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Eugeen Van Mieghem’s Compassionate Sketches of the Tired, Poor and Huddled Masses
7 February 2024
Last year, a private collector donated eighteen drawings by the Antwerp artist Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930) to the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan: a generous, but above all a relevant and strategic gesture. Relevant because it confirmed the link that Van Mieghem himself depicted with suc
‘We Can’t Do Without Migrants Anymore’: Experts on Migration in Belgium and the Netherlands
21 October 2022
Migration offers good pickings for populists, while those who take an honest look at the subject find they are up against a headwind. ‘As a politician, you won’t win elections by saying it will work out all right’, fears Marlou Schrover, a migration specialist at Leiden University. ‘It would
Never Completely Dutch: Flemish Writers in the Land of Freedom
18 October 2022
Flemish Writers Ivo Victoria, Sarah Meuleman and Geert Buelens all found it liberating to move to the Netherlands. But it wasn’t long before they encountered the downsides of their destination country. ‘Everything is viewed as a management issue.’
The Promised Land on the Other Side of the Border
10 October 2022
In both the Netherlands and Belgium, the number of inhabitants from the other country has grown considerably in the past fifteen years. But where in Flanders the Dutch form the largest group with a foreign nationality, in the Netherlands the Belgians only come in seventh place. Is abiding by the sou
How Romanian Writer Mira Feticu Made Dutch Her Own
17 September 2021
It requires a great deal of courage and persistence to make a new language and culture your own. In her book Liefdesverklaring aan de Nederlandse taal (Declaration of Love to the Dutch Language) Mira Feticu describes this struggle – this process of falling over and getting back up again – with D
Mira Feticu Declares Her Love to the Dutch Language
24 June 2021
Learning Dutch was a struggle, but it gave her freedom, states the Romanian-Dutch author Mira Feticu in her latest book. The Liberian-born writer Vamba Sherif can relate to Feticu’s victorious journey.
Strange, the Flemish Use of the Word ‘Vreemd’
30 August 2019
Call me a foreigner, a vreemdeling, but I find it strange how the Flemish media and government use the word vreemd, a word with connotations such as 'foreign', 'deviant', 'unusual'.
Wizo Flandrensis and the Flemish Settlers in Wales
11 July 2019
Given their geographical proximity, it is unsurprising that in the last thousand years there has been much migration from the Low Countries to the British Isles. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were reports of people of Flemish heritage in Scotland, the north of England and Wales. It
Draining and Building: The Dutch in the Baltic Sea Region
23 May 2019
It is well known that at the end of the seventeenth century Peter the Great spent several years in Holland learning techniques such as shipbuilding in order to modernize the Russian Empire, but since the Middle Ages many people from the Low Countries have been going the other way, often settling in
Bound For Sugar: Flemish Traders on Madeira
13 May 2019
Two Flemish merchants, Maerten Lem and Jean Esmenault, travelled south in the late 15th century. They left an imprint on the history of the Portuguese island of Madeira that is still visible today. Their fascinating story and that of their descendants is all about sugar.
The Call of the Orient: Dutch Migration to East Asia
6 May 2019
Through the ages, people have migrated from the Low Countries to all the corners of the globe. One area that has seen ongoing migration from this area since the turn of the seventeenth century is East Asia. The reasons for this are complex, but essentially they have to do with the struggle for the i
