Light railways and the rural-urban continuum: Technology, space and society in late nineteenth-century Belgium

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 312-328

  De Block, Greet ^a   Polasky, Janet ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

^b UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE   (United States)

Author keywords

Belgium; Engineering; Hybrid landscape; Nineteenth century; Railway; Urbanism

Indexed keywords

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; INDUSTRIALIZATION; LIGHT RAIL SYSTEM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; RURAL LANDSCAPE; TRANSPORTATION HISTORY; URBAN GEOGRAPHY; URBAN HISTORY;

BELGIUM;

EID: 80052416374     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2011.01.003     Document Type: Article

References (136)

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3. Vanthemsche, Les paradoxes de l'état (note 60).
4. Graux, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1883-84 (13 May 1884), 1256.
5. Constitution d'une Société nationale pour la construction et l'exploitation de chemins de fer vicinaux. Rapport fait, au nom de la section centrale, par Le Hardy de Beaulieu, Documents parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1883-84 (22 January 1884), 14-15.
6. De Bruyn, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1883-84 (9 May 1884), 1204.
7. C. Buysse, Kerels (1927) quoted in De Meulder, Dehaene, Atlas, 38. The term tram usually refers to local railways in cities, but in this case the tram refers to a light railway within a rural setting.
8. On the tension between abstract networks and local materialization, see Picon, L'art de l'ingénieur; Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism (note 38); and B. Verschaffel, De verpulverde stad. Over wonen en de logica van het netwerk, in: De beschikbare ruimte: reflecties over bouwen, Tielt, 1990.
9. The design was the 'improved version' of the 1866 law allowing secondary railways in Eastern Flanders (31 Mai 1866-Loi qui autorise la concession de chemins de fer secondaires dans la Flandre oriëntale).
10. Société nationale des chemins de fer vicinaux. Province de la Flandre orientale, Notice sur les lignes projetées par la Société nationale et soumise à l'examen du Conseil provincial pendant la session ordinaire de 1885, Brussels, 1885, 14.
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15. See M. Smets, Belgian reconstruction after World War I: a transition from civic art to urban planning, Planning Perspectives 2 (1987) 1-26.
16. See the conclusion (chapter 17) in Smets, L'avènement de la cité-jardin en Belgique (note 11).
17. See chapters about the ideas of Edouard Ducpétiaux and conferences on sanitation during the (mid) nineteenth century in Smets, L'avènement de la cité-jardin en Belgique (note 11).
18. See P. Uyttenhove, Les efforts internationaux pour une Belgique moderne, in: Marcel Smets (Ed.), Resurgam, 33-68.
19. Smets, L'avènement de la cité-jardin en Belgique (note 11).
20. B.S. Rowntree, Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium, London, 1911, 108.
21. M. Smets, L'avènement de la cité-jardin en Belgique. Histoire de l'habitat social en Belgique de 1830 à 1930, Brussels, 1976, 9.
22. Belgian reformers such as Emile Vandervelde interpreted the poems of Verhaeren about the villes tentaculaires negatively, as an argument to urbanize the country and to turn Belgium into one giant Garden City. Conversely, the English town planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie, as David Matless pointed out in Landscape and Englishness, extracted 'the motto of town planners' from Verhaeren's poems; an argument 'to lead the energies of the city into the right channels', to structure the city and make sure the distinction between town and country is guaranteed. See D. Matless, Landscape and Englishness, London, 1998, 36-38; and D. Matless, Appropriate geography: Patrick Abercrombie and the energy of the world, Journal of Design History 6 (1993) 167-178. For the original text, see P. Abercrombie, The many-tentacled town: the vision of Emile Verhaeren, Town Planning Review 3 (1912) 133-149.
