It is blockbuster TV, with Romans and Vikings, knights and Neanderthals, trains and the trenches of the first world war – and a hefty dose of political controversy.
The Story of Flanders, a 10-part history series airing in Belgium’s northern region until March, has been a cultural landmark. But the apparently lavish funding from the region’s government, run by the separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party, which seeks to make Flanders independent from Belgium, has led to accusations of propaganda.
The series, broken into 50-minute episodes, recounts 38,000 years of history in this corner of north-western Europe. It has been an epic production: three years in the making, with lavish historical reconstructions, involving 700 different actors and extras in period costume, 100 locations and a team of stunt horses. More than 200 experts were consulted and many appear on screen in between the painstakingly crafted reconstructions, which include the gruesome reality of dying from plague, to the snorting horses and bloody close combat of medieval battle.
The series attracts an average weekly audience of 1.6 million viewers, according to Flemish public broadcaster VRT, nearly a quarter of the population.
The minister-president of Flanders, Jan Jambon, has not hidden the agenda. “The N-VA is the largest party in the region and strengthening identity is part of our programme,” he told De Standaard shortly before the first programme aired. “We will do this from Sunday with Het verhaal van Vlaanderen [The Story of Flanders] on TV.” Opposition parties have denounced the series, reputed to cost €2.4m, as propaganda and argued the money could have been better spent on schools.
“What irritates me is that I have to hear every week there is no money for school books, school meals,” Hannelore Goeman, the Socialist group leader in the Flemish parliament told the Observer. “When it comes to their pet projects [the N-VA] miraculously find the money,” she said, referring to the show, as well as plans for a virtual museum of Flanders and a “canon of Flanders” to celebrate important figures and events in Flemish culture.
“I think it’s propaganda for Flanders,” she said, while adding it was a good programme that she enjoyed watching. “It’s well made, but they always talk about ‘us’ and ‘we’. But who are we, the Flemish people? I’m sorry, but the Flemish people in Burgundian times didn’t exist … There is this subtle undertone of identity construction.”
Other critics have seized on the treatment of historical events, such as the 1302 Battle of Kortrijk, when a ragtag army of Flemish weavers and craftsman routed superior French forces backed by Flemish feudal lords. The battle was elevated in the 19th century to a foundational myth of Flanders, when it became known as “the Battle of the Golden Spurs”. The series devotes an episode to that event, including the historically unproven detail that Flemish fighters bore shields emblazoned with a black lion on a yellow background – the symbol of modern-day Flanders.
The programme makers reject the critique. “It’s quite clear it’s not a nationalistic pamphlet, that we’ve tried to bring a scientific approach to history,” said the writer and producer Jesse Fabre, who described the reported €2.4m cost as “too high”.
He rejected the “scattershot criticism” of the Battle of the Golden Spurs episode, pointing out the programme includes contributions from one of the world’s leading authorities on that event, historian Jan Dumolyn. “He really emphasised that it was also a social struggle of poor workmen against powerful elites. That was the main message of our episode.”
“The battle is one of the biggest symbols of how history can and has been used and misused in Belgian and Flemish national history. It’s no wonder that the episode would draw criticism.” His aim was to make history tangible for a public he believes is little acquainted with the past. “There’s a big difference between reading about Filips de Goede, a Burgundian duke, and seeing his face and feeling what he feels,” he said, referring to the 15th-century leader, known to anglophones as Philip the Good, who was an ally of the English king Henry V.
Jelle Haemers, professor in medieval history at KU Leuven, who was not involved in the programme, finds the charge of propaganda unfair. But, he thinks, the show takes a rather old-fashioned view. “It’s all battle history,” he said. “Battles are important, but they’re not so decisive as they have been presented. And we don’t see cultural history at all. Where is the art history? Where is literary history? Where are the women?” he said, observing that in the late middle ages, women had more rights than in the tumultuous 16th to 18th centuries.
The programme makers have no regrets, when confronted with whittling down 38,000 years into 10 episodes for primetime. “We didn’t take those choices lightly,” Fabre said.
He looks back to a recent episode on the Eighty Years’ war, which led to the emergence of the Protestant Dutch Republic in 1648 from the Catholic Spanish empire. “I think 1.7 million people watched that episode. Most of them didn’t know anything about it. I think they learned a lot and what they learned was worthwhile.”
