Cultural Flamingantism

Introduction

Lodewijk de Raet (1870-1914)

The struggle for a uniformly Dutch-language education system in Flanders entered a new phase with Lodewijk de Raet. As an economist and sociologist with a thorough knowledge of the Belgian economy, de Raet resolutely connected the Flemish Question with Flanders´ economic disadvantages. He took the line that the rebirth of Flanders had to be economic in the first place – instead of cultural, as argued by MacLeod. According to de Raet, the roots of francophones´ predominance in Belgium, linguistically, culturally and politically, was economic power. In order to bring about some change, one had to take up the matter of the economic development of Flanders. Therefore, more than MacLeod did, de Raet emphasized the impact of Dutch-language higher and technical education on Flanders´ economic growth. The term “cultural Flamingantism”, usually associated with the figure of Lodewijk de Raet, refers precisely to the supposedly close relationship between linguistic discrimination and economic backwardness. The text that follows is a speech by de Raet, which was part of that campaign for legislation to make the University of Gent a Dutch-language institution. The fist extract of the two we have selected, deals with the respective economic positions of Flanders and Wallonia. >If you want to read a short biographical note on Lodewijk de Raet, please click here.

Fragment 1

“Our economic past teaches us a twofold lesson: we see how the main trends in the life of a society are directly influenced by economic forces; we can also ascertain the direction in which these primary forces underlying the visible fabric of daily events are leading us.[…]

[A] consequence of the Industrial Revolution was the localisation of the big industries. They were located where there was a local supply of coal and brought a rapid increase in population and prosperity to the Walloon provinces. This inevitably affected the country´s political orientation.
At a time when our bells were playing their carillons – albeit to a French tune – above our impoverished, deserted or moribund Flemish cities, Wallonia was flourishing as never before. Thus modern economic development took place to the detriment of Flemish Belgium. It resulted in a shift of power from the Flemish to the Walloon part of the country.

And this happened just as Flanders should have been resisting the mania for Frenchification which had been encouraged by the Revolution of 1830, by fashion and by the brilliance of French civilization at that time. Admittedly, it was not the economic predominance of Wallonia which brought the dominance of French into being, but this predominance did turn the temporary reaction against Dutch – a result of the events of 1830 – into a permanent linguistic oppression of the Flemings.
This linguistic oppression resulted in or was accompanied by neglect of the material interests of the Flemish population in the areas of industry, agriculture, shipping  and fishing, whenever the source of wealth in question was specifically or predominantly Flemish.[…]

In the area of economics, the Flemish are now set on a course where they will inevitably come off wordt: the French-speaking element – Walloons and Frenchified Flemings – is dominant, and is growing economically ever more powerful and influential. Belgian industrial development has taken place to the detriment of the Flemish race; the same is true for the movements which are flourishing today, colonialism and foreign economic expansion.”

An economic approach of the Flemish Question

De Raet´s proposition was that any progress, linguistic, cultural or political, had to be based on the economic strength of the Flemish people. In his speech, he aims to demonstrate how, throughout history, economic developments have determined the fate of Flanders. The Industrial Revolution went hand in hand with the collapse of the traditional artisanal home industry in Flanders and the settlement of the mechanised, new big industries in Wallonia (metal industry and coal mining); the result was that Wallonia dominated the economy. De Raet identifies exactly how the Belgian business world was controlled by holdings based in Wallonia and Brussels and how the status of French was raised as a consequence of its association with Belgium´s leading financial and industrial circles. Belgium soon became a first-rank industrialized nation. Around the turn of the century Belgian industry saw a period of accelerated growth, which is related to the start of the so-called >Second Industrial Revolution and the conquest of new markets outside Western Europa. An example is Congo – private property of King Leopold II until 1908 and only then a Belgian colony – which, again, served the interests of high finance in Wallonia and Brussels. It needs mentioning that the world economy in the 1890s and 1900s went through a phase of ruthless international competition, often interpreted at the time in terms of a pseudo-Darwinian struggle for life between nations. This helps to explain the dramatic language in de Raet´s discourse.
De Raet was very much aware of the fact that the investments of capital and trained personnel, which produced Flanders´ first signs of economic growth (around the turn of the century), were controlled by the big francophone holdings. It was not until the 1960s when Flanders caught up with the rest of the country in terms of the level of industrialization and when Dutch-speaking industrial entrepreneurs were no longer underrepresented. In the text, de Raet then connects his vision of an economically advanced and prosperous Flanders with his other passion, academic training through the medium of Dutch.

