Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 123, Issue 4, 2010

Analyzing long-term evolutions in the discourse on the closure of the river Scheldt in Antwerp comes down to unlocking an often overlooked but persistent and pervasive rhetoric on the blessings of free trade and seaborne navigation. This so-called ideology of commerce had its origins in the golden sixteenth century, but remained firmly interwoven with the city’s social fabric and institutions, even after its ideological tenets had become less credible later in the seventeenth century. Thus, understanding this ideology of commerce not only rationalizes much of Antwerp’s urban ceremony and acts of self-representation, it also accounts for the city’s poor economic performance at the turn of the eighteenth century. Despite open pleas for protective measures – even within Antwerp itself – the central government in Brussels lacked the means to break with the liberal tariff regimes, which were originally co-negotiated by the commercial lobby of Antwerp. When the river Scheldt was eventually reopened for sea traffic around the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new generation of international merchants revived the mechanics of this commercial rhetoric, which remains firmly connected with the identity of the city itself.

As one of the main ports of Europe, Antwerp had during its Golden Age (the sixteenth century) adopted a rich repertoire of mythological and allegorical figures that represented the River Scheldt (Scaldis) and the seas (Neptune acompanied by tritons and nereids, etc.), as well as commerce (Mercury). These were presented in works of art as well as in pageantry and public festivities, and emphasized the city’s commercial importance. After the closing of the Scheldt (1585) these figures were exploited more urgently. They raised their voices to plead with those in power to reopen the river. Pictures of the times when Scaldis was stil unfettered and when Neptune ruled the seas may have given new hope to the Antwerp public. Paintings by Abraham Janssens, Peter Paul Rubens, Frans II Francken, Jacob Jordaens, and others are interpreted in this light.

Deserted quays, ramshackle warehouses, rusty cranes, dilapidated houses, and pavements speckled with rank weeds: the stereotypical images used by early modern travellers to illustrate the decline of Antwerp after the Spanish Recapture (1585) and the closing of the Scheldt are well known. Deriving new insights from recent literature on heritage travel and lieux de mémoire, and by using a select body of Dutch travel books in manuscript, this article aims to develop a new point of view. First, it can be argued that travellers’ interest in the history of Antwerp was no isolated phenomenon, but part of a much broader interest in Netherlandish places of memory that was itself linked to the new vogue for travelling (the divertissante somertogjes). Moreover, the tragic history of the Recapture and the waning of the Golden Age was experienced in a standard tour along the Exchange, the Oosterlingehuis, and the City Hall, which were seen as tokens of a glorious past and present decay. Finally, the cliché of Antwerp as a dead town did not occur before the end of the seventeenth century, mirroring the devastating economic recession that struck the Southern Netherlands and later the Republic.

After more than a hundred years of mourning for past splendour, and dreams of a reopening, the blockade of the river Scheldt was finally lifted in 1792. The French authorities, who were responsible for the reopening, did not hesitate to exploit the political potential of the local historical narrative concerning the river. During the twenty years of French occupation, the Scheldt narrative was used as a means to legitimize French rule in the eyes of the local population. The French were represented as liberators who came to reverse the historical injustice perpetrated by the Treaty of Münster. During the revolutionary phase of the occupation, the French went so far as to retroject their ideals of freedom and equality onto the Antwerp of the sixteenth century, ideals which they said would be restored by their intervention. This projection was strikingly at odds with revolutionary orthodoxy, in which the old regimes were rejected as despotic. To make their message even more recognisable, administrators integrated meaningful elements of the narrative into their political culture. These included visual representations, historically charged places, and symbolic objects. Moreover, the artistic history of the city, the traditional counterpart of its commercial splendour, was actively appropriated. After Napoleon’s ascent to power in 1799, the Scheldt narrative kept its central place in official discourse, although it was rewritten to suit the new regime. During the Empire the former stress on the Scheldt as a commercial river was replaced by an emphasis on its military function. The Scheldt story was therefore an ideal theme to be appropriated for the purposes of legitimation, although its effect may have been limited.

In 1795 the river Scheldt was formally reopened to all maritime imports, but not until 1863 was there stable duty-free access to the sea. During this period of economic transformation and political instability, the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce played a key role in bringing together the business elite and advising the authorities on economic policy. The Chamber not only struggled for a (duty)-free access to the sea, as in the past, but strongly stressed the importance of free and easy access to the hinterland, especially to the German states. It argued that maritime and transit trade could only be integrated in a context of free trade. The Chamber served the business interests of a small group of predominantly foreign merchants wich were often blocked by the protectionist measures of the central authorities, the interest of industrialists and other port towns in the North Sea range. The discourse of the Chamber was oriented towards the future; the traditional story of the closure of the Scheldt was used only to reinforce its arguments.

Scheldt is frequently quoted in illustrated travel guides of the first half of the nineteenth century. The economic greatness of Antwerp as a sixteenth-century metropolis is a reference point for comparison with the image of nineteenth-century Antwerp. The empty city of the late eighteenth century still reflects the earlier splendour. Under the Napoleontic regime and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands the temporary opening of the Scheldt and the beginning of the reconstruction of the port give rise to a trading city represented as having a prosperous future. Landscape paintings and (litho)graphic albums of city views tell the same story. Historical paintings stage with great theatricality the sixteenth-century drama of the Fall of Antwerp. Focus can change, depending on the political context (French, (Pan)-Netherlandic, or Belgian). The memory of economic decline after the fall of the city is linked to the glorification of the Antwerp school of painting. Rubens and the Scheldt become intertwined. Besides, in paintings and murals painters recover Antwerp’s image as a prosperous sixteenthcentury trading metropolis. The opening of the Scheldt in 1863, the modernization of the port infrastructure, and the economic revival are the basis for an optimistic image of Antwerp as one of the greatest ports in the world.

The case of the river Scheldt estuary shows well where identities and economic and other interests are complementary and where they are not. The new treaty on the Scheldt negotiated after World War I between Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as other issues concerning the river, revealed Belgium as a country with conflicting identities. During the first half of the twentieth century the conflict crystallized between the defenders of a Flemish linguistic and cultural identity and those of the French cultural dominance over the entire Belgian territory. This opposition extended to the formation of Flemish versus Walloon national consciousness. That conflict between diverse national agendas was joined by a Belgian tradition of localism and also (sub)regionalism, which, together with various economic interests, paradoxically rather strengthened Belgian unity by neutralizing the effect of a single division in public opinion.