Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen

Christophe Declercq, christophe.declercq@artesis.be 

The main aim and focus of this PhD research is to provide a cross-cultural study of a part of British and Belgian history that is often overlooked and hardly analysed in detail: the stay of a quarter of a million Belgian refugees in England during world war I.

When in 1914 Germany invaded the then neutral Belgium, nearly one third of the Belgian population fled. 265,000 Belgians went to England during the initial stages of the war and although many returned during the war still (or went to France or the Netherlands), about half of them stayed.

In Britain, the wave of refugee distress relief and of philanthropy involved Belgian and British political and cultural elite. Charity also sprung from a wider mass. The reception and accomodation of the Belgian refugees in Britain was complex and cumbersome. Once settled on British soil, the enormous numbers of refugees formed a part of British everyday life as they were dispersed all over Britain. Various communities evolved around key locations in South East England, others around the main universities, others around munitions factories.

It is the purpose of this research to look into the stay of the Belgians in Britain from a historical and socio-political point of view on the one hand, and to offer an insight into the cross-cultural intracies the came along with the Belgians’ sojourn in Britain on the other hand.