Flemish Americans

Community, Not a Country

Though the Flemish have not had a country of their own for centuries, the Flemish Community remains an important idea in Flemish identity. In Belgium, the Flemish Community is one of three institutional communities making up the state, along with the French Community and the German Community, each of which has specific non-overlapping legal authority over issues pertaining to language, culture, education, and aspects of health care. The Flemish Community is celebrated every July 11 in remembrance of the Battle of the Golden Spurs, when the Flemish successfully defeated a French attack.

The Flemish Community also refers to the Flemish people in a broad cultural sense, one that encompasses Flemish cultural life and identity irrespective of political borders or the political authority of other ethnic groups: the Flemish nation. In this sense, the Flemish identity is similar to that of the Welsh or Quebecois, with the added issue that the Flemish homeland is not contained within another political entity (as Quebec is within Canada) but rather sprawls over into several political entities: Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

It is difficult to determine the number of Flemish Americans. Immigration officials at various points in history could classify an incoming immigrant as Flemish, Dutch, Belgian, or French. There are about 360,000 Belgian Americans, some portion of whom are Flemish. They are distributed primarily in the midwest—Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Indiana have some of the largest Flemish populations.

Famous Flemish Americans include the artist Jan Yoors, who spent much of his adolescence with a traveling group of Romani and whose memoir was one of the seminal works about that culture; George Washington Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal and the first Flemish American graduate of West Point; and the novelist Marguerite Yourcenar.

Aspects of Flemish American Culture

One aspect of Flemish American culture is the carillon (sometimes misspelled carillion). Similar to the German glockenspiel, the carillon is a very large musical instrument including at least 23 bronze bells, which are played by using both a keyboard and a pedal keyboard. It is typically housed in a bell tower or church belfry. The keys are mechanical, not electrical (even today), which allows the performer to vary the intensity of the note by varying the pressure applied to the key. A [Page 885]traditional musical instrument of the Low Countries, the carillon has become somewhat associated with Flemish identity—the Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium have a much greater concentration of carillons than the French-speaking regions do. Carillons in the United States include the Stanton Memorial Carillon at Iowa State University; the 49-bell carillon at Michigan State University's Beaumont Tower; the 48-bell carillon of the University of California, Riverside; and the 50-bell carillon at Duke University's chapel, which is played daily.

...