History

Pre 20th Century History

Neolithic tribes were thought to be among the first human inhabitants of the Low Countries, the long-standing name for the region now divided into Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Julius Caesar arrived with his armies in 57 BC and promptly subjugated the local tribespeople, who were called the Belgae, but when the Roman Empire went through some jitters in the third century it was booted out by Germanic Franks. Thus the current language divide was born, as Latin-speakers stuck to the southern regions and German-speakers took a trip up north. The cornerstone of what was to be Antwerp was laid around 800 AD during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, when a fort was erected on the site of the future city and Christian missionaries began sniffing around for the scent of compunction.

The following three or four centuries saw the ebb and flow of feudalism; among the strongest fiefdoms of this period was a Flanders-based court established by a man with an inflexible appendage - Baldwin the Iron Arm. The Flanders region consequently emerged from feudalism with a gung-ho attitude to cloth production and northern European trade that encouraged the growth of local towns such as Ypres, Ghent and Bruges, the latter of which was made capital of the Duchy of Flanders in 1093. These three communities quickly flourished, in particular Bruges, which became a trade-hungry terminus for merchant ships from all over Europe. Antwerp, however, was a little slower on the economic uptake, and would not begin carving out a metropolitan niche for itself until the early 16th century brought the construction of the guildhalls.

Guilds were specialist associations of traders and craftsmen (eg the Guild of Weavers, the Guild of Butchers) and had already been in existence for several centuries before they began building their wood and stone headquarters - guildhalls - around the perimeter of Antwerp's Grote Markt, mirroring the construction of similar buildings around Brussels' Grand Place. It was a sign of things to come because over the next half-century, burgeoning Antwerp was favoured over the economically declining cloth towns by the powerful Hapsburg-Burgundy ruler Charles V, commander of the Low Countries. With his patronage, the city established itself as the greatest port in an expansive empire.

In 1566 Antwerp went through a revolting time, with its proud cathedral plundered by rioting Protestants who were a tad upset at the Spanish Catholic monarchy's attempts to quash the Reformation - this period of violence was evocatively called the Iconoclastic Fury. A decade later, a Spanish garrison in the city mutinied over some late paychecks and proceeded to massacre 8000 people over three horrific nights. To add insult to injury, Antwerp was then declared a Catholic city and its substantial Protestant population was forced to emigrate north, severely reducing the number of inhabitants. The royalty of the so-called Spanish Netherlands upped their ostentatious lifestyles throughout the late-16th and early-17th centuries, encouraging the baroque brushstrokes of Rubens and Van Dyck and leading to the establishment of today's lace and diamond industries.

Another turning point in Antwerp's history came in 1648 with the signing of a treaty to end the Thirty Years' War, under which part of the River Scheldt was closed to non-Dutch ships; this heralded the rise of Amsterdam's port and the demise of Antwerp's. The 18th century was a multicultural nadir, beginning with Spanish rule, continuing with Austrian rule and ending under French occupation. The defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 saw the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (incorporating Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg), but a revolt against the Dutch finally led to the coronation of King Leopold I and Belgian independence in 1831. Antwerp grew in step with Brussels, the capital of the new nation, after the laying of railway tracks reinvigorated its port.