Belgium exists because Catholic provinces in the southern Netherlands revolted against Protestant Dutch rule in 1830. On August 25 of that year, an opera performance of Daniel Auber's La Muette de Portici at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels incited riots that spread into a full independence movement. By October, provisional authorities had declared independence. The major European powers recognized the new kingdom in 1831 through the Treaty of London, which also imposed permanent neutrality on Belgium. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, on July 21, 1831. The country took its name from the Belgae, Celtic tribes described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars, though modern Belgium's borders bear no relationship to those ancient tribal territories.
The linguistic division between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south existed before independence but hardened afterward. At independence, French served as the sole official language despite Flemish speakers constituting a majority of the population. The Flemish movement began demanding linguistic rights in the 1840s. The first laws recognizing Dutch in Flanders passed in 1873. Full legal equality between Dutch and French did not arrive until 1963. A small German-speaking community of approximately 77,000 people lives in the eastern cantons near the German border, territory Belgium acquired from Germany after World War I through the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Belgium now functions as a federal state divided into three regions—Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels-Capital—and three language communities—Flemish, French, and German-speaking. Constitutional reforms in 1970, 1980, 1988, 1993, and 2001 transferred most powers from the central government to these regional and community governments. Brussels remains officially bilingual, with 85 percent of residents speaking French as their first language and 10 percent speaking Dutch.
Leopold II ruled from 1865 to 1909 and personally controlled the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908 as private property, not as a Belgian colony. Forced rubber collection under his administration killed an estimated 10 million Congolese through violence, starvation, and disease, according to demographic research by Jan Vansina and other historians. International pressure from the Congo Reform Association, led by Edmund Morel and supported by figures like Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle, forced Leopold to cede the territory to the Belgian government in 1908. Belgium governed the Belgian Congo as a colony until independence on June 30, 1960. The rushed decolonization process left the new country with fewer than 30 university-educated Congolese citizens and immediately collapsed into civil war. Belgian paratroopers intervened without authorization from the Congolese government in 1960, and Belgium supported the secession of the mineral-rich Katanga province. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 with Belgian complicity, a fact confirmed by a 2001 Belgian parliamentary investigation.
Peter Paul Rubens defined Baroque painting across Europe from his Antwerp studio in the early 17th century. Born in Siegen in 1577 while his parents were in exile, Rubens returned to Antwerp in 1589 and established his workshop there in 1610. He employed over 100 assistants and apprentices, producing approximately 1,400 paintings during his career while also serving as a diplomat for the Spanish Netherlands. His house in Antwerp, built between 1610 and 1617, now operates as the Rubens House museum. Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted Flemish peasant life in the 16th century, producing works like The Hunters in the Snow (1565) and The Peasant Wedding (1567). His sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder continued painting in Antwerp through the early 17th century. René Magritte pioneered surrealism from Brussels between the 1920s and his death in 1967, creating approximately 2,000 oil paintings including The Treachery of Images (1929) and The Son of Man (1964). His works remain in the Magritte Museum within the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.
Georges Prosper Remi, writing as Hergé, created The Adventures of Tintin in 1929. The series ran until 1976 across 24 completed albums, selling more than 200 million copies in 110 languages. Tintin first appeared in the children's supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle on January 10, 1929. Hergé developed the ligne claire drawing style that influenced European comics for decades. The Belgian comic tradition, called the Ninth Art in Belgium and France, produced other significant creators including Peyo (The Smurfs, 1958) and Morris (Lucky Luke, 1946). The Belgian Comic Strip Center opened in Brussels in 1989 in a Victor Horta-designed Art Nouveau building from 1906. Belgium publishes more comic books per capita than any country except Japan, according to production statistics from the French-language Publishers Association.
The Battle of Waterloo occurred 15 kilometers south of Brussels on June 18, 1815, three years before Belgian independence. The Duke of Wellington commanded a coalition army of British, Dutch, Belgian, and German forces against Napoleon Bonaparte. Approximately 50,000 soldiers died or were wounded in nine hours of combat. Napoleon's defeat ended his Hundred Days return to power and led to his final exile to Saint Helena. The battlefield remains preserved as a heritage site, with the Lion's Mound monument erected in 1826 using earth excavated from the battlefield itself. The mound stands 40.5 meters high and is topped with a 28-ton cast iron lion facing France.
Germany invaded Belgium on August 4, 1914, violating the guaranteed neutrality established in 1831. King Albert I personally commanded the Belgian Army throughout World War I. The German advance expected to pass through Belgium in days under the Schlieffen Plan, but Belgian resistance at Liège held German forces for 12 days. The Belgian Army conducted a fighting retreat to a small section of territory in western Flanders around Ypres, where Albert I commanded from his headquarters in the town of De Panne for the entire war. The Yser Front remained stable from October 1914 to October 1918, flooding defensive positions after Belgian engineers opened sluice gates at Nieuwpoort on October 26-29, 1914. Approximately 40,000 Belgian soldiers died during the war, along with an estimated 60,000 Belgian civilians. The First Battle of Ypres in October-November 1914, the Second Battle of Ypres in April-May 1915 (where Germany first used poison gas on the Western Front on April 22), and the Third Battle of Ypres in July-November 1917 destroyed the medieval city. The Menin Gate memorial in Ypres lists 54,395 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known graves. The Last Post has sounded beneath the gate every evening at 8 PM since July 2, 1928, except during the German occupation from May 20, 1940 to September 6, 1944.
Germany invaded Belgium again on May 10, 1940. The Belgian Army surrendered on May 28, 1940, after 18 days of combat. King Leopold III remained in Belgium under house arrest rather than joining the government in exile in London, a decision that created a constitutional crisis after liberation. A 1950 referendum on Leopold's return produced a 57.68 percent vote in favor nationally, but French-speaking Wallonia voted 58 percent against his return. The political crisis ended when Leopold abdicated in favor of his son Baudouin on July 16, 1951. Belgium suffered approximately 88,000 deaths during World War II, including about 25,000 Jews deported from the Mechelen transit camp to Auschwitz. The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944, in the Ardennes region of eastern Belgium. German forces pushed 80 kilometers into Allied lines before the offensive stalled in January 1945. Approximately 19,000 American soldiers died in the battle, along with 10,000 to 12,000 Germans and 3,000 Belgian civilians.