European Kingdoms

Low Countries (Western Europe)

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The coastal north-western corner of Europe is known as the Low Countries. Today the region consists of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Combined these are known as the Benelux countries, taken from the initial letters of their names. The Low Countries are bordered by Germany to the east and France to the south.

The region is named 'low countries' due to the fact that much of its land along the North Sea coast and for some distance inland is either below sea level or is just above it. More than a quarter of the total land area of the Netherlands is below sea level, but the inhabitants have become the masters of sea defences and land reclamations.

The Low Countries have a long and rather complicated history which goes farther back than may be imagined. In recent years researchers have concluded that all modern Europeans carry partial descent from an early founder population of humans of the Aurignacian culture which lived in the area of Belgium around 35,000 BC (see feature link).

By the Iron Age it was the tribes of the Belgae which occupied the later southern Netherlands area, along with some fringe Germanic tribes in the early days of their outward expansion from Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast in the first couple of centuries BC.

The oldest traces of the Frisian population (proto-Frisians) in the Early Netherlands date back to the end of the Bronze Age in 700 BC, which makes the Frisians one of the oldest still-surviving population units in Europe. Their origin circa 1000 BC probably lies in southern Scandinavia, along with the other Germanic peoples. This period includes the legendary 'Frisian Folk Mothers'.

The coastal area around Friesland (Zwin, near Sluis in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, and Weser, Bremen) was ruled during the Roman empire period by the Ubbo and Offo kings. During the turmoil of the empire's gradual collapse, smaller tribes in the Low Countries such as the Canninefates and the Batavi merged with the bigger tribe of the Frisians, while some communities joined the Jutish/Saxon migration to southern Britain.

Around the time of the emergence of the diocese of Liège and the formation of the margraviate of Flanders, the county of Friesland suffered heavily from Viking attacks, especially Danish Viking attacks. This was during the same period in which England was also facing destruction and eclipse by the sheer weight of Viking attacks. The county of West Frisia ruled locally in the name of the archbishop of Utrecht, who himself governed the area on behalf of the Holy Roman emperor.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, Drs Dirk van Duijvenbode, and William Willems, with additional information from Waterloo, The Hundred Days, David Chandler (Osprey Publishing Ltd, 1980), from Foreign Policy and the French Revolution: Charles-François Dumouriez, Pierre LeBrun, and the Belgian Plan, 1789-1793, Patricia Howe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), from The First World War, John Keegan (Vintage Books, 2000), and from External Links: BBC Country Profiles, and European Community (Encyclopaedia Britannica), and A Short History of Holland, Belgium & Luxembourg (available for download as a PDF from Stanford University), and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Belgium from Revolution to the War of the Sixth Coalition 1789-1814, Dale Pappas (The Napoleon Series Archive), and List of Dutch Sovereigns (dead link).)