Francis Dumont

Francis Dumont born with Montignies-on-Sambre on July 9th, 1904, deceased with Beaumont on September 7th, 1975 is a Belgian historian and a Walloon militant.

Research and publications

Civil engineer of the mines (1928), engineer in electricity (1932) of the Université of Liege), very committed in the sections of young people of the Walloon Mouvement it founds (in 1938), with the abbot Jules Mahieu, Maurice Bologna and Arille Carlier the historical Société for the defense and the illustration of Wallonia which will become the Institut Jules Destrée in 1960.

Impassioned history and impassioned by that of the Wallonia Dumont in 1938 publishes the French irredentism in Wallonia of 1914 to 1931 which will be republished by the Destrée Institute in 1965. It had already published in 1935 the revolution inhabitant of Li2ege in the Pays of Charleroi (1935). It continued its work after the exodus of 1940 and an exile in France: the counter-revolution brabançonne in the peninsula of Chimay ((1947), Two years of history of France seen of a Walloon small town (1951), great love of Charles of Lorraine or romantic destiny of a chanoiness of Bubbles (1953). It had inward conviction that Since the end of the XVIIIe century at least the Walloon country forever ceased expressing its political originality clearly, forever ceased constituting an autonomous province of the spirit and feeling public.

Its reflection on the direction to be given to a History of Wallonia

In its Historiography and policy in Belgium Herve Hasquin quotes lengthily, in postface (as well in the edition of 1980 as in that 1995), a conference of F.Dumont given to the beginning of 1940 and published in the Bulletin n° 2 of the historical Société for the defense and the illustration of Wallonia . Dumont answers lengthily it Leon Halkin which proposed to give the teaching of the history starting from the medieval principalities. It disputes the professor inhabitant of Li2ege, who criticized itself Henri Pirenne because this one speaks about Belgium even front 1430. However, elon Dumont, even the idea that the Burgundian Netherlands (after 1430) would be the prefiguration of Belgium are not convincing: because this State recovered a territory infinitely wider than Belgium, than several Walloon grounds did not form part of it, in particular the Principauté of Liege. Admittedly, after the secession of Holland in XVIe century these Netherlands approaches current Belgium but, continues Dumont, aiming the Spanish Netherlands as well as the Austrian Netherlands, the territories that, for the conveniences of their administration, the sovereigns hispano-Austrians joined together under the denomination of Netherlands, form, when the chart is drawn, two block distinct, hardly welded one with the other by a narrow language of ground on the Dining side of : the block Flanders - the Brabant - County of Hainaut, on the one hand, and the block Luxembourg on the other hand.

He also insists (as Pirenne made it), on the fact that it is at the French period that the provinces of current Belgium really amalgamated and he sees in the Belgium a girl of the French revolution. Leon Halkin asked that one not admit Belgium before 1430, but which one does not say either that Wallonia would have existed before 1830. It is also that which Dumont rejects too.

Wallonia before 1830

Dumont continues by admitting to some extent the reasoning of Halkin: If it is true, incontestably, that it should be prevented introducing into the History, by pure arbitrary, the appearance even of a Walloon community conscious of itself and acting like such, is it followed from there that it is also necessary to proscribe the objective concept of a country, a territory, a Walloon company? It thinks that it is necessary to answer by the negative one for this question. For Dumont, if Belgium étaitr non-cohesive natural and borders, Wallonia, it, was limited, on two sides at least by a registered border, if not on the ground, at least, if I then to say, in social reality, the linguistic Frontière. . To the question of knowing what, then, limited Wallonia on the side of France, Dumont gives this solution which it considers personal There were, on this side, an important limit, that of the moving territories of the crown of France, changing in time, of the Kingdom of the Lilies and the Holy roman Empire. There existed thus, in the North-East of France, a territory of Romance or French language, a territory of French civilization , independent of France, compact territory, and even almost formed, the Franco-German border approaching, according to the parallel of Virton, the linguistic border and drawing a sortte Isthme.

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