23. Of course there are other regions of which the landscape differs from this archetypal composition. Comparable regions with fertile agricultural land and dense settlement patterns are, for example, the Veneto and Milano region.
24. Vandervelde, L'exode rurale (note 4), 138-139.
25. For a historical study on the implementation and development of the Garden City concept in Belgium, see Smets, L'avènement de la cité-jardin en Belgique (note 11).
26. E. Mahaim, Les abonnements d'ouvriers sur les chemins de fer belges et leurs effets sociaux, Brussels, 1910. For a survey and mapping of commuting population in 1947, see O.Tulippe, La population active en Belgique. Localisation et mouvements. Etude préliminaire, Les cahiers d'urbanisme 17 (1954). For a comparative analysis of commuting in the Netherlands and Belgium in 1947, see R. E. Dickinson, The geography of commuting: the Netherlands and Belgium, Geographical Review 47 (1957) 521-538.
27. Mahaim, Les abonnements d'ouvriers (note 16), 77.
28. Mahaim, Les abonnements d'ouvriers (note 16), 63.
29. Dickinson, The geography of commuting (note 16), 531.
30. A. De Winne, A travers les Flandres, Gent, 1902.
31. Rowntree, Land and Labour.
32. Comte d'Aviella, in: Annales parlementaires: Senat, 1902-03 A., 130.
33. H. Demain, Les migrations ouvrières à travers la Belgique, Louvain, 1919, 132.
34. Vandervelde, L'exode rural (note 4), 233. E.C. Vollans has studied this combination of agricultural with other forms of employment. See E.C. Vollans, Urban development in Belgium since 1830, in: R.P. Beckinsale and J.M. Houston (Eds), Urbanization and its Problems, New York, 1968, 171-198.
35. The common reading of spatial development starts from concepts on city development and city renovation: see introduction of Hohenberg and Lees, The Making of Urban Europe (note 10). A few recent studies have analyzed the historical relation between rails and urbanization in Belgium. However, they are limited to specific regions and approach infrastructure and space phenomenologically. For morphological analyses of light railways and urbanization in Brabant, see B. Grosjean, Urbanisation sans urbanisme. Une histoire de la 'ville diffuse', Wavre, 2010; of South West Flanders, see B. De Meulder and M. Dehaene, Atlas. Fascikel 1, Zuid-West-Vlaanderen, Kortrijk, 2001.
36. Ghent Urban Studies Team (Ed.), Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions, Rotterdam, 2002, 8. For an elaboration of the term hyperville, see A. Corboz, La Suisse comme hyperville, Le Visiteur 6 (2000) 112-129
37. Zwischenstadt, see T. Sieverts, Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land, Basel, 1999
38. città diffusa, see F. Indovina, La città diffusa, Venezia, 1990; rurbanisation, see G. Bauer and J.-M. Roux, La rurbanisation ou la ville éparpillée, Paris, 1976. Henri Lefebvre also refers to the concept of the rurban to describe the invalidity of 'the old opposition between town and country', see H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, Oxford, 1996, 120.
39. For a reference work on urban history in Belgium, see R. De Meyer and M. Smets, De recente stedebouwkundige geschiedschrijving in België omtrent negentiende en begin twintigste eeuw, Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis 13 (1982) 467-517.
40. M. Smets, La reconstruction belge ou le passage de l'art urbain à l'urbanisme, in: M. Smets (Ed.), Resurgam. La reconstruction en Belgique après 1914, Brussels, 1985, 74.
41. B. De Meulder, J. Schreurs, A. Cock, B. Notteboom, Patching up the Belgian landscape, Oase: Tijdschrift voor Architectuur 52 (1999) 86.
42. As early as 1864, Belgian urbanism and urbanity was weighed and found wanting by Charles Baudelaire. A hundred years later, the prominent urbanist Renaat Braem wrote the influential pamphlet The ugliest country in the world: C. Baudelaire, Pauvre Belgique, Brussels, 1864
43. R. Braem, Het lelijkste land ter wereld, Leuven, 1968. See also: F. Strauven, Hoe Belgie zijn huidige aanblik kreeg (The history of Belgian town and spatial planning), Wonen-TA/BK 12 (1980) 7-20
44. F. Strauven, Het lelijkste land?, in: R. Gobyn, M. Hürrig and M. Roquet (Eds), De fifties in België, Brussels, 1988, 268-281. On the difference between planned Holland and 'non-planned' Belgium, see A. Faludi, A. van der Valk, Rule and order. Dutch planning doctrine in the twentieth century, Geojournal Library 28 (1994)
