There were still several decisions that needed to be made. Would the Walloon culture of Brussels itself be a focus? The authors decided not to concentrate on aspects involving the capital, which in geographical terms “is not really part of Wallonia, even if the connections between the two cultures are very strong, especially beginning in the 18th century with the beginning of the dominance of the French language.” What about the German-speaking community? It was decided that it would be included, for similar institutional reasons.

No “Wallonia” before 1844

The book – after an introduction, of course – opens with this question: “What is Wallonia?” The answer may appear obvious, but in reality it is rather complex. The word “Wallonie” does not even appear until 1844 (its usage even at this time was limited to a certain intellectual elite from Namur or Liège). As we see from the very interesting set of maps accompanying the first chapter, the actual territory was actually passed back and forth over the centuries from one empire to another, now part of Gaul, now part of Lotharingia, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, then Austria, then France…

Next, the authors decided to divide the book into a chronological part – from prehistoric times to the contemporary period, passing through the history of Gaul, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the era of revolutions – and a part devoted to important cultural themes: language and literature, books and the reading public, publishing, music, theatre arts, the arts of the Middle Ages, the arts of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, the plastic arts from the 16th century through the 18^th century, plastic and graphic arts in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, photography, motion pictures and audio-visual arts, and finally, museums.

The entire book is richly illustrated (no less than 400 images!), which makes reading it a visual pleasure. It is an occasion for (re)discovering particular objects, places, and archives. A reproduced cover from the magazine Pourquoi pas ? shows us that in 1961, a weekly magazine cost 10 francs, but also that the notion of dividing Belgium under a Federal arrangement was already a topic of conversation (the cover art shows a Belgian national flag cut in two by a pair of scissors). We can appreciate anew photographs of superb buildings which we are so used to seeing, that we pass them by every day without noticing: the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Tournai, the Le Manège theatre in Mons, the recent addition to the Museum of Photography in Charleroi, Liège’s Palais Curtius, the Walloon Parliament at Namur, situated between Namur’s Citadel and the Meuse River, etc.