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2444Ch3 3/12/02 3 2:02 pm Page 69 Christian Franck, Hervé Leclercq and Claire Vandevievere Belgium: Europeanisation and Belgian federalism Introduction: European integration as a historical lesson of neutrality For about fifty years, the Belgian policy toward European integration is the most significant demonstration Belgium has made of its commitment to multilateralism and international co-operation in security as well as in economic affairs. Even if Belgium had already illustrated such an orientation through its participation in multilateral trade and
This edited volume offers the first comprehensive historical overview of the Belgian medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its chapters develop narratives that go beyond traditional representations of medicine in national overviews, which have focused mostly on state–profession interactions. Instead, the chapters bring more complex histories of health, care and citizenship. These new histories explore the relation between medicine and a variety of sociopolitical and cultural views and realities, treating themes such as gender, religion, disability, media, colonialism, education and social activism. The novelty of the book lies in its thorough attention to the (too often little studied) second half of the twentieth century and to the multiplicity of actors, places and media involved in the medical field. In assembling a variety of new scholarship, the book also makes a contribution to ‘decentring’ the European historiography of medicine by adding the perspective of a particular country – Belgium – to the literature.
1 Heroines in Belgium and Serbia Introduction: plucky nurses At the outbreak of the First World War British women volunteered for war service in such numbers that organisations such as the Red Cross and the Order of St John of Jerusalem found themselves, initially, overwhelmed. Many of those who offered to nurse the wounded held no nursing qualifications of any kind, and had to wait until they had passed VAD examinations, or acquired full nurse-training in recognised training hospitals, before they could gain acceptance for military service. American women, too
This study investigates internationalism through the prism of a small European country. It explores an age in which many groups and communities – from socialists to scientists – organised themselves across national borders. Belgium was a major hub for transnational movements. By taking this small and yet significant European country as a focal point, the book critically examines major historical issues, including nationalism, colonial expansion, political activism and international relations. A main aim is to reveal the multifarious and sometimes contradictory nature of internationalism. The Belgian case shows how within one particular country, different forms of internationalism sometimes clashed and sometimes converged.
The book is organised around political movements and intellectual currents that had a strong presence in Belgium. Each of the main chapters is dedicated to a key theme in European history: nationhood, empire, the relationship between church and state, political and social equality, peace, and universalism. The timeframe ranges from the fin de siècle to the interwar years. It thus covers the rise of international associations before the First World War, the impact of the conflagration of 1914, and the emergence of new actors such as the League of Nations.
With its discussion of campaigns and activities that ranged beyond the nation-state, this study is instructive for anyone interested in transnational approaches to history.
When physicians gathered in medical societies to present, share, discuss, evaluate, publish and even celebrate their medical studies, they engaged in a community with specific practices, rules and manners. This book explores the formal and subtle ways in which such norms were set. It analyzes societies’ scientific publishing procedures, traditions of debate, (inter)national networks, and social and commemorative activities, uncovering a rich scientific culture in nineteenth-century medicine. The book focuses on medical societies in Belgium, a young nation-state eager to take its place among the European nations, in which the constitutional freedoms of press and association offered new possibilities for organized sociability. It situates medical societies within an emerging civil culture in Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp, and shows how physicians’ ambitions to publish medical journals and organize scientific debates corresponded well to the values of social engagement, polite debate and a free press of the urban bourgeoisie. As such, this book offers new insights into the close relation between science, sociability and citizenship. The development of a professional academic community in the second half of the century, which centered around the laboratory, went hand in hand with a set of new scientific codes, mirroring to a lesser extent the customs of civil society. It meant the end of a tradition of ‘civil’ science, forcing medical societies to reposition themselves in the scientific landscape, and take up new functions as mediators between specialties and as centers of postgraduate education.
This volume is the impressive result of the collective efforts of Belgian (medical) historians to do at least two things: first, to put Belgium on the map of medical historiography and, second, to do so using the latest methods and approaches. With a single stroke, the Belgian field presents itself at the forefront of medical history. Not only is Belgium now ready
Belgian refugees (France, Britain, Netherlands) v 9 v Belgian refugees during the First World War (France, Britain, Netherlands) Michaël Amara Introduction: the exodus The German invasion of Belgium in the First World War, from August to October 1914, led to the flight of more or less 1.5 million Belgian civilians. The vast majority of them sought asylum abroad, in the Netherlands, France and Great Britain. The magnitude of this exodus gave birth to a huge diaspora unique in the history of Belgium. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children of all ages
Many know that King Leopold II played a decisive role in the creation of the Belgian empire in Central Africa. The king was driven by a life-long and obsessional quest for profitable overseas territories, in spite of the original indifference, reticence or even hostility of most of Belgium’s leading politicians and businessmen. 1 His tenacity finally led to the establishment of the Congo Free State in 1885. Leopold
Colonial powers commonly regarded their medical and public health programmes as a form of compensation for the hardships caused by their colonisation of African peoples. 1 By the early 1940s the Belgians were proud of their colonial medical services in the Congo which they considered to be an outstanding feature of their ‘civilising mission’. The history of medical services in the
Arguing that limit transgression is a key feature for understanding the cinematic performance of, and the controversy around, sexuality in the public sphere, this contribution focuses on various aspects of limit transgression in relation to sex cinemas. Following a new cinema history approach and concentrating on the case of an emerging sex cinema in postwar Belgium (Cinema Leopold in Ghent, 1945–54), this article looks at various dimensions of limit transgression in terms of concrete physical and spatial relations; programming strategies; audience experiences; and a range of disciplining societal practices and institutional discourses.