Foreword

What do I, a British historian, know of the history of Belgium and the Low Countries? Bits and pieces. I studied the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries in school and know a great deal about the highly specific topic of Vauban’s barrier fortresses. I read about European political history at university and have a superficial knowledge about how the areas now contained within northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands were torn apart and apportioned to different countries regardless of the desires and identities of the populations living there. And I fell in love with the incredible artistic outpourings from mainly Flemish artists of the early modern era, so unique in style and subject, and so useful to the food historian. Many of the paintings illustrated in this book are like old friends to me, from Bruegel to Peeters, from banketletter to peperkoek.