Answer

In both extracts de Raet prefers to define his language as “Dutch” instead of “Flemish”, which demonstrates that he believed in complete linguistic unity between the Netherlands and Flanders. In the text, he even talks about “a Dutch education”. Like many other freethinking Flamingants, de Raet was an advocate of greater collaboration between Flanders and the Netherlands. More radical than most, he spoke about a Greater-Netherlands. According to him, the inhabitants of Flanders and the Netherlands did not only speak the same language, they were also one people – or, had to become one. Yet, for de Raet, this Greater-Netherlandic people was divided by a frontier. He did not argue for a partition of the Belgian state and a political unification of Flanders and the Netherlands.

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