low country

A low-lying area of land, especially the coastal plains of the Carolinas and Georgia.

A region of northwest Europe comprising Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

For more information on Low Countries, visit Britannica.com.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, twelve Belgian restaurants operated in New York City, but only one Dutch restaurant planned an opening. Historically tied together, Belgium and the Netherlands nevertheless developed dissimilar cuisines. During the fifteenth century the area subsequently divided between the two countries became part of the holdings of the powerful duke of Burgundy. With the death of Charles V in 1555, Belgium became a possession of the Spanish Crown. It was part of the Habsburg Empire from the beginning of the seventeenth century until the Napoleonic age. After the revolution of 1578 the Netherlands was an independent republic, confirmed as such in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia. In 1813 the two countries were united under King Willem I, which lasted until 1831, when the Netherlands and Belgium, where Flemish, a Dutch dialect, and French are spoken, became separate monarchies. Although the two countries share the Dutch language, they have made different culinary contributions. Belgium's kitchen, akin to the French, is known for its exuberant bistro-style foods that became popular in the United States. The Netherlands' cuisine is more staid, but the country exports fine food products, such as vegetables and cheeses, sought all over the world.

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The first printed cookbook in the Dutch language was Een Notabel Boecxken van Cokeryen (A notable little book of cookery). It was published circa 1514, during the time the Low Countries were part of the Burgundian Empire under the reign of Maximilian of Habsburg. The presumed author and publisher is Thomas van der Noot, who belonged to one of the prominent Brussels families.

The book was meant for the well-to-do, the nobility and the high-placed clergy, who could afford the expensive foodstuffs called for in the recipes. As was common for cookbooks at that time, many of the 170 or so recipes were copied from other authors. In this case they were copied especially from the famous French cookbook of the period, Taillevent's Le Viandier. The Dutch book includes sauces; fish dishes; ways to prepare meat, poultry, and game, including peacock and pheasant; raised pies; tarts; sweets; and eggs. The recipes are clearly divided into dishes for everyday and those for the church-ordained days of fasting and abstinence, when meat, dairy products, and eggs were forbidden. This prohibition encompassed altogether about 150 days in a year, when only fish, vegetables, and bread were permitted.

Eggs were particularly popular. Said to be the poor person's supper, they often were barely cooked and were slurped from the shell. Milk was cooked in porridges or custards, some of which were given a pastry base. Milk was preserved as cheese and butter. Unlike in southern Europe, in the Low Countries butter rather than oil was used as a cooking medium.

Several kinds of cheese made of cow's and sheep's milk were marketed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Cheeses were usually named for the places they came from. The Netherlands is known for its cheeses from the cities of Gouda and Edam. Gouda cheese is made from milk with cream, while Edam-style cheeses are made from skimmed milk and are sometimes flavored with cumin, as in Leyden cheese. By the end of the eighteenth century cumin was replaced in the north by cloves to create Frisian nagelkaas. Sheep cheeses were popular early on. Often colored green with sheep feces, these cheeses came from the island of Texel or from 's-Gravenzande. As breeding improved and cows produced more milk, more recipes called for milk products, including homemade ricottalike cheeses.

Pork, particularly the fatty parts, was the favorite meat of all classes. Pigs were kept everywhere and generally roamed free. In the fall families who could afford it would purchase a cow that was slaughtered and preserved for winter through salting and smoking.

Cattle, particularly oxen, were imported from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. They were herded or transported by ship to Holland for grazing and fattening for slaughter in the grassy meadows of that province. Chickens, ducks, and geese were the common poultry, although songbirds were eaten as well. Deer, goats, and wild boars were among the large game animals hunted, whereas rabbits, pheasants, bitterns, cranes, swans, herons, and ducks were considered small game. The hunt was the privilege of nobility. Falcons and sparrow hawks were trained to catch partridge, geese, ducks, kites, doves, or any other fowl. By the fifteenth century game was reserved more for special occasions than for the daily table of the nobility.

