What follows is an excerpt from Chapter I: What's a Walloon and Why Does It Matter? by Judith Carlsen
Belgium is the country of our origins, and Belgium is a very small country, approximately the size of Maryland. One would think that designating our forebears as Belgian would be sufficient.Yet Belgium has always been a divided country. It has long been fought over and subdivided by larger surrounding nations, rather like a solitary bone among a pack of hungry dogs. There are relics of civilizations from earliest antiquity associated with the area we know today as Belgium. The first named inhabitants were the Belgae. These people groups were Celtic tribes that settled the European landmass about 500 BC.
By 51 BC, the Belgae were overtaken by Julius Caesar's armies. Caesar referred to the Belgae as "the bravest of all the Gauls," and Belgium, or Belgica, flourished as a Roman province. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes invaded. The Franks, one of these Germanic tribes, eventually took over Belgium and installed Clovis I as king of the dynasty. After he converted to Christianity he recruited Irish monks and other Christian scholars to preach Christianity to the Belgium populace.
Spain and the Vikings had their turns in conquering and ruling Belgium. Charlemagne was born near Leige, Belgium and he brought a huge part of Europe under his rule. He was crowned "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" in the year 800. As his empire lost its power in the 11th and 12th centuries, the country we know as Belgium was divided into separate states. These feudal states correspond roughly to the provinces of Belgium from which our ancestors emigrated. It's important to note that the country is divided, geographically, into two halves, roughly corresponding to the language that is spoken : Flemish, the language of the northern, more populous, half, has Germanic-Dutch derivation, while Walloon, a regional dialog with similarities to French, is the dominant language of the southern half. The populace of each half has genetic kinship to their neighboring country, whether it be Holland or France.