Fragment 2

“[A] vast network of educational institutions came into being in Belgium, covering every branch of further education: four universities, five technical colleges for engineers, agricultural and commercial schools and numerous others, which all sprang up in response to the force of circumstances – some for the benefit of culture in general, most to fulfil the needs of a rapidly developing industrial state. But in all these institutions of higher or technical education, French was the language of instruction. […] This state of affairs explains one of the main causes of the Fleming´s inferiority.[…]
We must bring unity to our intellectual life. The best amongst the Flemish are now resigning themselves to a double education: a French one in school, a Dutch one through their own efforts using books from Holland. But this can be asked only of a small number of strong individuals and not of the 4,000 Flemish students who attend our universities and vocational schools. […]

If we wish to bring to an end the Sisyphean task that we are now undertaking as supporters of the Flemish cause, then we must acquire an institution which will give the Dutch language the necessary authority to enable it to impose itself on the ruling classes. This will stem the tide of Frenchification, allow us to control our material development and to promote it in the Flemish land. It will unify all that striving for education which now finds expression in study circles, >extension courses, theatre companies, and so on. […]

Is the Flemish University a panacea then, which will change everything as if by magic? […] It alone is not strong enough to re-create our intellectual and economic life. But with the forces already present, with the reserve of energy dormant in our people, with the youthful life whose flame now flickers through our literature, with the intellectual store which has grown up over the centuries in Flanders – with all these forces, the Flemish University will work wonders: to the benefit not only of Flanders, but also of the >Greater-Netherlands. […]

In a lower sphere, too, the Flemish University will have to supply the men who can lead the way in strengthening [national awareness in every Fleming] through intellectual and moral edification.”

A Dutch-language university

Title page of Flanders'
Economic Development
by Lodewijk de Raet (1910).

For de Raet, a Dutch-language university was a central and indispensable link – yet no panacea – in the Flemish people´s economic and intellectual development. He considered the Dutchification of higher education in terms of how it would improve Flanders´ economic position. Accordingly, de Raet targetted not just universities, but also polytechnics. Dutch-language higher and technical education was to produce an army of highly skilled technicians, junior and senior staff, trained through the medium of Dutch. In sum, a Flemish economic elite which would have the economic development of Flanders under its own control. The message he spread was that linguistic discrimination played a role in the economic inferiority of the Flemish middle class, working class and farmers. Or, “linguistic interest equals material interest” (in Dutch: “taalbelang is stoffelijk belang”). Even more than MacLeod, de Raet was against a halfway house: the State University of Gent, the most prestigious francophone bastion in Flanders, and its dependent polytechnics should switch, in their entirety and simultaneously, to the mother-tongue as a language of instruction. Only this will stem the tide of Frenchification amongst the middle classes and undermine the power base of the “French-speaking element” in Flemish society (see fragment 1).

As we mentioned earlier, creating an officially monolingual region, that is, a region where education, public administration and the justice system were uniformly Dutch-speaking, was a new, radical strategy designed to protect the Dutch language. The  status of the French language compared with that of “Flemish” – as an official language, as a language of culture and of science, as the elite´s everyday language, as a language of the country´s industrial circles, as an international language, as a standardized language – and the pressure on Dutch-speakers to adopt the French language were such that only within the safe confines of a demarcated territory, so the argument went, the language of the Flemings would be able to become more competitive and the Flemish people would be able to develop to their fullest potential. According to the ´cultural Flamingants´, an official status of monolingualism would enable Flanders to improve the quality of its education, bring Flemish culture up to a European level and – this was de Raet´s unique contribution – build up a stronger position of power, both economically and politically. The initiative in all of this was to be taken by the Dutch-speaking intelligentsia.

