French Flanders
French Flanders ( French Flandre (française) , Dutch Frans-Vlaanderen ), also called South Flanders , is the part of the old county of Flanders that belongs to France . It covers most of the Nord department in the Hauts-de-France region in the far north of France.
Geography and language
French Flanders consists of two regions separated by the Leie .
French Westhoek
To the north of the Leie is the French Westhoek ( Westhoek français , Franse Westhoek ), which roughly coincides with the Arrondissement of Dunkerque . It is the French part of the Westhoek , a region that also includes the western part of the province of West Flanders in Belgium .
The capital and by far the largest city is (the agglomeration) Dunkirk . The language of the French Westhoek has always been a Dutch dialect , West Flemish or its subspecies, Westhoek Flemish . Today there are tens of thousands who speak the dialect, although its continued existence is threatened. Since it had been suppressed by the French state since the French Revolution and especially since 1870 (establishment of the Third Republic ), fewer and fewer people spoke West Flemish at home and French became more and more important. Very few young people still have an active command of the dialect. Language courses have been very popular again for some time. For some years now, Dutch has been taught as the first foreign language in primary schools . The Dutch character of the area can also be seen in the many place and family names.
Liller Flanders
South of the Leie lies the Liller Flanders ( Flandre lilloise , Rijsels-Vlaanderen ), also known as "Wallonian Flanders" ( Flandre wallonne ), which has always been the French-speaking part of the old county of Flanders. The center of what is now a very urban region is the city of Lille , which in the Middle Ages was one of the capitals of the County of Flanders.
A majority among both peoples felt and feels, regardless of their different language and culture, as a solidary unit and as a self-confident but undisputed part of France.
history
French Flanders belonged to the Spanish Netherlands from 1529 (the Peace of Cambrai ) to 1659 (the Peace of the Pyrenees ) . In 1662 Dunkerque ( Dunkirk ) was bought by King Louis XIV of France , in 1667 Lille was conquered and annexed. In four peace treaties (Peace in the Pyrenees in 1659, Peace in Aachen in 1668 , Peace in Nijmegen in 1678 and Peace in Utrecht in 1713), Spain finally ceded the region to France. Until the French Revolution, Flandre was a province of its own , since then it has belonged to the Nord department .
In 1924 the Catholic priest Jean-Marie Gantois founded the "Vlaams Verbond van Frankrijk" (VVF) to maintain the Flemish language. During the Second World War (after the defeat of France in 1940 ) the Flemings of Westhoek collaborated with the German occupation forces. After the war, Gantois was imprisoned for two years. French Flanders, including the two French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais , was incorporated into the German military administration in Brussels, together with all of Belgium, without, however, being formally separated (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Erwin Karl Münz: France , pages 70 and 72. Glock and Lutz, Nuremberg 1953