History
During the early Middle Ages the region was part of the Frankish Empire, which was divided into several pagi. The territory of the present day province belonged to several pagi of which the region around Antwerp belonged to the Pagus Renesium. The Pagus Toxandria stretched from North Brabant into the Campine region. To the south there was the Pagus Bracbatinse and the Pagus Hasbaniensis. In 843 the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne was divided among his sons and the river Scheldt became the border between West Francia and East Francia. In 974 Otto II established the Margraviate of Antwerp as a defence against the County of Flanders.
In 1106, Henry V granted the Margraviate to Godfrey I of Leuven. His descendants would from 1235 onwards become the Dukes of Brabant and the region itself was the northern part of the Duchy of Brabant. In 1430 the Duchy became part of the County of Burgundy until 1477 when it fell to the House of Habsburg. In 1713, at the end of the Spanish Succession War the region became part of the Austrian Netherlands until 1794, with in 1790 the short lived United States of Belgium. On 1 October 1795 the former Austrian Netherlands were annexed by France under the French Directory.
The modern province was created as the Department of the two Netes during the First French Empire (when the Southern Netherlands were part of France). After the defeat of Napoleon, the territory became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as the province of Antwerp. In 1830, after the Belgian Revolution the province kept its name.
Read more about this topic: Antwerp (province)
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“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)