It is often implied that medieval people strongly seasoned their foods because the meats were generally spoiled. That is an unlikely premise. People knew how to preserve foods by drying, smoking, and salting and many regulations concerned the sale of meat. Seasoning was instead more a matter of taste. Spices from the Orient, such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon, were introduced by way of Venice and became a status symbol for the well-to-do. These spices were mixed with sour verjuice (juice from unripe grapes) or apple juice and some locally grown herbs such as parsley, sage, or savory. They gave the dishes a sharply spiced and sour taste that was popular.

Little is known about the food of the masses. Much of what is known about the food of the period comes from records of the elaborate banquets of the nobility on the occasions of weddings, victories, or coronations. These extravagant medieval feasts consisted of several courses, each with ten or more dishes, and were known for their between-course happenings. For example, at one of Philips of Burgundy's banquets, an entire orchestra stepped out of a raised pie and started to play.

Fishery was as important to the food supply as to the economy. In the fifteenth century, when the schools of herring moved from the Sont, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, to near the English coast, the Dutch herring fishery bloomed. The development of cleaning and salting herring onboard ship made the fish less perishable. Consequently herring became not only a folk food but also another major trade good for the Low Countries. The salt, which was needed in large quantities not only for preserving herring but also for preserving meat, was imported from France and Portugal. Dried cod, imported from Bergen, Norway, was the main fish eaten by all classes and an important food for the days of fasting and abstinence.

From the rivers the abundant eel were harvested, as were carp, pike, and bream. These were the fish for the more affluent, while the poor and the working classes ate dried plaice, flounder, or whiting. Among its forty or so fish recipes, Een Notabel Boecxken describes how to make a brown sauce for a freshly boiled carp. The cooking liquid is mixed with lebkuchen (a chewy honey cake), vinegar, and wine and seasoned with ginger, cinnamon, rosemary, quite a bit of sugar, and a little salt.

Castles and cloisters were the centers of horticulture during the Middle Ages. Their gardens provided vegetables, herbs, fruits, and nuts. When, in the second half of the fifteenth century, the sand dunes near Haarlem were removed, fertile grounds became available for horticulture. Through the increased mercantile influence of the large towns, such as Antwerp and Amsterdam, with their expanding markets, horticulture started to flourish beyond castles and cloisters, and by the sixteenth century the Netherlands was known all over Europe for its vegetables. Seeds were cultivated under glass to extend the growth period. Gheeraert Vorselman's Eenen Nyeuwen Coock Boeck (A new cookbook) of 1560 was the first to publish salad and vegetable recipes in the Low Countries.

In the Middle Ages, wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, and beans were grown, but even in the beginning of the period the Netherlands did not grow enough grain to supply its inhabitants. The grain trade developed early on, and by the fifteenth century it was concentrated in Amsterdam. Bread was the mainstay of the diet. It was prepared by bakers, who were organized in powerful guilds. As early as 1341 the government set regulations on bread content, weight, and price. The more expensive wheat bread (called white bread) was eaten by the affluent. Rye bread (called black bread) was the common food for the poor until the second half of the nineteenth century, when through improved transportation methods American wheat, cheaper than the local rye, was imported. At that time wheat bread became the common bread for all.

Beer was the common drink, wine was for the well-to-do, and buttermilk was popular on farms. Beer was brewed at home, but by the fourteenth century the cities of Haarlem and Amersfoort had famous breweries. Cloisters were often known for their brews, and some of the famous Belgian beers hail back to that tradition. The sweeter and less-perishable wines from the Mediterranean countries were popular with the upper classes. The mostly young and white wines, imported from France and Germany, were at that time sour, so they were mixed with honey and spices, such as cloves, coriander, cinnamon, and ginger, to make a drink like hippocras that was enjoyed at the end of a large meal.

