After the Habsburg dynasty inherited the Low Countries from the Burgundy dynasty, they were governed as part of a vast empire dominated by Spain (and Portugal) with huge colonies. Europe was however being torn apart by dissension against the previously evident, almost omnipotent Catholic church. Under most devout king Philip II, Calvinists, opposing 'excessive devotion', challenged both ecclesiastical and royal authority by starting an epidemic of vandalizing raids on churches, starting at Steevoorde monastery, a center of the most despised cult of the Holy Virgin. The king sent his 'iron duke' of Alva, a respected, rigid general, who immediately installed a reign of terror centered around a special court that passed over 12000 death sentences, including the counts of Egmont and Hoorn, among the Low countries top nobility, meant as a deterrent but actually stirring general hatred against Spanish oppression. This escalated into the Eighty Years (civil) War, which wrecked the Low Countries bloodily and ultimately exhausted the parties (basically Catholic v. protestant) to conclude the Westphalian peace treaties of 1648. One remarkable episode was the failed attempt to break the Spanish siege of Antwerp and block the Scheld -making it the world's richest port- using fire ships. Afterward, the Catholic character of the remaining Spanish south -roughly Belgium- was emphasized during the Counterreformation, remaining more dominant then ever until the industrial revolution and secularization.

In the reign of Leopold I, the young Belgium was leading the Industrial Revolution second only to Britain, with such novelties as the continent's first railroad, making it the world's fifth-wealthiest economy. Yet for the working class, life as factory laborer was even worse, especially into 'continental Manchester' Ghent, often packed into unsanitary pauper housing, cesspits for diseases. The rich 2% who paid enough taxes to qualify for the vote opposed social reform, until a as trike wave allowed the socialist movement winning its main demand: the general vote, albeit it multiple for the rich and excluding women. .The exploitation of the Congo as king Leopold II's private colony was particularly harsh, yet for long the ordinary Belgians barely knew about the excesses, flocking to stereotypical world exhibition 'nicker village' reconstructions known as 'people gardens'.