EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

as one of its more liberal concepts. 70 It was also composed of two legislative bodies the
upper and lower chambers. It was a compromise between a representative democracy
and a monarchy that evolved over the months of 1830-31 as a result of the push and pull
of European politics and the internal divisions of Belgian society itself. 71
The impetus for the Belgian Constitution of 1831 began with the French
occupation and subsequent absorption into France of what had been the Austrian
Netherlands in 1795. During this particular period, Belgium, a deeply introverted,
agricultural, Catholic country, was exposed to the secular and Enlightenment reasoning
of the French Republic. It was also during this time, and as a result of this exposure,
that a class of educated secular professionals (such as lawyers, judges, and
administrators) emerged and began to see the possibility of a Belgium different than the
one that had existed prior to 1795. 72
With its absorption into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 at the
insistence of the Quadruple Alliance (Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia), Belgium
became part of a nation created to form a buffer against a potentially resurgent, France.
It was a political solution to a practical problem. The incorporation of the industrial and
agricultural, Catholic, French-speaking Belgium with the commercial/maritime,
Protestant, Dutch-speaking Netherlands produced a situation that under the dictatorial
William II inevitably gave way to separation, revolution, and a new nation. The two
concepts, the enlightened liberalism of the French Revolution and the autocratic notions
70 Edwige Lefebvre, "The Belgian Constitution of 1831: The Citizen Burgher."
Zentrum für europäische rechtspolitik an der Universität Bremen. (Bremen: Zentrum für europäische
rechtspolitik an der Universität Bremen, 1997). 18-23.
71 Lefebvre, 29-32.
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