Abundant feasts at times of plenty contrasted with the famines of the Middle Ages that wiped out large parts of the population. The Dutch were true trencherpeople who ate and drank immoderately at parties and banquets for guild celebrations; weddings; births, where they would "drown the child"; or funerals, called in jest "grave weddings." Paintings by Brueghel and others depict such events. But the regular meal pattern consisted at most of two meals a day. The main meal, two dishes, was served around eleven in the morning, and the evening meal was one dish. Bread; cheese; root vegetables, like parsnips, carrots, and turnips; cabbage; garlic; onions; peas and beans; fruit in season; porridge; eggs; and a little meat or fish when available were the main foodstuffs.

Mealtimes shifted toward the end of the Middle Ages, when increasingly people ate breakfast. Before meals a water pitcher, a bowl, and a towel or napkin were provided for washing the hands. The plates were first made of bread, then wood, and later tin. The table was covered with a cloth, and bread and salt were placed upon it. The fingers, spoons, or knives were used for eating as the fork was not yet in fashion.

A major change in eating habits came after the Protestant Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the northern Netherlands largely embraced the Protestant faith as preached by John Calvin and the southern Netherlands remained Catholic. It may be assumed that the Calvinists stopped the days of abstinence immediately, though they continued to eat fish on Friday. Meeting the obligation not to eat meat and dairy products on many days of the year was difficult and expensive. Some medievalists hold that this might be one of the contributing causes of the Reformation's success.

The Seventeenth Century

The seventeenth century brought prosperity. Both the East India and the West India Companies were founded in its first quarter. Dutch ships brought spices from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and sugar first from Brazil and then from plantations in the West Indies. Exotic plants, like the pineapple, arrived from every port where Dutch ships docked. With more food available, consumption increased, and the common meal pattern grew to four meals a day. Breakfast consisted of bread and butter or cheese. The noon meal became a stew of meat and vegetables or fish with a dish of fruit, cooked vegetables, honey cake, or raised pie. The afternoon meal of bread and butter or cheese was served a few hours later. Just before people went to bed they ate leftovers from noon, bread and butter or cheese, or a porridge. The poor had a more meager diet.

With the fortunes made in the overseas trade, well-to-do families built country houses away from their city houses, which were usually their places of business also. Country houses had gardens with fruits and vegetables for home consumption and plants from far-away lands. For example, corn was grown as an ornamental and was used in flower bouquets, as still lifes testify. The definitive cookbook of the seventeenth century, De Verstandige Kock (The sensible cook), published by an anonymous author in 1667, gives recipes for the homegrown bounty. The book starts with recipes for salads, which were eaten before the meal "to open the stomach." It gives a full range of recipes for greens; meat; game; poultry; salted, smoked, and dried fish; fresh saltwater and freshwater fish; baked goods; raised pies; and tarts. Separate chapters on preserving meat and fruits end the volume. This was a cookbook for the rapidly developing, affluent burgher class, which, since the nobility had comparatively little influence, was the leading segment of Dutch society. While the peasant diet consisted mostly of bread, milk dishes, vegetables, and meat, the middle classes ate a plentiful diet of varied foods.

The people of the Low Countries were known for their love of sweets. Such treats as sweet breads, like honey cake or gingerbread; or confections, like marzipan, candied almonds, or cinnamon bark, were consumed in addition to the daily fare. Like cheese, Dutch koek (Kuchen in German) or honey cake was named for its city of origin. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Deventer koek from the town of Deventer in the eastern part of the country was famous all over the Netherlands. An important component of the Saint Nicholas celebration on 6 December was another special kind of koek named for its chewy texture, taai taai or tough dough. All of these cakes were made by professional bakers, who protected their recipes and were united in guilds. Waffles, wafers, and olie-koecken, deep-fried balls of dough with raisins, apples, and almonds, were some of the celebratory foods prepared at home, but they were also sold on the streets, as the contemporary artists portrayed.