45. R. Houthave, De moeizame adoptie van de 'ruimtelijke planning' in Vlaanderen, Stedenbouw en ruimtelijke ordening 86 (2005) 10-24.
46. P. de Decker, E. Lammens, P. van der Sluys, L. van der Vliet, P.J. Van Severen, Flanders' urbanity: an outline, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 30 (1987) 98.
47. E. Vandervelde, L'exode rural et le retour aux champs, Paris, 1903.
48. See M. Qviström, Informal plans and informal agencies; On methodological challenges for peri-urban planning history in Sweden (ca 1930-1970), in: Gülersoy, Ayataç, Önem, Koramaz, Günay, Arslanli, Ayranci (Eds), Urban Transformation: Controversies, Contrasts and Challenges, Istanbul, 2010, 318.
49. On the spatiality of modernity, see D. Gilbert, D. Matless and B. Short (Eds), Geographies of British Modernity: Space and Society in the Twentieth Century, Oxford, 2003.
50. On motorways and landscape, see C. Mauch and T. Zeller (Eds), The World Beyond the Windshield. Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe, Athens (Ohio), 2008. For a transdisciplinary study on the design, landscaping and construction of the M1 motorway in Britain, see P. Merriman, Driving Spaces: A Cultural-historical Geography of England's M1 Motorway, Oxford, 2007
51. P. Merriman, 'Operation motorway': landscapes of construction on England's M1 motorway, Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005) 113-133. For a historical study on the German Autobahnen and landscape, see T. Zeller, Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, New York, 2007.
52. For more theoretical work on infrastructure systems and space, see G. Dupuy (Ed.), Réseaux territoriaux, Caen, 1988
53. J.A. Tarr and G. Dupuy (Eds), Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America, Philadelphia, 1988
54. G. Dupuy, L'urbanisme des réseaux, Paris, 1991; J.-M. Offner (Ed.), Réseaux, territoires et organisation sociale, Problèmes politiques et sociaux 740 (1994)
55. P. Bélanger, Landscape as infrastructure, Landscape Journal 28 (2009) 79-95; chapter on 'infrastructural urbanism' in S. Allen, Points+Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City, New York, 1999, 46-59.
56. For studies on automobilization and landscape in France and the United States, see D. Mangin, La ville franchisée. Formes et structures de la ville contemporaine, Paris, 2004; O.D. Gutfreund, Twentieth Century Sprawl. How Highways Transformed America, New York, 2004
57. M. Gottdiener, Planned Sprawl. Private and Public Interest in Suburbia, Londen and Beverly Hills, 1977. For an international overview of recent infrastructure landscapes, see M. Smets and K. Shannon, The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure, Rotterdam, 2010.
58. For an excellent review of the history of urbanization, see G. Fields, City systems, urban history, and economic modernity: urbanisation and the transition from agrarian to industrial Society, Berkeley Planning Journal 13 (1999) 102-128
59. A. van der Woude, A. Hayami, J. de Vries (Eds), Urbanization in History, Oxford, 1990s.
60. See for example the special section on 'Railways and Political Economy in Britain, France, and the United States, 1840-1950' in Social Science History 34 (2010). The articles illustrate the effects of railway networks on demography and urbanization by means of quantitative methodologies such as the Geographic Information System (GIS), spatial statistics and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). See J. Atack, F. Bateman, M.Haines and R. A. Margo, Did railroads induce or follow economic growth? Urbanization and population growth in the American Midwest, 1850-1860, Social Science History 34 (2010) 171-197
61. I.N. Gregory and J. Martí Henneberg, The railways, urbanization, and local demography in England and Wales, 1825-1911, Social Science History 34 (2010) 199-228.
62. R.M. Schwartz, Rail transport, agrarian crisis, and the restructuring of agriculture: France and Great Britain confront globalization, 1860-1900, Social Science History 34 (2010) 229-255.
63. Foucault's notion of the bio-technico-political is the driver of the debate. For the last publications of Michel Foucault on biopolitics, see his lectures: M. Foucault, M. Senellart (Eds), Sécurité, territoire, population: Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978), Paris, 2004
