Concept

History of the Walloon Movement

Summary
The Walloon Movement traces its ancestry to 1856 when literary and folkloric movements based around the fr began forming. Despite the formation of the Society of Walloon Literature, it was not until around 1880 that a "Walloon and French-speaking defense movement" appeared, following the linguistic laws of the 1870s. The movement asserted the existence of Wallonia and a Walloon identity while maintaining the defense of the French language. During French control of the Low Countries, linguistic problems arose with the first language laws. After the invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, French revolutionaries began the "francisation" of the country. Under the Old Regime French coexisted with many languages, including Latin and English, but the decree of 2nd Thermidor Year II made French the official language of France and its territories. Revolutionary France differentiated between Flemish and Walloon provinces: "It seems the revolutionaries themselves consider the fact French was enough close to the Walloon language so as not to manage Wallonia as Brittany, Corsica, Alsace or Flanders." The French Consulate and Empire extended the francisation process by requiring all the civil servants of Flanders to become French citizens. Authorities sent members of the French bourgeoisie and clergy to Belgium to replace Belgian elites and moved Belgian elites to France to remove them from their roots and their culture. For example, Flemish seminarians were trained in Paris and Lyon under the direction of Jean-Armand de Roquelaure, the archbishop of Mechelen, a French clerk installed by French authorities. After the fall of the French Empire, the Congress of Vienna united the Belgian provinces of the Austrian Netherlands with the former Dutch Republic, forming the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The new ruler of the United Kingdom, William I, gave Dutch the status of "national language" in order to reduce the influence of French ideas. On 15 September 1819, William I decreed Dutch as the official language for justice and governmental administration although he did not prohibit the use of other languages.
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