Belgium

Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe in the Low Countries, bordered by the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, France and the North Sea. It is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a complex federal system of three regions, Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region, and two main linguistic communities, Dutch-speaking Flemish and French-speaking. Present-day Belgium was part of the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and the Burgundian Netherlands in the Middle Ages, was ruled successively by Habsburg Spain, the Austrian Habsburgs and Revolutionary France, and was incorporated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. An independent Belgium was established in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution, becoming one of the earliest participants in the Industrial Revolution and the first country in continental Europe to industrialise.