In the second half of the seventeenth century tea and coffee were introduced, and they had a significant impact on meal patterns and social customs. The East India Company brought tea to the Netherlands first from Japan, then from China through Chinese merchants situated in Batavia. An early shipment in 1610 was considered a curiosity, but as shipments gradually increased, domestic markets developed. Preparing tea required its own paraphernalia, such as small porcelain teacups and small teapots, which were also imported from the Orient. Using a small teapot, an extract of tea was brewed that was diluted with boiling water when served. The small teapots remained in fashion until the nineteenth century, when, according to the English custom, tea was brewed at the required strength directly in a large teapot. Teacups did not have handles until the eighteenth century. Many humorous tales relate the enormous number of cups drunk at the popular late-century tea parties. One woman, admonished by her husband that it was time to go home, told him she could not leave yet because she had only had twenty cups. Tea was served with sweets, like hard candies, marzipan, cookies, and particularly an Utrecht specialty called theerandjes (tea cookies), which were strongly spiced small gingerbread slices. The third meal of the day, which earlier in the century had consisted of bread and butter, was incorporated into the tea ritual and was moved to a later time in the afternoon.

While tea drinking, for which women would gather in the afternoon, had a certain air of high society and snob appeal, coffee was the more public drink. Coffee was consumed in coffeehouses, where men stopped in to have a cup, smoke a pipe, and read the paper. Stefanus Blankaert, an Amsterdam physician and author of a 1686 book on diet, commented on the crowds visiting the coffeehouses in his city. At the end of the century it became the custom of the wealthy to furnish their guests with eating implements, not only a knife and spoon but also a fork. However, it took several decades for the fork to be accepted generally. As late as 1733 a leading journalist argued against its use because, according to a contemporary saying, "God has given us fingers."

The Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century marked greater sophistication in recipes and more variety in dishes offered at one meal. De Volmaakte Hollandse Keuken Meid (The perfect Dutch kitchen maid) of 1761 describes in detail how to serve the customary succession of three courses, each consisting of at least ten dishes, and how to place each dish on the table. It was so popular that in 1838 it was reprinted as De Volmaakte Belgische Keuken Meid (The perfect Belgian kitchen maid), an updated version that included a section on potato recipes. With some twenty editions spanning the second half of the century, La Cuisine bourgeoise (1753) by Menon is an important part of Belgian culinary history.

Fish rather than meat was an important food for the common folk, but oysters and mussels were foods of the rich except in those areas with ready access, such as the Belgian provinces and Zeeland. Game was still the food for nobility, but rabbits became more commonly available.

The more affluent kitchens increased their use of vegetables, including nettles and watercress, abundantly available in rivers and streams. The Italian broccoli was cultivated and was preferred over white cauliflower. Although Carolus Clusius, the founder of the extant botanical garden of Leiden, mentioned the potato plant as early as 1601, potatoes did not enter the popular cuisine until the second half of the eighteenth century. At that time crop failures had made grain expensive and scarce, and cattle diseases had created a lack of milk products. The potato took up the slack and became the most important foodstuff of the poor person's diet. Not until the Napoleonic age, when the economy was failing, did the upper classes include potatoes in their main meals. That was also when the custom developed of not eating bread when potatoes were served. In Dutch restaurants the bread is removed when the main course is served.

Desserts and treats were presented in even greater variety in the eighteenth century. De Volmaakte Hollandse Keuken Meid offers a recipe for a luxurious double-crust pie filled with sliced oranges, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, and topped with a layer of chopped pistachio nuts. The same volume includes a vast assortment of cookies and sweets, presumably served with tea. The first famous version of the centuries-old koek was a simple mixture of rye, honey, spices, and the secret addition of leavening potash made from wood ash imported from the Baltic to make the heavy dough rise. By the seventeenth century koek was made all over the Netherlands. The northern parts of Groningen and Friesland were known particularly for their spiced honey cakes with candied citrus fruit peel. But in 1751 the first pastry book, Gerrit van den Brenk's T'Zaamenspraaken Tusschen een Mevrouw, Banket-bakker en Confiturier (A dialogue between a lady, a pastry baker, and a confectioner), finally revealed a professional baker's secrets and gave helpful insights into its preparation. By 1750 sugar had overtaken honey as the general sweetener. By that time chocolate had become a popular drink at home, especially on Saturday and Sunday evenings. Fruit, though seasonal, was eaten by all classes.