64. M. Foucault, M. Senellart (Eds), Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979), Paris, 2004. See also P. Rabinow, French Modern. Norms and Forms of the Social Environment, Cambridge, 1989
65. A. Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1992; B. Latour, Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Cambridge, 1996
66. D. Nye, Electrifying America. Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940, Cambridge, 1992
67. S. Graham and S. Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, London, 2001, 8-12.
68. A. Picon, Les saint-simonians: raison, imaginaire et utopie, Paris, 2002, 9.
69. The list of publications on the relation between the construction of railways and urbanization is very limited. Most studies focus on the urbanization of 'virgin land', for example, J.W. Reps, Cities of the American West. A History of Urban Planning, Princeton, 1979; D.H. Bain, The Old Iron Road. An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West, New York, 2004; C. Purcar, Railway and Landscape Interaction: A History of the First Transylvanian Railway (1868-2000), Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leuven, 2009.
70. On the Belgian agricultural crisis and its effects on rural economy and regional poverty, see D.A.G. Vanneste, Rural economy and indigence in mid-nineteenth-century Belgium, Journal of Historical Geography 23 (1997) 3-15; G. Jacquemyns, Histoire de la crise économique des Flandres, Brussels, 1928; Camille Jacquart, Mouvement de l'état civil et de la population, Brussels, 1906; and Emile Jottrand, Le dépeuplement des campagnes, Mons, 1895.
71. For example, the work of Bart Van der Herten on transport in Belgium during the nineteenth century is written from the perspective of transport economy. Although it gives an excellent overview of the evolution of different transport modes in Belgium, space, or the intended organization of the territory or society, is absent in this narrative. The impact of transport is illustrated by databanks describing the financial return. (Bart Van de Herten, België onder stoom. Transport en communicatie tijdens de 19de eeuw, Leuven, 2004).
72. On railways and cities, see R. Roth and M.-N. Polino (Eds), The City and the Railway in Europe, Aldershot, 2003
73. the 4th International Railway History Conference. Cities, Users and their Railways, 27-29th of May 2010, Mechelen, Belgium. On the interaction between light railways and town-planning, see L. Bigon, Tracking ethno-cultural differences: the Lagos steam tramway, 1902-1933, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 596-618.On steam and national landscapes, see W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, 1980
74. M. Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination, New Haven and London, 1999; S. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, Cambridge, 1983
75. T. Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern World, London, 2006.
76. Liora Bigon's research on the Lagos steam tramway has a similar approach. Relating infrastructure and colonial town-planning policy, she showed that 'the tramway was used by British colonial authorities to reinforce a pre-existent informal residential segregation in Lagos'. Bigon, Tracking ethno-cultural differences (note 42).
77. For example, France is 18 times the size of Belgium, but three times less populated. The United Kingdom is 8 times bigger but only two-thirds times less densely populated. (See Eurostat website).
78. G. De Block, Designing the nation: the Belgian railway project, 1830-1837, Technology and Culture, forthcoming.
79. C. Rogier in Chambre des Représentans [sic]. Suite de la discussion du chemin en fer, Moniteur belge (12 and 18 March 1834).
80. On the ideas of territory and infrastructure of French Saint-Simonian engineers, see Picon, Les saint-simoniens (note 39).
81. Mai 1866-Loi qui autorise la concession de chemins de fer vicinaux dans le Brabant, Pasinomie (1866) 183-184
82. Mai 1866-Loi qui autorise la concession de chemins de fer secondaires dans la Flandre orientale, Pasinomie (1866) 184; 31 Mai 1866-Loi qui autorise la concession de chemins de fer secondaires dans le Hainaut, Pasinomie (1866) 185-186.
