Belgium was the second country in which the Industrial Revolution took place and the first in continental Europe:
Wallonia (French-speaking southern Belgium) took the lead. Starting in the middle of the 1820s, and especially after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830, numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills were built in the coal mining areas around
Liège and
Charleroi. The leader was a transplanted Englishman
John Cockerill. His factories at
Seraing integrated all stages of production, from engineering to the supply of raw materials, as early as 1825.
[192][193]
Wallonia exemplified the radical evolution of industrial expansion. Thanks to coal (the French word "houille" was coined in Wallonia),
[194] the region geared up to become the 2nd industrial power in the world after Britain. But it is also pointed out by many researchers, with its
Sillon industriel, 'Especially in the
Haine,
Sambre and
Meuse valleys, between the
Borinage and
Liège...there was a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and iron-making...'.
[195] Philippe Raxhon wrote about the period after 1830: "It was not propaganda but a reality the Walloon regions were becoming the second industrial power all over the world after Britain."
[196] "The sole industrial centre outside the collieries and blast furnaces of Walloon was the old cloth-making town of
Ghent."
[197] Professor Michel De Coster stated: "The historians and the economists say that Belgium was the second industrial power of the world, in proportion to its population and its territory [...] But this rank is the one of Wallonia where the coal-mines, the blast furnaces, the iron and zinc factories, the wool industry, the glass industry, the weapons industry... were concentrated."
[198] Many of the 19th-century coal mines in Wallonia are now protected as
World Heritage sites[199]
Wallonia was also the birthplace of a strong Socialist party and strong trade unions in a particular sociological landscape. At the left, the
Sillon industriel, which runs from
Mons in the west, to
Verviers in the east (except part of North Flanders, in another period of the industrial revolution, after 1920).
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