Belgium in the long nineteenth century

back to the late eighteenth century. There was the long, slow decline of the Ottoman Empire, with its base for much of its existence in present-day Istanbul and which over some five centuries stretched over a good deal of what today constitutes the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Europe, and parts of Asia. The second trend was the emergence of

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The incursion of the European imperialists put China into an economic tailspin from which it would not recover for more than a century. With the Qing Dynasty humiliated and weakened by the losses of the First Opium War, an internal rebellion broke out between 1850 and 1864. Known as the Taiping Rebellion, it pitted the Qing Dynasty against the foll

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the journey ahead would not be easy for the newly formed nation. At its helm would be a monarch who had refused the title ‘German Kaiser’ and only reluctantly accepted the more neutral ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’. He would forever remain a Prussian king first, second and third. Otto von Bismarck, the architect of the fledgling state and its first chancellor,

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Just as the end of the eighteenth century marked the beginning of intellectual specialisation in Europe and North America, the end of nineteenth century marked the beginning of professional or occupational specialisation worldwide. The growth of this phenomenon was catalysed by the establishment of two powerful institutions: the government bureaucr

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