Low Countries - Geo-political Situation

Geo-political Situation

The term is not particularly current in modern contexts because the region does not exactly correspond to the sovereign states of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, for which an alternative term, Benelux, was employed after the Second World War, though only to describe them as a trading union.

Before early modern nation-building, the Low Countries referred to a wide area of northern Europe as a low-lying triangular river delta for the rivers Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, and Ems. This area roughly stretches from French Gravelines and Dunkirk at its southwestern point, to the area of Dutch Delfzijl and German Eastern Frisia at its northeastern point, and to Luxembourg and French Thionville in the southeast.

The Low Countries were the scene of the early northern towns, newbuilt rather than developed from ancient centres, that mark the reawakening of Europe in the 12th century. In that period, they became one of the most densely populated regions of Europe, together with northern Italy.

A collection of several regions rather than one homogeneous region, all the low countries still shared a great number of similarities.

• Most were coastal regions bounded by the North Sea or the English Channel. The countries not having access to the sea linked themselves politically and economically to those that had access, so as to form one union of port and hinterland. A poetic description also calls the region the Low Countries by the Sea.
• Aside from Romance-speaking Belgium (cf. the Bishopric of Liège, the Romance Flanders (i.e. Cambrai, Lille, Tournai), the French-speaking part of Brabant around Nivelles and, Namur, where Walloon is traditionally spoken), the region is Germanic with Dutch and Luxembourgish being the dominant languages, although French has historically played an important role as it still does in Luxembourg.
• Most of the regions depended on a lord or count in name only, the cities effectively being ruled by guilds and councils and, although in theory part of a kingdom, their interaction with their rulers was regulated by a strict set of liberties describing what the latter could and could not expect from them.
• All of the regions depended on trade and manufacturing and the encouragement of the free flow of goods and craftsmen.