Belgian Food History

Historical period

Roman Belgica; the medieval County of Flanders and Duchy of Brabant, whose cloth wealth made them among the most urbanised places in Europe and whose beguinages and abbeys shaped brewing; the BURGUNDIAN NETHERLANDS, whose court table is where the word "Burgundian" for good living comes from; Habsburg, Spanish and Austrian rule; the French period and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands; independence in 1830; early and heavy industrialisation, the coalfields and the labour migration that fed them; the Congo Free State from 1885 and the Belgian Congo to 1960; two German occupations and the 1914-18 food relief; and federalisation from 1970.