|
Around the year 867,
Baldwin Iron Arm, the first Count
of Flanders, decided to build a castle at the
meeting of the Lieve and Leie rivers in order
to thwart the raiding Norsemen. A town soon grew
up around the castle, and Baldwin adopted it as
the seat of his domain. By the 12th century, the
castle had been enlarged and strengthened and
the town of Ghent was rapidly growing into a prosperous
city. The cloth trade flourished here like nowhere
else and within a century Ghent had become an
industrial city with a population greater than
that of any city in Europe. Such prosperity brought
the workers and citizens into conflict with the
ruling nobility; and the city experienced frequent
clashes between the two for the next several centuries.
By
the late 15th century, the cloth trade had begun
to wane, though Ghent remained prosperous by shifting
its economy to the shipping trade along the Leie
and Scheldt rivers. In the latter part of the
century, however, the closing of the Scheldt brought
commercial decline, not to be reversed until the
revival of cloth working during the industrial
boom of the 19th century. |
