Questions & Answers

This section offers a quiz containing 15 multiple-choice questions, followed by a series of open questions testing your general knowledge and understanding and a part reserved for teachers, which includes a number of assignments for use inside or outside the classroom.

Multiple-choice quiz

This quiz consists of 15 questions. Try first to work your way through all of them, writing down your answer on a sheet of paper as you go along. Only one answer is the correct one. At the end you will be able to check your answers. How many did you answer correctly?

1. What does the term ´pro-Dutch Flamingantism´ refer to?

a. a belief in a Greater-Netherlandic people, composed of the Dutch and the Flemings, in some cases combined with a longing for a political unification of Flanders and the Netherlands
b. a brand of Flamingantism which advocated closer cultural contact between Flanders and the Netherlands – in the areas of language, literature, science, etc
c. a form of Flamingantism which sought complete linguistic and cultural unity between Flanders, the Netherlands, the Dutch colonies and South Africa
d. none of the above answers is correct

2. Which of the following statements concerning Julius Vuylsteke is NOT correct?

a. Flamingantism coincides with Liberalism
b. the source of Flanders´ backwardness was located in the intellectual inferiority of its lower classes
c. Vuylsteke use the symbolism of the Beggars to aid the Flemish cause
d. Vuylsteke worked for the total Dutchification of public life in Flanders

3. Who or what were the «klauwaards»?

a. supporters of the opposition against the French king in the Late Middle Ages
b. rebels against the Spanish regime in the sixteenth century
c. participants of the Peasants´ War (1798) [i.e. revolt against the French occupation regime of the time]
d. anti-Belgian Flemish militants who during the First World War claimed political autonomy

4. Julius MacLeod argued that

a. Dutch had little future as a scientific language
b. the official recognition of a Flemish-Belgian language would further the Flemish cause
c. Frenchification had tried to block the doors and windows of the Flemish house on the north, west and east side
d. higher education in Flanders had to become bilingual

5. Which of the following statements concerning Belgian socio-economic history is NOT correct?

a. as a result of the collapse of the traditional artisanal home industry in Flanders and the settlement of modern big industry in Wallonia, industrial life in Belgium was controlled by francophone holdings
b. the new industrial plants in Flanders at the turn of the century were in the hands of francophone industrial and financial circles
c. prior to the nineteenth century, Flanders was the economic core of the Southern Netherlands
d. Flanders´ underindustrialization and the underrepresentation of Dutch-speaking industrial entrepreneurs were redressed in the interwar years

6. What is the exact meaning of de Raet´s slogan “linguistic interest equals material interest”?

a. remedying language discrimination, especially in education, has a direct positive effect on the economic status of the Flemish middle class, working class and farmers.
b. imposing bilingualism on the civil service offers Dutch-speaking (lower) middle-class people much better professional prospects
c. Dutchifying public life in Flanders is one of the preconditions for a more equal society
d. none of the above answers is correct

7. What is implied by the principle of territorial integrity?

a. citizens are free to opt for the language of their choice in matters of education and other public services
b. citizens have no choice in the matter of the language of education or of other public services
c. a country´s borders have to coincide with the territory inhabited by a people
d. it is mandatory for citizens to have command of the language of the region where they reside

8. What did the Equality Law of 1898 bring about?

a. it granted Flanders political autonomy
b. it introduced bilingualism in the army
c. it recognized Dutch as an official language of Belgium, alongside French
d. it made it mandatory to appoint an equal number of Dutch-speakers and French-speakers in the civil service

9. Who launched the slogan “We want to be Flemings, in order to become Europeans”?

a. August Vermeylen
b. Julius MacLeod
c. Lodewijk de Raet
d. Guido Gezelle

10. In which respect(s) did the nineteenth-century Flemish Movement differ from comparable movements elsewhere in Europe?

a. the Flemish people was not an age-old people but a recent creation
b. the Flemish cause was not tied up with a political struggle for modern, democratic state institutions
c. the Flemish Movement did not strive for self-government but remained loyal to the Belgian state which it intended to transform via parliamentary means into a bi-cultural nation.
d. all of the above answers apply

11. Which of the folllowing statements regarding the use of French in education in turn-of-the-century Flanders is correct?

a. educational institutions at all levels, from primaries to universities, were almost entirely French-speaking
b. primary education remained largely Dutch-speaking, whereas secondary and higher education was almost exclusively Frenchified
c. primary education remained largely Dutch-speaking, secondary education was bilingual, whilst higher education was almost exclusively French-speaking
d. none of the above answers is correct

12. Which of the following statements about the Dutchification of university education in Belgium is NOT correct?

a. the Catholic University of Leuven switched to an exclusively Dutch language regime before the University of Gent did
b. the campaign for Dutch-language higher education targetted the State University of Gent
c. the first Dutch-language university in Belgium was opened in 1930
d. the campaign for a Dutch-language university was driven by a common pro-Flemish front across political party lines

