties
Willem I envisioned one kingdom, one language, butvreverted this partial after resistance of the Southern elire and higher clergy

Walloon would very much not be an official language, the resistance of the bourgeoisie was because they wanted French everywhere, nobody with any power gave a crap about Walloon in the 19th Century. OTL, it did remain the majority language in Wallonia until the 20th Century, but never with any official status.

I suppose if the Dutch want to try to widen the cultural/social gap between Wallonia and France as a better safeguard against French expansion, they could make Walloon the main language in primary schools in Wallonia, but that will probably still anger the Francophone bourgeoise whose taxes fund said schools, so not sure how viable that is.

 

[ennobee]

Would any united netherlands ATL government do much to protect the Walloonian language, for example schooling/universities?

Curiously, without the shift to 'standard' French as a unifying administrative language in Belgium, Walloon French might end up becoming a distinctive dialect, or even several local distinctive dialects such as Flemish Dutch did OTL. I can even imagine that with every region still cultivating their own dialects as 'the speak of the common folk' eventually regions like Hainaut and Dinant will start making fun of each others dialect much like the Antwerp and the West-Flanders do OTL

 

[funnyhat]

Not encouraged but also not sppressed. It would an official language in several parts of the country. The language question was more or less done in the 1820ties
Willem I envisioned one kingdom, one language, butvreverted this partial after resistance of the Southern elire and higher clergy

I don't think of Walloon as an entirely separate language from French, like Breton or Occitan are. Walloon and French can be thought of as two dialects of the langue d'oïl, something like the relation between Scots and English. I think it is very likely that Walloon speakers would have shifted to French as it was the prestige dialect, not to mention the language of international diplomacy at the time. It might survive in a diglossia situation (like Scots today in Scotland) but it's hard for me to see it becoming an institutional official language.

 

[ennobee]

But as for the original question: The United Netherlands would have to go through a lot of reforms in order to become a stable country/empire. It was by design a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society with all of the parts having a different historical background. To evoke a perpetual AH.com pipedream, the United Netherlands will be the Austro-Hungarian/Holy Roman empire in miniature- or if you want the HRE's annoying little brother.

(Sidenote: the United Netherlands were actually proposed by the HRE during the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Flanders and Brabant were actually part of the HRE before the Napoleronic wars and at that time the HRE was actually doing pretty well, not yet the big bag of problems it was in 1914. So yes, from the HRE's standpoint as well as from the view of many other nations, it could well have worked. In fact there were no reasons to think it would not)

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

[

But as for the original question: The United Netherlands would have to go through a lot of reforms in order to become a stable country/empire. It was by design a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society with all of the parts having a different historical background. To evoke a perpetual AH.com pipedream, the United Netherlands will be the Austro-Hungarian/Holy Roman empire in miniature- or if you want the HRE's annoying little brother.

Interesting view, but the political history of OTL Netherlands proves you can create a stable nation with a big divide. The increasing parliamentary democracy solved the religious divide and prevented seperatism. Was Switzerland HRE's annoying little brother?

 

[Thomas1195]

[

Interesting view, but the political history of OTL Netherlands proves you can create a stable nation with a big divide. The increasing parliamentary democracy solved the religious divide and prevented seperatism. Was Switzerland HRE's annoying little brother?

Then you would need a new Dutch Republic - perhaps the Swiss model. Switzerland was a republic and by 1848 was a democratic (by 19th century standard) one. Any reforms under a United Kingdom of Netherlands would only result in a limited franchise at best, just like any typical 19th century European constitutional monarchy.

 

[p0lish_runn3r]

ig if britian had prioritized a strong state between prussia and france,like they did during the congress of vienna, then they wouldnt have supported a "belgium breaking away to weaken it.

 

[Parma]

Euro Africans of Dutch descent manage to create successful plantations which exported colonial goods as coffee, cocoa, palm oil and wood. Further they manage to build a post road to Kumasi the Ashanti capital, as envisioned by Mr Deandels a decade ago. The road increase the commerce and trade with the inland regions, with this increasing the marked for Dutch goods and making the Gold Coast trade posts again economic valuable.
A United Netherlands buys the Danish forts at the Gold Coast before the British does is lest say 1848 for 10,000 Pound sterling.

 

[Anneessens]

How will Protestants react to being a.minority population in a state that was arguably created by the Reformation?

That's really one of the most important questions when discussing a continuing United Kingdom of the Netherlands. I think we can, indeed, safely assume that a continuation of the UKN wouldn't prevent the ongoing democratisation during the 19th century (which isn't the same as excluding the possibility that butterflies would Western Europe and the UKN would be less democratic in this ATL by 2020 than in OTL).

A wild guess: the UKN might move to some form of decentralization (even federalism), but not one based on (essentially) language like in OTL Belgium but on the combination of linguistic and religious identities, perhaps by making a religious arrangement per autonomous province. Of course, it's an open question if the situation, whereby one province might be religiously very liberal and another one might have a very discriminatory attitude towards catholics or protestants, would be a viable solution in the long term.

As for the position of Dutch in OTL Belgium: I agree with those that the linguistic border wouldn't change that much. That is: Brussels would've remained Dutch speaking, as would some smaller places along the linguistic border that shifted towards French after 1830 (Edingen/Enghien, the Jeker/Geer valley).
But places like Charleroi would remain Romance-speaking - although the process of assimilation of the Flemish immigrant working class might be somewhat slower and Dutch would probably be known by the educated layers in Wallonia (and one can speculate that by 2020 - ignoring butterflies - most or a large portion of Walloons would be somewhat bilingual in Dutch, akin to the knowledge of English by French Quebeckers).
That Romance language will probably be just (Walloon) French, not Walloon (or Picard, etc), just like in OTL. If anything, the dominance of Dutch in the UKN will give extra impetus to identify with the prestigious, "international" language.

 

[Osman Aga]

@pompejus I haven't seen you here, maybe you may not have seen this topic. We'd value the views on someone experienced on these matters. Even as a fellow Dutchman myself, I cannot really add more than you can.