83. Splingard, Chemins de fer secondaires. Réseau du Brabant, Brussels, 1864, 8-9.
84. Vanderstichelen, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1865-66 (17 May 1866), 842-843.
85. Rowntree, Land and Labour (note 2), 544.
86. Vanderstichelen, in: Annales parlementaires: Sénat, 1865-66 (25 May 1866), 620.
87. Belgique industrielle: vues des établissements industriels de la Belgique, Brussels, 1852-1855
88. B. Van der Herten, M. Oris and J. Roegiers (Eds), La Belgique industrielle en 1850: deux cents images d'un monde nouveau, Deurne, 1995 (republished in 1995).
89. For a discourse on the picturesque as a representational and discursive unifier of the premodern and the modern, see D. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, London, 1984
90. chapter on the picturesque and appropriation in J. Macarthur, The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust and other Irregularities, London and New York, On the picturesque in a Belgian context, see L. Pil, 'Pour le plaisir des yeux'. Het pittoreske landschap in de Belgische kunst; 19de-eeuwse retoriek en beeldvorming, Leuven, 1993; and the essay of L. Pil in Van der Herten, Oris, Roegiers (Eds), La Belgique industrielle en 1850 (note 52).2007, 176-233.
91. Jamar, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1868-69 (22 April 1869), 763.
92. Jamar, in: Annales parlementaires (note 54), 1868-69 (22 April 1869), 765.
93. Septembre 1869 - Arrêté du ministre des travaux publics. Chemin de fer de l'Etat. Trains spéciaux pour le transport, par abonnement, des ouvriers, Pasinomie (1869) 368.
94. Jamar, Chemins de fer de l'Etat. Tarifs pour le transport des voyageurs, Documents Parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1869-1870 (10 December 1869).
95. Vandervelde, L'exode rurale (note 4), 131.
96. Mahaim, Les abonnements ouvriers (note 16), 39.
97. G. Vanthemsche, Les paradoxes de l'état, Brussels, 1997.
98. See R.E. Pahl, The rural urban continuum, Sociologia Ruralis 6 (1966) 301.
99. Vandervelde, L'exode rurale (note 4), 142.
100. On trains and suburbanization in Europe, see P. Capuzzo, Between politics and technology: transport as a factor of mass suburbanization in Europe, 1890-1939, in: C. Divall and W. Bond (Eds), Suburbanizing the Masses. Public Transport and Urban Development in Historical Perspective, Aldershot, 2003, 23-48.
101. For a comparative analysis of social reform in nineteenth-century London and Brussels, see J. Polasky, Reforming Urban Labour: Routes to the City, Roots in the Country, Ithaca, 2010.
102. Jamar, in: Annales parlementaires (note 54), 1868-69 (22 April 1869), 765.
103. On the social effects of the workmen's trains, from the poorly accommodated mass transport of the lower class to a democratic mobility, see D. Weber, The Birth of a Commuter Society. Workingmen's Trains in Belgium, 1870-1914, paper presented at the 4th International Railway History Conference (note 42), 27-29th of May, Mechelen, Belgium.2010
104. Demain, Les migrations ouvrières (note 22), 205.
105. E. Vliebergh, De landeliljke Bevolking der Kempen gedurende de 19e eeuw, Brussels, 1906, 27.
106. Budget de Ministère des Travaux publics pour l'exercice 1876. Rapport fait, au nom de la section centrale, par M. T'Serstevens, Documents parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1875-1876 (6 April 1876), 2.
107. Budget de Ministère des Travaux publics (note 68), 1876, 36.
108. de Naeyer, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1852-53 (16 February 1853), 636-637.
109. On population changes in Belgium between 1846 and 1935, with special attention to local variations of density, see H. M. Kendall, A survey of population changes in Belgium, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 28 (1938) 145-164
110. Omer Tulippe, Densité de la population en 1846, 1880, 1900, et 1930, Brussels, 1962.
111. de Lexhy, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1874-75 (29 April 1875), 749-750.
112. Budget de Ministère des Travaux publics pour l'exercice 1875. Rapport fait, au nom de la section centrale, par M. T'Serstevens, Documents parlementaires: Chambre des représentants 1874-1875 (1 January 1875), 11.
113. Juillet 1875 - Loi sur les tramways, Pasinomie (1875) 158-169.