The Nineteenth Century

An even wider difference between the diets of the middle classes and the poor is evident in the nineteenth century. By the end of the century the well-to-do ate meat once or twice a week; only rarely did the worker have meat or, for that matter, fish. An 1869 peat worker's family ate mainly potatoes, rye bread, buckwheat flour, barley, rice, some melted fat, oil, and butter and went without wheat bread, meat, eggs, cheese, or vegetables. They drank a little milk and some coffee. Such unhealthy conditions raised enough concern by midcentury that charitable groups began to establish soup kitchens to provide food for the poor.

The nineteenth century also produced mechanical inventions and a wider selection of cookbooks. Cheese and butter making had been the province of women, but in the 1860s machines took over the work. A machine was invented for kneading rye bread, which up to then, because of its heavy structure, had been kneaded with the feet. While Belgium's most important cookbook of the time, L'économie culinaire, written by a Ghent caterer in 1861, enjoyed multiple editions, the main cookbook in the Netherlands, Philippe-Édouard Cauderlier's Aaltje, de Volmaakte en Zuinige Keukenmeid (Aaltje, the perfect and frugal kitchen maid), spanned the entire nineteenth century. First published in 1803, it was reissued in 1893. This book presented for the first time the mashed onepot dishes and the typically Dutch menus of meat, vegetable, and potatoes followed by a dessert made with milk.

Until the nineteenth century the sugar beet was used as cattle feed. But during the Napoleonic age, when the supply of sugar cane was interrupted, the emperor encouraged the fabrication of sugar from sugar beets. By 1812 fourteen such factories operated, but after Napoleon's defeat they disappeared until later in the century.

Changes occurred as well in the general use of beverages. Beer lost its popularity and was replaced with coffee, particularly in the eastern and southern provinces. Tea was more popular in the west, where both beverages were served. The use of jenever (juniper-flavored gin) increased dramatically among the working classes, and even hospital personnel received a daily ration of jenever. The affluent still drank wine.

The Twentieth Century

After the industrial revolution and two world wars, the customary meal pattern changed to three meals a day, including breakfast and lunch, of which bread was the major component, and one hot meal in the evening. Coffee breaks in the morning and tea breaks in the afternoon became the common interruptions of the workday. Snack foods, especially French fries and soda, readily available from corner snack shops or street carts, were consumed anytime. Holiday foods still included taai taai and oliekoecken (oliebollen in modern Dutch). Indonesian restaurants, serving the well-known rijsttafel (rice table), became especially popular after World War II. In the year 2000 cosmopolitan restaurants, including America's McDonald's and Pizza Hut, reflected the Dutch trade interests in most countries in the world.