Around 1906 de Raet won the Flemish Movement over to his side. His proposal for an accelerated Dutchification of the State University of Gent received overwhelming support – it is worth noting that over other Flemish demoands it proved to be much more difficult to reach any kind of consensus. Now the Flemish Movement became a different creature, no longer a linguistic movement but a true political movement. What was at stake according to its supporters was not only the future of a language, but also the future of a people. The Flemish Movement, at this stage in its history, started to fight for specifically Flemish cultural, economic and political issues, not just for language issues.

A mass movement?

“In Vlaanderen Vlaamsch”,
Flamingant postcard.
>To enlarge the illustration please click here.

In de Raet´s opinion, the rising Dutch-speaking intelligentsia was not only to shoulder a heavy responsibility in the economic sphere but also to spread propaganda, advertising to the Flemish working man, farmer, office-worker and tradesman just which economic and social interests were involved in Dutchifying public services, with the aim of stirring up a Flemish consciousness amongst the masses. Earlier on we noted how the ideas of the Flemish Movement appealed in the first place to the middling and lower ranges of the Flemish bourgeoisie – a growing social group with very personal experience of gross linguistic discrimination in appointments and promotions in central and local government. It is only natural that it was precisely this social group, that is, the petty bourgeoisie and the university-trained, which was also much more susceptible than the lower classes to the message of de Raet with its emphasis on the training and mission of a Dutch-speaking entrepreneurial and professional class. In addition, one has to remember that although many Catholic Flamingants – still the main promoters of the Flemish Movement – tried to to sell a Flamingant programme among working men and farmers, these so-called >Christian-Democrats were handicapped in that they never took the initiative in the political campaign to replace universal plural suffrage for >universal single-vote suffrage, an electoral system that would no longer disadvantage the lower classes.

More than before, Flemish militants came to realize that they would only score results, if the Flemish Movement became a mass movement. A novelty of the time were campaigns addressing the general public. The postcard shown on the left is an example of how the man in the street was mobilized in order to publicize the Flemish Movement´s message and pressurize the authorities into adopting further-going language legislation. This particular postcard did not just carry rousing statements from prominent Flamingants, supporters were also urged to affix the postage stamp on the left-hand side in protest against the continued use by the postal service of French-language stamps, thus contravening a law passed in 1891 laying down that stamps had to be bilingual. It is also telling that the statements on the postcard are from men of letters such as Conscience, Gezelle and Willems – now honoured as “the Father of the Flemish Movement”. It shows that the aspiration of de Raet and others to give the Flemish cause socio-economic foundations would only gradually translate into practical action. Time now for another freethinking Flamingant, August Vermeylen, who, among other things, strongly criticized the mediocrity of the Flemish Movement´s socio-economic programme. Vermeylen held a mirror up to the Flemish Movement and was sorely disappointed, as we will see in the next section.

Reading comprehension question

1. Which factor did de Raet identify as being one of the principal obstacles slowing down the rebirth of the Flemish people?

>Click here for an answer.

2. Re-read the penultimate paragraph of the second extract (leaving aside, for the time being, the reference to the Greater-Netherlands). What does this paragraph tell you about the way in which de Raet saw the Flemings?

>Click here for an answer.

3. The reference to the Greater-Netherlands in the second extract emphasizes de Raet’s pro-Dutch Flamingantism. Can you find any other indications in either extract of his pro-Dutch disposition?

>Click here for an answer.

4. Why do you think the message of de Raet was particularly appreciated by functionaries, office-workers and teachers?

>Click here for an answer.

>To find out more about Vermeylen´s critical look at the Flemish Movement please click here.