Belgium’s south was Europe’s second industrial powerhouse
Wallonia, one of Belgium’s three regions beside Flanders and Brussels, made itself rich on coal and iron in the Industrial Revolution—second only to the United Kingdom. From the early nineteenth to mid-twentieth century it was the country’s economic engine along the east–west Sambre–Meuse valley.
Namur is the regional capital and Charleroi the largest city, and about two-thirds of Walloons live along the Sambre–Meuse valley, the old industrial spine. In the east, three cantons annexed after the First World War are home to a German-speaking Community amounting to less than one percent of Belgium’s population. The region borders Flanders and Dutch Limburg to the north, France to the south and west, and Germany and Luxembourg to the east, and it has belonged to the Francophonie since 1980.
The terminology is slightly tangled. The constitution still names the federal unit the Walloon Region, but its government adopted Wallonia, and the renaming took effect in 2010; before that, Wallonia could mean the territory while Walloon Region meant the administration. Context usually makes the meaning clear.
The name is a cousin of Wales, Cornwall and Wallachia, all built on Germanic Walha, strangers, a word for Celtic or Gallic peoples. Walloons are the local speakers of Romance languages, and in Middle Dutch and French the term once covered the secular Walloon principalities, the French-speaking subjects of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and all Romance speakers in the medieval Low Countries.
Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 57 BC brought the area into Roman hands, and it became part of Gallia Belgica, a province stretching from south-western Germany to Normandy. Its Celtic population showed Germanic influence, stronger in the north, and was gradually romanised. The Walloons’ ancestors became Gallo-Romans, abandoned their Celtic speech for Vulgar Latin, and were called Walha by their Germanic neighbours.
Source: Wallonia