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the interest in wholesome foods and the plight of the masses prompted the founding of so-called household schools in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Household schools were intended to instruct working-class housewives in a proper family diet. A better-fed worker could produce more work. But because working-class women had to work, daughters of the middle classes, who were expected to stay home and tend their families as adults, attended these institutions. The teachers did not adjust their curricula or their recipes to the new, higher-class audience. With the goal to simplify and improve, they took away much of the charm, the joy, and some say the taste of the good, centuries-old Dutch burgher kitchen described above. The aim was to create recipes that were considered nutritious and healthful with the right combination of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Martine Wittop Koning's Eenvoudige Berekende Recepten (Simple calculated recipes, 1901), which went through sixty-two editions, is a prime example. In addition, rather than instructing their students in home cooking from scratch, the teachers encouraged and popularized time-saving, factory-made products in both their classrooms and their cookbooks. The influence of the household schools lasted through several generations, until at least the 1960s. These developments coupled with ever increasing agricultural mechanization and industrialization of food production might explain the demise of the Dutch burgher kitchen. The Netherlands' renowned and outspoken food writer Johannes van Dam also cited them as the explanation for the Netherlands' lesser status as a culinary power. Others look to the lingering trend to think that "one eats to live" coupled with the Calvinist spirit, which frowns on earthly pleasures. Yet others indicate the Dutch commercial inclinations to sell the best products and keep the lesser quality for use at home. The fact remains that, while Dutch foodstuffs are highly sought after and are sold all over the world, its restaurants are not well known.

In contrast, the Belgian kitchen remained true to its French-inspired original. Belgian restaurants have achieved the coveted three-star Michelin status on more than one occasion. Nika Hazelton in The Belgian Cookbook (1970) lauds home cooking from scratch. She savors the fish soup from Ghent called waterzooi and marvels at mussels marinière with white wine, butter, lemon, and parsley. She cannot stop talking about the friture or deep-fried foods, particularly French fries, and she toasts the cuisine with a smooth Bruges wheat beer or a Brussels geuze lambiek.

The generous custom of treating friends on a person's own birthday rather than being treated is the origin of the expression "Dutch treat." Both countries, Belgium with its restaurants, artisan-made beers, and melt-in-the-mouth chocolates, and the Netherlands with its horticultural products, beers, cocoa, and cheeses, bring the world a true Dutch treat.

New Netherland

The history of the colony New Netherland begins in 1609. In that year Henry Hudson explored the river that bears his name on behalf of the Dutch East India Company with the aim of finding a northern passage to the Orient. Hudson's explorations established the Dutch claim to a vast area from the Connecticut River to the Delaware Bay. In 1621 the Dutch States General granted a charter with exclusive trading rights in the Western Hemisphere to the Dutch West India Company. In 1626 the island of Manhattan was purchased and settlement began. In 1664 the English took over New Netherland, and with the exception of a brief interlude in 1673–1674, the area remained in British hands until the American Revolution. Yet in only seven brief decades the persistent Dutch settlers entrenched their culture in the country.

Americans eat dishes that can be traced back to the foodways brought by early Dutch settlers. The practical merchants who formed the West India Company intended that the colony should be not only self-sufficient but also able to provision the company's officials and ships engaged in the fur trade and in trade with the West Indies. The settlers brought fruit trees, such as apples, pears, and peaches; vegetables, such as lettuces, cabbages, parsnips, carrots, and beets; and herbs, such as parsley, rosemary, chives, and tarragon. In addition they brought farm animals, such as horses, pigs, and cows. Aboard ship the animals had their own stalls, and often each had an attendant, who would get a bonus when the animal arrived safely.

The new land was fertile. Jacob Steendam, one of the three major Dutch-American poets of New Netherland, called the colony "a land of milk and honey." Adriaen van der Donck, who wrote A Description of the New Netherlands (1655) to entice his fellow citizens to settle in the new colony, also was impressed with its fertility. He reports that by the middle of the seventeenth century all sorts of European fruits and vegetables "thrive well" and marvels at the native fish, fowl, and other wildlife available in great abundance.

Trade with the Indians was an important aspect of life in New Netherland. The Dutch traded cloth, beads, and ironware, such as axes and cooking kettles, for beaver skins. The Dutch also used their baking skills to produce breads, sweet breads, and cookies to trade with the Native Americans. The Indians valued the wheat bread of the Dutch, which previously had been unknown to them. Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert relates in his diary of 1634–1635 that, when he was more than a day's walk away from Fort Orange, a Mohawk Indian who had just come from the fort offered him a piece of wheat bread. An ordinance for Fort Orange and the village of Beverwijck (now Albany) forbade further baking of bread and cookies for the Indians. Evidently the bakers were using so much flour for this Indian trade that not enough was left to bake bread for the Dutch community. A record survives of a court case in which a baker was fined because "a certain savage" was seen coming out of his house "carrying an oblong sugar bun."

