The history of Wallonia, from prehistoric times to the present day, is that of a territory which, since 1970, has approximately coincided with the territory of Wallonia, a federated component of Belgium, which also includes the smaller German-speaking Community of Belgium (73,000 inhabitants). Wallonia is the name colloquially given to the Walloon Region. The French word Wallonie comes from the term Wallon, itself coming from Walh. Walh is a very old Germanic word used to refer to a speaker of Celtic or Latin (cf. Wales).Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (1963), English and Welsh in Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures, University of Cardiff Press. read online
Prehistory
, the largest find of the fossilised remains of Iguanodon to date occurred in 1878 in a coal mine at Bernissart, at a depth of . I. bernissartensis, that lived from the Barremian to the early Aptian (Early Cretaceous) in Europe, between about 130 and 120 million years ago.
The Grotte de Spy (Spy Cave) is located near Spy, Belgium, in the Walloon municipality of Jemeppe-sur-Sambre in the province of Namur. It was discovered in 1886 and has been classified as Wallonia's Major Heritage. It is one of the most important paleolithic sites in Europe. The excavation was conducted by Marcel de Puydt and Max Lohest of Liège. They proved the existence of the Neanderthal. Fraipont published an article about the cave in the American Anthropologist.La race humaine de Neanderthal ou de Canstadt en Belgique: Recherches ethnographiques sur des ossements d'une grotte à Spy et détermination de leur âge géologique in American Anthropologist, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1888), pp. 286-287 (review consists of 2 pages)
Spiennes, another famous Walloon village in the municipality of Mons, Province of Hainaut, has well known neolithic flint mines that are included on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. The entry on the list describes them as "the largest and earliest concentration of ancient mines in Europe" and cites the level of early technological development they demonstrate as justification for their inclusion.
Antiquity
According to the region's official website, after Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, its inhabitants became the Gallo-Romans and were called the "Walha" by their Germanic neighbours, from whence the name Wallonia comes. The Walha started speaking Vulgar Latin instead of their Celtic dialects. At that time, Wallonia was on the border between Germanic-speaking and Latin-speaking territories. Historian Léopold Genicot wrote in his review Toudi n° 1, 1987, p." of an "enclave" in "the area of the Germanic languages". According to Hervé Hasquin, described the Walloon territory as "a kind of isthmus" connecting old France and old Germany.
Félix Rousseau said Wallonia has always been a Romance land since the Gallic Wars and constitutes a Latin avant-garde in Germanic Europe. In his book La Wallonie, Terre Romane (Wallonia, a Romance Land) he says: For centuries, the land of the Walloons has been and has never ceased to be a Romance land. That is the capital fact of the history of the Walloons that explains their ways of thought, feeling, and belief. Moreover, in the whole Romance world, the land of the Walloons, caught between Germanic territories, occupies a special position, the position of a vanguard. In fact a border about 300km long separates these extremi Latini from the Flemish to the North and from the Germans to the East. Depuis des siècles, la terre des Wallons est une terre romane et n'a cessé de l'être. Voilà le fait capital de l'histoire des Wallons qui explique leur façon de penser, de sentir, de croire. D'autre part, dans l'ensemble du monde roman, la terre des Wallons, coincée entre des territoires germaniques, occupe une position spéciale, une position d'avant-garde. En effet, une frontière de près de trois cents kilomètres sépare ces extremi Latini des Flamands au Nord, des Allemands à l'Est. Félix Rousseau, La Wallonie, Terre romane, Institut Jules Destrée, Charleroi, 1962, 3rd ed., p. 9.
According to Genicot, the most remarkable evidence of the Romance identity of Wallonia is the Sequence of Saint Eulalia because of its traits of Walloon, Picard, Lorrain, which may have been located in Wallonia or adjacent to it. Its origin must be located "in a region between Tournai and Liège, and it was written around 880".
The longue durée event of the language border
According to Fernand Braudel, the most important event of Walloon historyand that of Belgian historyis the Barbarian invasions, which he says is an interesting example of the longue durée event. Braudel wrote that the result of the Germanic invasionsthe language borderis "a contemporary and living circumstance" and that "Belgium divided into two parts along a language border". This border, separating the Germanic and Roman sprachraums, moved over the centuries preceding the establishment of the Belgian state over an area between the Ardennes and the line from Aachen to Calais and the more sparsely populated frontier from Aachen to Arlon via Malmedy. This frontier has not much changed since the 18th century. Flanders is to the north of the line and Wallonia to the south. According to Kenneth D. McRae, this language border "acquired administrative significance for the first time in 1822 with [William I of the Netherlands'] legislation on the use of Dutch in Flemish communes".Kenneth D. McRae, Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Belgium, Wilfrid Laurier University Press (1 january 1986), p. 18.
