Sorrows of Belgium

Liberation and Political Reconstruction, 1944-1947
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-969434-1
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 426 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 801 g

The liberation of Belgium by Allied troops in September 1944 marked the end of a harsh German Occupation, but also the beginning of a turbulent and decisive period in the history of the country. There would be no easy transition to peace. Instead, the rival political forces of King Leopold III and his supporters, the former government in exile in London, and the Resistance movements which had emerged during the Occupation confronted each other in a bitter struggle for political ascendancy. The subsequent few years were dominated by an almost continual air of political and social crisis as Resistance demonstrations, strikes, and protests for and against the King appeared to threaten civil war and the institutional dissolution of the country. And yet by 1947 a certain stability had been achieved: the Resistance groups had been marginalised, the Communist Party was excluded from government, the King languished in unwilling exile in Switzerland, and, most tangibly, the pre-war political parties and the parliamentary political regime had been restored.

In this substantial contribution to the history of the liberation era in Europe, Martin Conway provides the first account, based on substantial new archival material, of this process of political normalisation, which provided the basis for the integration of Belgium into the post-war West European political order. That success, however, came at a cost: the absence of any substantial political reform after the Second World War exacerbated the tensions between the different social classes, linguistic communities, and regions within Belgium, providing the basis for the gradual unravelling of the Belgian nation-state which occurred over the second half of the twentieth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Conway, Martin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1: The Legacies of an Occupation, 1940 - 1944

- 2: The Struggle for Liberty and Legality, September 1944 - February 1945

- 3: Recovery and Upheaval, February - August 1945

- 4: The Dynamics of Political Normalisation, Summer 1945 - February 1946

- 5: The Reconstruction of the Belgian Nation-State and Post-War Elections, Summer 1945 - February 1946

- 6: The Social Normalisation of Belgium 1945 - 1947

- 7: Economic Conflict and Political Realignment, February 1946 - March 1947

- 8: The Death of Belgium

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Martin Conway is a historian of twentieth-century Europe at the University of Oxford. He has written widely on aspects of the history of Europe, focusing particularly on the making and unmaking of democratic politics in inter-war and post-1945 Europe. He has long had a particular interest in the history of Belgium. His first book on pro-German collaboration in Belgium during the Second World War was published in French- and Dutch-language editions in Belgium.