In their new country the colonists continued to prepare the dishes they were used to. Ship records confirm that the West India Company ships brought them kitchen tools, such as frying pans for pancakes or irons for hard and soft waffles. The settlers tried to duplicate life in the Netherlands in New Netherland. However, while they continued their own foodways, they incorporated native foods into their daily diets but in ways that were familiar to them. For instance, they made pumpkin cornmeal pancakes, made pumpkin sweetmeat, or put cranberries instead of the usual raisins and apples in their favorite oliekoecken. For lovers of porridge, it was easy to get used to sappaen, Indian cornmeal mush, but the Dutch added milk to it. This dish became such an integral part of the Dutch-American diet that it is mentioned on an 1830 menu for the Saint Nicholas Society at the American Hotel in Albany under the heading of "National Dishes." Although many descendants forgot the native tongue, they did not forget the foods of their forebears, and they continued to enjoy the pastries and other dishes connected with feasts and holidays into the twenty-first century. Cookies; pancakes; waffles; oliekoecken, a fore-runner of doughnuts; pretzels; and coleslaw are among the items the Dutch colonists imported into to America. Vestiges from those original foodways remained in the American kitchen.

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—Peter G. Rose

Collective name for The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, so called because much of their land surface is at or below sea level. These countries have often been culturally and historically united, and, bordered by the most powerful nations in Europe, they have been a major battleground in European wars for centuries.

For information about the confusion between the Low Countries and the Netherlands, see Netherlands (terminology).

The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. The term is more appropriate to the era of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe when strong centrally governed nations were aborning and territorial governance was at the hand of a noble or noble house.

As such, the Low Countries were swapped around by inheritance leading to such historical terms as Burgundian Netherlands, French Netherlands, Spanish Netherlands and Austrian Netherlands. With the reorganization of the region during and after the Napoleonic Wars, the term Low Countries gradually became more appropriate to romantic descriptions by authors vice useful diplomatic or geographically accurate and well defined meanings. This is analogous to the way the literal and purely geographic term Eastern Europe became used as an euphemism for "Countries behind the Iron Curtain" or "Eastern Block", and morphed into a political term instead. In the case of the Low Countries, a geo-political term, for all intents and purposes, became irrelevant.

Nonetheless, in modern English usages, the term will occasionally be found, by which is meant the French Netherlands, Kingdom of Belgium and (European main land part) of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Geo-political situation

The Low Countries as seen from space

History of the Low Countries Bishopric of Liège 985–1790 Burgundian Netherlands Duchy of Luxembourg integrated 1441 1384/1473–1482 Habsburg Netherlands 1482–1556 Spanish Netherlands Dutch Republic 1581–1795 1581–1713 Austrian Netherlands 1713–1790 United States of Belgium 1790 Bishopric of Liège 1790–1795 Austrian Netherlands 1790–1794 French Republic Batavian Republic 1795–1806 1795–1804 French Empire 1804–1815 Kingdom of Holland 1806–1810 United Kingdom of the Netherlands 1815–1830 Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (in personal union with the Netherlands until 1890) Kingdom of Belgium since 1830 Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1830

The term is not particularly current in modern contexts because the region does not very exactly correspond with the sovereign states of The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, for which an alternative term, the Benelux was applied after World War II.

Before early modern nation building, the Low Countries referred to a wide area of northern Europe roughly stretching from Dunkirk at its southwestern point to the area of Schleswig-Holstein at its northeastern point, from the estuary of the Scheldt in the south to Frisia in the north. The Low Countries were the scene of the early northern towns, built from scratch rather than developed from ancient centres, that mark the reawakening of Europe in the 12th century.

