Southern Netherlands - Place in The Broader Netherlands

Place in The Broader Netherlands

As they were very wealthy, the Netherlands in general were a jewel in the ever debt-burdened Habsburg crown, but unlike others of the Habsburg dominions, they were led by a merchant class. It was the merchant economy which made them wealthy and the Spanish attempts at increasing taxation, to finance the Habsburg wars, was a major factor in their proud defence of ancient privileges. This together with resistance to the religious intolerance of the Roman Catholic Spanish monarchy led to a general rebellion of the Netherlands against Spanish rule in the 1570s. Although the northern seven provinces, led by Holland and Zeeland, established their independence as the United Provinces after 1581, the southern Netherlands were reconquered by the Spanish general Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma.

The Southern Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs after the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century. Under Austrian rule, the provinces' defence of their ancient privileges proved as troublesome to the reforming Emperor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor as it had to his ancestor Philip II two centuries before, leading to a major rebellion in 1789–1790. The Austrian Netherlands were ultimately lost to the French Revolutionary armies, and annexed to France. Following the war, Austria's loss of the territories was confirmed, and they were joined with the northern Netherlands as a single kingdom under the House of Orange at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The south-eastern third of Luxembourg Province was made into the autonomous Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, because it was claimed by both the Netherlands and Prussia.

In 1830 the predominantly Roman Catholic southern half became independent as the Kingdom of Belgium (the northern half being predominantly Calvinist). The autonomy of Luxembourg was recognised in 1839, but an instrument to that effect was not signed until 1867. The King of the Netherlands was Grand Duke of Luxembourg until 1890, when William III was succeeded by his daughter, Wilhelmina of the Netherlands – but Luxembourg still followed the Salic law at the time, which forbade a woman to rule in her own right, so the union of the Dutch and Luxembourger crowns then ended. The north-western two-thirds of the original Luxembourg remains a province of Belgium.