13. Frans van Cauwelaert was of the opinion that

a. co-operation between Catholic Flamingants and Flemish activists from other political parties was not an option
b. the Flemish people had largely lost its national consciousness
c. Catholic workers and farmers had to operate as the motor of the Flemish Movement
d. none of the above is correct

14. What was the Walloon Movement´s objective in the 1900s?

a. Flanders was to have a bilingual status and Wallonia an exclusively French-speaking status
b. Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia were all to have an exclusively French-speaking status
c. re-unification of Belgium and France
d. none of the above is correct

15. In which decade did it become mandatory for public administrations, educational institutions and the law courts in Flanders to exclusively use Dutch?

a. in the 1900s
b. in the 1910s
c. in the 1930s
d. in the 1960s

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General questions

1. Why was the Flemish Movement in the period before 1914 an overwhelmingly Catholic movement?

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2. Was the Flemish Movement of the nineteenth century an anti-Belgian movement?

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3. Why were some Flemings opposed to Dutch-language education?

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4. Why did the Flemish Movement oppose the principle of freedom of language?

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5. What kind of arguments did 'cultural Flamingants' deploy in order to claim exclusively Dutch-language schools, administration, law courts and army units?

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6. Why was it not until the turn of the century before the Flemish Movement´s field of work was widened to include educational and socio-economic questions?

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7. Which was the most important event in Flamingant interpretations of Flemish history – an event that continues to be commemorated each year? And what kind of self-image (as well as views of non-Flemings) did this historical narrative stimulate among the Flemish population?

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Assignments (for teachers)

What follows are a few model assignments which can be used by teachers, either for essay purposes or for presentations or class discussions. Most of the assignments listed here raise questions about the Flemish Movement from a European perspective. In designing these assignments, our intention has been to find ways of linking up this subject with issues and histories more familiar to students who study Dutch as a second (or foreign) language. Please feel free to make any changes you wish to any of these assignments. Just make sure your students are provided with a reading list – the bibliography contained in this study pack is only a starting-point.

1. Flemish militants were fuly aware of the existence of multilingual states in Europe (e.g. in Switserland, Austria).

Question: compare the language laws that were passed in Belgium before the First World War with language legislation elsewhere in Europe.

2. The success of the Belgian Revolution in 1830 was, among other things, related to the non-intervention of the major continental powers (i.e. Prussia, Austria and Russia) who were opposed to the break-up of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The outbreak of revolution in Poland was instrumental in making sure that no troops were sent to Belgium from the East. Hence the reference to the Polish in the caricature entitled “Lese-majesty in Belgium” (“Majesteitsschennis in België”). If it had not been for the Polish Revolution, it was said, Belgium might never have come into existence.

Question: compare the struggle of the Flemish Movement with the struggle of Polish nationalism.

3. The above-mentioned caricature suggests that the whole of Europe was a witness to the sad spectacle occurring in Belgium. What does this detail tell us about the caricaturist´s politics? A brief reference to the contemporary European context is in order here. The Franco-Prussian War of 1871 brought France to its knees and resulted in the unification of Germany. Being seen as the state responsible for torpedoeing French intentions of annexation vis-à-vis Belgium, Germany´s reputation in Belgium was considerably enhanced after 1871. The new German Empire was now also continental Europe´s most formidable power.

Question: do you think there is a relationship between these developments and the passage of the first language laws in Belgium? What was fuelling the sentiment of Pan-Germanism amongst supporters of the Flemish Movement?

4. Compare the nineteenth-century Flemish Movement with contemporary Irish nationalism.

5. MacLeod stated that one of the arguments used to justify Frenchification was a so-called ´civilisatory argument´: adopting French helps to break down the ´Chinese Wall´. That is, Frenchification served to bring Flemish homegrown culture up to a European level.

Question: to what extent can you see a parallel between the nineteenth-century process of Frenchification and current processes of assimilation of the English language in the Low Countries, in the fields of education and science in particular? To what extent are similar sorts of arguments brought forward?

6. To conclude, an exercise in counterfactual history. One may wonder about the kind of Belgium that would have developed, if the Belgian government at the turn of the century had opted for universal, national bilingualism. Such a policy would in time not just have created a bilingual national political elite and a bilingual civil service in Brussels – instead of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking politicians and civil servants – but there would also have emerged an officialdom in both the Flemish and Walloon parts of the country fluent in both national languages and public services such as education would have had to be provided in both languages in both Flanders and Wallonia.

Question: if this had happened, do you think Belgium would have gone down the road of federalism? Would present-day Belgium be composed of communities and regions?