County of Flanders

The County of Flanders was one of the most powerful political entities in the medieval Low Countries, located on the North Sea coast of modern-day Belgium and north-eastern France. Unlike the neighbouring states of Brabant and Hainaut, it was within the territory of the Kingdom of France. The counts of Flanders held the most northerly part of the kingdom, and were among the original twelve peers of France. For centuries, the economic activity of the Flemish cities, such as Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, made Flanders one of the most affluent regions in Europe, and also gave them strong international connections to trading partners.

Up to 1477, the core area under French suzerainty was west of the Scheldt and historians call this "Royal Flanders" (Dutch: Kroon-Vlaanderen, French: Flandre royale). Aside from this, the counts, from the 11th century onward, held land east of the river as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and this is referred to as "Imperial Flanders" (Rijks-Vlaanderen or Flandre impériale). From 1384, the county was politically united to the Duchy of Burgundy, and it formed the starting point for more acquisitions in the area, and the eventual creation of the Burgundian Netherlands. The expansion of Flemish ("Burgundian") power deep into the Holy Roman Empire further complicated the relationship between Flanders and France, but reinforced the connections with Brabant, Hainaut, Holland and other parts of the Low Countries. The link to the empire was strengthened even more when the Burgundian Netherlands came into the hands of the imperial Habsburg dynasty in 1477. Most of Flanders became part of the empire after the Peace of Madrid in 1526 and the Peace of the Ladies in 1529, although it came to be ruled under the Habsburg crown of Spain. The territories of the old county are now the only part of the late medieval French kingdom outside of modern-day France, Catalonia having been renounced in 1258.

By 1795 the entire Austrian Netherlands, the successor of the Spanish Netherlands, was acquired by France under the French First Republic, and this was recognized by treaty in 1797. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, these territories, including most of the old county of Flanders, passed to the newly established United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was split up between 1830 and 1839 into the modern countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Although the French Republic had avoided using the names of the great medieval counties for their administrative départements, the Dutch and Belgian regimes brought back such names, and as a consequence the two westernmost provinces of the Flanders region of modern Belgium are now called West Flanders and East Flanders.

The term Flanders originally referred to the area around Bruges. It is first mentioned in the biography of Saint Eligius (c. 590–660), the Vita sancti Eligii. The work was written before 684 but has been known only since 725. This work mentions only the place "in Flandris".

A Germanic etymology for Flanders and Flemish (Dutch: Vlaanderen, Vlaams) was proposed by Maurits Gysseling in 1948, based upon an article by René Verdeyen in 1943.

According to this proposal, the terms Flanders and Flemish are likely derived from words derived from Proto-Germanic *flaumaz, meaning stream, current, flood or eddy. Based on this, it is proposed that there was a proto-Germanic term *flaumdra which referred to waterlogged land. According to Toorians, the strength of this proposal is that it would describe the salt marshes and mud flats of this low-lying coastal region. It was regularly inundated, before the development of dykes which started around 1050. However, a weak point of the proposal is that the Germanic wordforms which it requires are not found in any records of Dutch or its dialects. Comparison was instead based upon Old High German flewen and flouwen, and Old Norse flaumr.

The geography of the historic County of Flanders only partially overlaps with the present-day region of Flanders in Belgium, but even there, it extends beyond the present provinces of West Flanders and East Flanders. Some of the historic county is now part of France and the Netherlands. The land covered by the county is spread out over:

The arms of the County of Flanders were allegedly created by Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191; a climbing or rampant black lion on a gold field. In the story about the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the arms and its corresponding battlecry Vlaendr'n den leeuw ("Flanders, the Lion") plays a crucial role in the forming of a Flemish consciousness, which was popularised in the 19th century by the book De Leeuw van Vlaanderen by Hendrik Conscience. As a result, the arms of the county live on as arms of the Flemish community.