Talk:French Flanders

French Flanders vs. French Westhoek (Maritime Flanders)

"Why sourced linguistic information would be removed I have no idea. The geography and WW2 information is unsourced, but whatever... 03:59, 27 July 2007 CharlesMartel" Copied from edit summary.

As the edit summary notes, the sourced info you are referring to was not removed. It was moved intact with references to Westhoek (region) because it only applies to that region, not to all of French Flanders. The Romance Flanders (southeastern) half of French Flanders has never been Dutch-speaking (or not for a millenium anyway). Sentences such as "The traditional language of the French Flanders region is a dialect of the Dutch language known as West Flemish...It was once the dominant language of the region..."[1] imply that all of French Flanders was relatively recently Dutch speaking when such is only the case for French Westhoek. Hence the move.

As far as the "unsourced" additions, they are from fr:Flandre française, nl:Frans-Vlaanderen, and other English Wikipedia pages such as Reichskommissar and Picard language. Since these are other Wikipedia pages, they are not citable but have been potentially subject to the same oversight as any Wikpedia page.

It is clear from the French and Dutch articles as well as sources such as ones cited here and here that French Flanders includes more than just French Westhoek (~Arrondissement of Dunkirk). However, the article and its images dealt only with Westhoek so I expanded the article to include the non-Westhoek areas of Lille (the center of French Flanders) and Douai and moved the information exclusively on Westhoek to its own article.

— AjaxSmack  06:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Historically Dutch?

Greetings,

Even the article on Flanders notes that it was a part of ancient France, as far back as King Clovis, who was crowned at Tournai. Due to meddling by the Spanish, the region was separated from France in the 1500s and only a minority was returned ("French Flanders") in 1659.Ryoung122 08:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The link to a supposed map of Walloon speaking people in this area is broken. and sorry no tildes on my mac keyboard!110.33.173.24 (talk) 12:53, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

French historical bias

"Once a part of ancient Frankia since the inception of the Frankish kingdom under the Merovingian monarchs such as Clovis, who was crowned at Tournai, Flanders gradually fell under the control of the English and then Spanish. When French power returned under Louis XIV, a part of historically French Flanders was returned."

I can only assume this passage has been copied from the 1952 Larousse that is listed as a source. It would take an article much, much longer than this one to outline all the things that are wrong with this statement.

Not only is this heavily biased it also insinuates a historical right for France to invade and take over territories that were once Frankish (never mind the false impression that the Franks and the French are synonymous, which they certainly are not). A nice piece of historical revisionism but really has no place in in an impartial historical perspective. It is also factually incorrect as the English never held French Flanders with the exception of Calais and Dunkirk.

Modern French historical references make no such allusions but simply refer to the Treaties of the Pyrenees and Nijmegen as an explanation as to why French Flanders is French. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pytter (talk • contribs) 21:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)