A collection of several regions rather than one homogeneous region, all of the low countries still shared a great number of similarities.

• Most were coastal regions bounded by the North Sea or the English Channel. The countries not having access to the sea politically and economically linked to the ones that had so as to form one union of port and hinterland. A poetic description also calls the region the Low Countries by the Sea
• Most spoke Middle Dutch out of which later would evolve Dutch. However some regions, such as the Bishopric of Liège, the Romance Flanders around Cambrai, Lille, Tournai and Namur, where French was the dominant language are often considered as part of the Low Countries as well.
• Most of them depended on a lord or count in name only, the cities effectively being ruled by guilds and councils and although in theory part of a kingdom, their interaction with their rulers was regulated by a strict set of liberties describing what the latter could and could not expect from them.
• All of them depended on trade and manufacturing and encouraging the free flow of goods and craftsmen.

Economical situation

Of particular importance for the cities was the manufacture and trade of woollen cloth, Europe's first industry. Cities that grew around this trade included Liège, Leuven, Mechelen, Antwerp, Brussels, Ypres, Ghent, Leiden and Utrecht.

Historical situation

The low countries were part of the Roman provinces of Belgica, Germania Inferior and Germania Superior. They were inhabited by Celtic tribes, before these were replaced by Germanic tribes in the 4th and 5th century. They were governed by the ruling Merovingian dynasty.

By the end of the 9th century, the Low Countries formed a part of Francia and the Merovingians were replaced by the Carolingian dynasty. In 800 the Pope crowned and anointed Charlemagne Emperor of the re-established Roman Empire.

After the death of Charlemagne, Francia was divided in three parts between his three sons. The Low Countries became part of Middle Francia, which was ruled by Lothair I. After the death of Lothair, the Low Countries became an object of desire between the rulers of West Francia and East Francia. They each tried to swallow the region, and merge it with their spheres of influence.

As such, the Low Countries consisted of medieval fiefs, whose sovereignty resided with either the Kingdom of France or the Holy Roman Empire. The further history of the Low Countries is a permanent struggle between these two powers until today.

Gradually, separate fiefs were ruled by the same family through intermarriage. This process culminated in the rule of the House of Valois, who were the rulers of the Duchy of Burgundy

In 1477 the Burgundian holdings in the area, the Burgundian Netherlands passed through an heiress Mary of Burgundy to the Habsburgs. In the following century the "Low Countries" corresponded roughly to the Seventeen Provinces covered by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which freed the provinces from their archaic feudal obligations.

After some of the Seventeen Provinces declared their independence from Habsburg Spain, the provinces of the Southern Netherlands were recaptured (1581) and are sometimes called the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1713, under the Treaty of Utrecht following the War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria and thus became known as the Austrian Netherlands. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830) temporarily united the Low Countries again.

Linguistic distinction

In English, the plural form Netherlands is used for the present-day country, but in Dutch that plural has been dropped; one can thus distinguish between the older, larger Netherlands and the current country. So Nederland (singular) is used for the modern nation and de Nederlanden (plural) for the domains of Charles V.

Bibliography

• Paul Arblaster. A History of the Low Countries. Palgrave Essential Histories Series New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 298 pp. ISBN 1-4039-4828-3.
• J. C. H. Blom and E. Lamberts, eds. History of the Low Countries (1999)
• B. A. Cook. Belgium: A History (2002)
• Jonathan Israel. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (1995)
• J. A. Kossmann-Putto and E. H. Kossmann. The Low Countries: History of the Northern and Southern Netherlands (1987)

See also

• The Netherlands (disambiguation)
• Seventeen Provinces
• Early Netherlandish painting
• Burgundian Circle
• Benelux

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - Low Countries

Français (French)
n. - Pays-Bas

Deutsch (German)
n. - Niederlande

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Países-Baixos

Español (Spanish)
n. - Países Bajos

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ארצות השפלה‬

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