ABSTRACT
With the publication of the May 1993 revisions to the Belgian Constitution, one of the more centralized states of nineteenth-century Europe became a self-proclaimed federation. The federalist road has been long and winding. It began with the demands of a small group of Flemish intellectuals in the cities of northern Belgium for the right to use their native tongue in public life. Along the way it saw the development of a widespread movement for language rights among speakers of Dutch and related Flemish dialects in the North, the rise of a reactive movement among the speakers of French and related Walloon dialects in the South, and the emergence and subsequent entrenchment of the idea that the linguistic geography of Belgium should be the foundation on which the country’s internal political structure should be built. The administrative units that emerged out of this idea did not have significant power until quite recently, however, and something approaching a federal state is only now coming into being.
