Belgium in "the long nineteenth century" the small duchies, princedoms and counties which had traditionally been the basic territorial units. Aside from Zeelandic Flanders, part of Luxembourg, and Northern Limburg, which were ceded to the Dutch to compensate for the loss of the rest of the territory, the outline of Belgium in 1914 was virtually identical to that established by the French in 1795. The three ceded territories had a total of 300,000 inhabitants at the time. The northern half of Belgium, which would come to be known as Flanders, was a largely agricultural area containing the important port of Antwerp, the city of Ghent and
Dutch colonization of the Americas independence prompted many to migrate to the Netherlands. Political instability and economic decline after independence resulted in even more migration to the Netherlands. The Surinamese community in the Netherlands is now almost as large as half of the population in the country itself (about 350,000). Dutch colonization of the Americas The Dutch colonization of the Americas began with the establishment of Dutch trading posts and plantations in the Americas, which preceded the much wider known colonisation activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 (in present-day Indonesia), the first forts and