ABSTRACT
The origins of Comines may lie in the etymology of its place name; cf. a Roman general's nom de guerre, or the Flemish verb komen. Picardian–Flemish Comines and West Flemish Wervik lie at the heart of the Belgian question; not merely in terms of the present internal divide but altogether wider issue of appreciating the country's historic cultural reach well beyond its post-1839 borders. Northern Brabant was thus lost to the Dutch Republic and a vital part of Flanders surrendered to the French Kingdom a century-and-a-half before Belgian independence. While extensive use of modernist decorative arts broadly differentiated French from Belgian 'reconstruction' programmes, comprehensive transformation from white-washed houses of varying heights and proportions to more standardised bare red-brick construction prevailed in each town. Industrialisation turned Belgium into one of the world's most advanced economies. With coal and iron production established in the Meuse and Sambre valleys from the late 1700s, the southern provinces boomed.
