Kingdom of Belgium

Overview

The Belgian Revolution (25 August 1830 – 1831) produced a provisional government (led in part by Charles Rogier) and a declaration of independence (4 October 1830). The National Congress voted on 22 November 1830 for a constitutional, hereditary monarchy and adopted the liberal Constitution of 7 February 1831. It chose Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg, who took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831 (now the Belgian national day). The sovereign is styled "King of the Belgians." The Treaty of London (19 April 1839) secured great-power recognition and imposed perpetual neutrality, violated by the German invasions of 4 August 1914 (with the "atrocities" of 1914 and four years of occupation) and 10 May 1940. Leopold II (1865–1909) ran the Congo Free State (1885–1908) as a personal domain infamous for atrocity: estimates of the resulting population collapse range widely — Wikipedia's "Atrocities in the Congo Free State" cites a decline of between 1.2 million and 10 million, while Encyclopædia Britannica states the population fell "from approximately 20 million to 8 million," with Adam Hochschild and demographers converging on roughly a 50% collapse (about 10 million excess deaths). Belgium annexed the territory as the Belgian Congo in 1908 (independent 1960). The tension between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia (with a small German-speaking community) drove a series of state reforms transforming Belgium into a federal state, completed with the fourth state reform of 1993 (three Regions and three Communities).