Netherland keep Belgian Limburg and entire Luxemburg

Valdemar II

Banned
What if Netherland kept entire Limburg and Luxemburg after the loss of Belgium. How would it effect both Netherland, Belgium and Luxemburg?
 
What if Netherland kept entire Limburg and Luxemburg after the loss of Belgium. How would it effect both Netherland, Belgium and Luxemburg?
I believe there is some coal in in Belgian Limburg, so the most important change for the Netherlands would a stronger industrial revolution, which could lead to a more wealthy and more developed Netherlands. Also it would mean more Catholics, so a stronger position for them during the pilarization years (although not that much, I think).

For Belgium it means the loss of the Limburgish coal mines, but they still have enough left, so that isn't that big of a problem. They have both less Walloon and less Flemish people, so I don't think that will make a big difference. Just a smaller, yet still wealthy country, with the same kind of linguistic problems as before.

I think that Luxemburgian history would be more or less the same, although it would be more Frenchified than OTL. A more Frenchified Luxemburg might be of less interest to Prussia, and more interesting for France (although Prussia still don't want France to have it). Of course a change so early could lead to a continuing personal union between Luxemburg and the Netherlands, if we can butterfly the tragedies in the Dutch royal family in the late 19th century away. That could influence the Dutch position during WWI or its variant in this timeline (as I really doubt that the Franco-German rivalry will be butterflied away).
 
With the amount of coal in Dutch Limburg the supplies in Belgium aren’t really necessary. But the other industries around Liege would have been welcome.

One problem for Belgium is that they lost the border with Germany, so more depend on the Netherlands and France for their export.

Conclusion the industrial revolution would have been reduced in Belgium, compared with the OTL.
 
(as I really doubt that the Franco-German rivalry will be butterflied away).

I think that's overly simplistic. After 1860, Napoleon III was still very fascinated by the prospect of a Prussian alliance that would get him Belgium, and Bismarck had no desire to unduly piss him off (rejecting Baden for the NGF) still less to make war (a Prussian war with France for Luxemburg in 1867 would have caught the French Army pants right down and mobilised German sentiment: it seems that Bismarck genuinely arsed up over Luxembourg and covered it up with customary adroitness, then, as usual, made this part of the Master Plan in his memoirs).

It was only Alsace that caused permenant bad blood (Bismarck didn't want it for this reason), and even then, the Wicked Franco-German Alliance of Doom for Britain can be found in plenty of turn-of-the-century British political cartoons. It wasn't that France went to war for Alsace in 1914 (she and Russia were probably in a better military position to back up such naked irredentism in the 1890s; France found herself attacked (to simplify) and naturally made Alsace her first war aim.

So it seems very strange to say the Franco-German rivalry was inevitable, still less a remotely recognisable WW1, which arose from a lot of other factors. The Balkans, to name an obvious one, which are absurdly vulnerable to European diplomatic butterflies.
 
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