The Merchant of Antwerp

The Merchant of Antwerp is an English translation of a novel by Hendrik Conscience, the Belgian Flemish writer who lived from 1812 to 1883 and who is generally considered the founder of modern Flemish language literature. Conscience produced more than one hundred novels and short stories across his long career and is the writer whose work essentially established Flemish as a serious literary language alongside French in nineteenth century Belgium.

Belgium became an independent state in 1830 after the revolution that separated it from the Netherlands, and the new country contained substantial populations speaking both French and Flemish, the Dutch dialect spoken in the northern half of the country. French dominated as the language of government, higher education, and high culture during the early decades of Belgian independence, with Flemish relegated to the status of a peasant dialect not considered suitable for serious literary work. Conscience’s substantial novels in Flemish challenged this assumption and gave the Flemish speaking population a literature of their own.

Conscience’s most famous work was The Lion of Flanders of 1838, the historical novel set during the early fourteenth century conflicts between Flanders and France that culminated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302. The novel essentially created Flemish historical consciousness and remained the central document of Flemish nationalist identity through the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. His other novels covered various historical and contemporary Flemish subjects with the same combination of literary ambition and national feeling.

The Merchant of Antwerp uses the Flemish commercial city of Antwerp as the setting for one of Conscience’s contemporary or historical narratives. Antwerp had been one of the major commercial centres of Europe during the sixteenth century and retained substantial commercial and cultural importance throughout the nineteenth century. The novel combines the careful local observation that Conscience brought to all his Flemish subjects with the kind of dramatic plot that the nineteenth century European novel reader expected.

Conscience’s English translations were widely read in the late nineteenth century English speaking world. The book is of interest now to readers of nineteenth century European national literatures, of Belgian and Flemish cultural history, and of the broader nineteenth century European historical novel tradition. It pairs naturally with The Lion of Flanders and with the broader Flemish literature of the period.