Industry
The Ardennes is an old mountain mass formed during the Hercynian orogeny. At the bottom of these old mountains, coal, iron, zinc, and other metals are often found in the sub-soil. In the north and west of the Ardennes lie the valleys of the Sambre and Meuse rivers, forming the Sillon industriel, an arc stretching across the most industrial provinces of Wallonia, Hainaut, along the river Haine, the Borinage, the Centre and Charleroi along the river Sambre and Liège along the river Meuse. This geological region is at the origin of the economy, the history, and the geography of Wallonia. "Wallonia presents a wide range of rocks of various ages. Some geological stages internationally recognized were defined from rock sites located in Wallonia, e.g. Frasnian (Frasnes-lez-Couvin), Famennian (Famenne), Tournaisian (Tournai), Viséan (Visé), Dinantian (Dinant) and Namurian (Namur)." The Tournaisian excepted, all these rocks are in the geological area of Ardennes.
The Ardennes includes the greatest part of the Belgian province of Luxembourg, the south of the province of Namur, the province of Liège, and a very small part of Hainaut. The first furnaces in the four Walloon provinces were in this area, before the 18th century using charcoal made in the Ardennes forest. This industry was also found in Gaume in the south of the province of Luxembourg. After the 18th century, the most important part of the Walloon steel industry, now using coal, was built around the coal mines, principally around the cities of Liège, Charleroi, La Louvière, the Borinage, and also in Walloon Brabant in Tubize. Wallonia became the second industrial power of the world, in proportion to its territory and to its population.
The Industrial Revolution in the Sillon industriel embraced four industrial basins: Borinage, La Louvièrecalled Centre, Charleroi and Liège, and a semi-industrial basin in Namur.Or more accurately Between-Sambre-and-Meuse see the bibliography (in several languages) Production et Travail du Fer en Gaule du Nord et en Rhénanie à l’époque romaine: le rôle des établissements ruraux According to Peter N. Stearns, the area was an important centre for iron manufacture for the Roman Empire. After the empire's fall, brass and bronze became favourable and the centres of metalworking shifted to Huy and the forested areas around Dinant and Chimay. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Walloon method, involving the use of a blast furnace, was developed in Liége, making it possible to substitute bronze with iron. The few coal mines around Liège, Charleroi, and the Borinage produced coal for breweries, dyeworks, soap and brick factories, and in the fourteenth century by the glassmaking industry in the Charleroi basin. At that time, coal mining was a part-time activity carried on by rural peasants to supplement their incomes.
The Walloon process in the Middle Ages During the Late Middle Ages, the demand for iron for artillery caused important technological developments in iron working to occur in Wallonia, especially in the County of Namur, County of Hainaut, and Principality of Liège; this was called the Walloon process. It consists of making pig iron in a blast furnace, then refining it in a finery forge. The process was devised in the Liège region and spread into France and thence from the Pays de Bray to England before the end of the 15th century.Peter N.Stearns, Op. cit., p.130 Louis de Geer took it to Roslagen, Sweden, in the early 17th century, where he employed Walloon ironmakers. Iron made there by this method was known in England as oregrounds iron.
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution The beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Wallonia, like elsewhere in Europe, was predicated on the location of coal mines, particularly in coal-rich Hainaut and Liège. Moreover, the French annexation of Belgium, although initially chaotic, gave Walloon industries access to the larger French market and protection from British competition, aiding early industrial experimentation. In 1799, English emigrant William Cockerill built the first water-powered carding and spinning machine for the wool industry, sparking off the rise of the modern machine-building sector. Wallonia's first industrialisation wave took place from 1800 to 1820.
Peter N. Stearns wrote that the development of the puddling process and the improvement of the blast furnace after 1750 accelerated the substitution of coke for charcoal. The first puddling furnace in Belgium was installed in 1821, and two years later the first coke-fed blast furnace was installed there. By 1870, except in a few small establishments in Luxembourg and Namur, the extensive use of charcoal in metalworking had been discontinued. Metal production moved from forests close to the coal-producing areas Charleroi and Liège. Newcomen-type steampumps were used in mines near Liège by 1723 and at Charleroi by 1725. The first steam engines based on James Watt's modifications appeared about 1803 in a Liège cannon foundry. The two engines installed there was producing 100,000 horsepower by 1860.Peter N. Stearns, op. cit., p. 131
Second industrial power of the world
Jean-Pierre Rioux quoted the following table in his book La révolution industrielle (The Industrial Revolution) based on several "levels of development"; consumption of cotton in the rough state, of cast iron, cast steel, coal, and the development of the railway network. It was first drawn by Paul Bairoch, one of the most important post-1945 economists. This table is not based on absolute figures, nor does it point out absolute ranks, but the hierarchy of the industrial powers is based on their levels of development. "Wallonia" may be substituted for "Belgium".
Rank J.P.Rioux, op. cit., p. 105) 1810 1840 1860 1880 1900 1910 1 United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom United States United States2 Belgium Belgium Belgium Belgium United Kingdom United Kingdom 3 United States United States United States United States Belgium Belgium 4 France Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland Germany5 Switzerland France France Germany Germany Switzerland6 Germany Germany Germany France France France7 Sweden Sweden Sweden Sweden Sweden Sweden8 Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain9 Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy10 Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia11 Japan Japan Japan Japan Japan Japan