Nobles into Belgians : the Brabant pedigreed nobility between the ancient régime and the nation-state, 1750-1850

Abstract

Without questioning the fact that many nobles in Belgium entered into the resistance against the Nazi occupation out of compassionate engagement for their fatherland and king, this thesis argues that a Belgian noble identity built around ‘Serving King and Country’ is not a remnant from a remote, pre-modem past. Rather, it is the Belgian variant of a deep transformation that nobles all over Europe experienced following the disintegration of the old order of Estates. In line with other recent scholarship, I suggest in this dissertation that noble identity underwent a profound shift around 1800, which can be summarised by the notion of ‘nationalisation’. Even if the specific moment, context and manner of this change differed from state to state, sooner or later, all aristocrats throughout Europe, like all burghers, were to be caught up by nationalist fever. The main question of the thesis at hand is simple: when and why did nobles come to think of themselves as being part of a Belgian nation, and how did this sense of community change over time? The group of families on which this research is based are the families of the noble Estate of Brabant. (More details about these lineages are provided at the end of this chapter). The period I look at stretches from the middle of the eighteenth century) when no abstract form of Southern-Netherlandish nation can be detected, to the middle of the nineteenth century, when an independent Belgian nation-state had turned out to be a stable construction.