Confusing categories: peasants, politics and national identities in the multilingual state, Belgium c. 1880-1940

The politicization of the farming population has been at the center of a long academic debate in European historiography. If anything has become apparent so far, it is that the process was neither linear nor unambiguous. Belgium –a bilingual country since its establishment in 1830– is a fascinating case in this respect. This paper points out the singularity and complexity of the Belgian example, focusing on the role played until World War II by farmers’ associations in affirming or reordering national identities and strengthening or weakening ideologies and political parties. Initially, there was a convergence around a coherent Belgian Catholic organizational model that rested on a romantic nationalist image of the peasantry and countryside. But organizational fragmentation eventually prevailed, causing splits along two fundamental fault lines in Belgian society: the ideological and ethno-cultural cleavages. This article argues that farmers’ associations faced the challenge of navigating through the Belgian political imbroglio, using party politics as an instrument for their own economic and social ends. In so doing they became involved or even ensnared in the minefield of politics, subsequently contributing to the reaffirmation of Belgium’s political fault lines. The analysis is based on relevant primary sources along with the combined use of three scholarly sub-disciplines that do not often appear together: rural history, political history and the history of nationalism.