Are the words “Flanders” and “Wallonia,” the names of the Flemish and Walloon regions of Belgium, used as true geographic terms, or are they used only in the context of the two ethnic groups?
For example, would one say something like, “We’re going Flanders this weekend to shop for antiques.”
I don’t think Lance Armstrong will cycling around an ethic group in this year’s Tour of Flanders.
The soldiers who lie “In Flanders Fields”, where the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row, are in a real place!
I just want to clarify that I’m not asking whether Flanders and Wallonia exist, but whether in common parlance, the terms “Flanders” (or “Vlaams”) and “Wallonia” (or “Wallonie”) are used by the people themselves as geographic designators, as opposed to other terms, such as names of towns or provinces.
Why wasn’t I told?
Yeah, they do.
The country is, administratively, broken up along these lines with 3 major administrative divisions (Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels) which correspond ROUGHLY to the language regions (with their own transportations departments and school systems and such, something like states); each of these units is further divided into something like counties-- in the Flanders administrative unit you have East Flanders, West Flanders, Flemish Brabant, Antwerp province, etc; in Wallonia you have Waals-Brabant, Liege, and, um, some others. In the news and such they usually report events in terms of these units (i.e. “Waarschoot, Oostvlanderen”). Usually when you are going somewhere in YOUR region for the weekend (someone from Ghent going to Ypres) you’d be more specific (“we’re going to West Flanders/ the westhoek”) while if you were Flemish talking about a Wallonian you might be more vague (“He’s Wallonian, which is why he has no idea what you are saying”). They definitely are defined geographic units, in any case.
Ah, on posting I see your follow up: yeah, depends on the circumstances. They do have different political entities so the general term shows up a lot; if one means “the entire area in my country where people speak French” one says “Wallonia.” If one is talking about the Flemish cultural tradition in general they say “Flanders” (i.e. “Flemish fries”, “old Flemish painting”). Same with government issues: If they are squabbling about taxation the People In Flanders bitch about The People in Wallonia taking their hard-earned cash, and the Wallonians bitch about the Flemish Extreme Right Wing, etc.
Jeez, sorry to post thrice in a row, but one other major context-- differentiating themselves from The Other Countries. If Flemings are talking about their culture and language or something else that happened within their borders but want to make it clear they are NOT including the Dutch Republic/ United Provinces of the Netherlands, or talking about the Dutch-Flemish language/cultural region NOT including Wallonia, they use “Flanders” (I.e. “In the Netherlands and Flanders”; “Flemish as a second language classes”, 17th century Flemish versus Dutch paintings, etc). I imagine the Wallonians, with their useful words for ‘70’ and ‘90’ and fairly separate cultural/ political history uses the term Wallonian to define themselves away from northern France similarly-- “on THIS side of the border as opposed to THAT side”: “we came back into Wallonia with 10 cases of wine in the trunk and didn’t get searched.”
One final comment: Flanders was an independent nation, all by itself, during the latter part of the Middle Ages. The Counts officially owed suzerainty, IIRC to the French crown, but ignored them for all practical purposes, and ran the place as an independent state. Eventually it got inherited by the Dukes of Burgundy and then the Habsburg Empire, and merged into those larger states.
I think occasionally autonomous might be a better way to put it. Though the counts of Flanders were prodigiously wealthy and had a very tightly organized lordship ( at their height it is projected that they could raise 50% more knights than the French crown could from their own royal demesnes at their nadir ), they were never able to completely ignore the crown. Or at least not any more than other great French magnates of the time.
They probably came closest to independence from France ( the French section of Flanders that is ) as, as you mentioned, a possesion of the Dukes of Burgundy, who really did have the makings of a prospective seperate kingdom. Charles the Bold came close to releasing his dream of rebuilding the kingdom of Lotharingia. He was in fact negotiating for the emperor to grant him the royal dignity, in exchange for the marriage of his daughter Mary to the imperial prince Maximillian. That however didn’t happen until after his death in battle in 1477.