114. Beernaert, Tramways et raccordements industriels par chemins de fer. Exposé des motifs, Documents parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1874-1875 (21 April 1875), 1.
115. Beernaert, Tramways et raccordements industriels (note 74), 4.
116. Beernaert, Tramways et raccordements industriels (note 74), 5 and Tramways et raccordements industriels (note 74). Rapport fait, au nom de la section centrale, par M.A. Nothomb, Documents parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1875-1876 (22 June 1875), 7.
117. Beernaert, Tramways et raccordements industriels (note 74), 2-3.
118. Beernaert, in: Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1874-75 (30 June 1875), 1125.
119. References were made during important speeches advocating a revision of the tramway law. For example, Minister of Public Works Beernaert stated that the practical solutions of the brochure of senator Bischoffsheim and engineer Wellens allowing tramways in the countryside deserved the attention of the government: Annales parlementaires: Sénat, 1876-77 (3 May 1877), 101. Representative Delcour referred to the brochures of de Laveleye and Pousset during the discussion about the budget of Public Works in the session of 6 April 1880. Also in 1884 many members of Parliament were inspired by these publications, for example, in the opening speech, De Bruyn refers to Bischoffsheim and Wellens, to engineers such as Frédérix and Pousset, and to de Laveleye (Annales parlementaires: Chambre des représentants, 1883-84 (9 May 1884), 1205-1206).
120. Bischoffsheim and Wellens, Institution d'une société nationale des chemins de fer vicinaux, Brussels, October 1875. In 1877 a review of the brochure was published in the official journal Moniteur des Intérêts Matériels 50 (16 December 1877) and in Revue de Belgique (Mars 1878).
121. Vandervelde, L'exode rural (note 4), 130. Historical studies on patterns of population change, rural out-migration and socio-economic forces underlying rural transformation in France include: H. Mendras, The Vanishing Peasant, Cambridge (Mass.), 1970
122. Jean Pitie, Exode rural et migrations intérieurs en France, Poitiers, 1971
123. E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870-1914, Stanford (Calif.), 1979
124. R. Price, The Modernization of Rural France: Communications Networks and Agricultural Market Structures in Nineteenth-century France, London, 1983
125. P.E. Ogden and P.E. White (Eds), Migrants in Modern France: Population Mobility in the Later Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London, 1989
126. F. Plet, La géographie rurale française: quelques jalons, Sociétés Contemporaines 49-50 (2003).
127. Bischoffsheim and Wellens, Institution d'une société nationale des chemins de fer vicinaux (note 80), 2.
128. Bischoffsheim and Wellens, Institution d'une société nationale des chemins de fer vicinaux (note 80), 3.
129. For an elaboration on the financial structure of the Société nationale des chemins de fer vicinaux, see Bart Van der Herten, België onder stoom (note 41), 387-393.
130. E. De Laveleye (professeur à l'université de Liège) and E. De Laveleye (ingénieur des mines), La crise économique et les chemins de fer vicinaux, Brussels, 1879. The theoretical part of the brochure, i.e. the part by Emile De Laveleye, was also published in Moniteur des Intérêts Matériels (4 May 1880).
131. De Laveleye attributes the economic crisis, which affected agriculture, industry and the world of finance, to multiple causes: overproduction after 1871, an increased import of cheap goods from the United States, inflation, and the lack of government investments in public works. See De Laveleye and De Laveleye, La crise économique (note 84), 11-12.
132. De Laveleye and De Laveleye, La crise économique (note 84), 18.
133. De Laveleye and De Laveleye, La crise économique (note 84), 8.
134. J.J. Pousset, Chemins de fer vicinaux. Réseau du Limbourg, Liège, 1880.
135. Politicians referred often to: E. Frédérix, La question des chemins de fer vicinaux et industriels à voie étroite, Brussels, 1880; and E. Houba, Notice sur le projet d'un réseau de chemins de fer à voie réduite dans la partie oreintale du Luxembourg, Brussels, 1881.
136. Edmond Frédérix, La Belgique industrielle et commerciale, Brussels, 1880, 305.