The Belgian Empire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had
long since past into dust like the ruins of Ozymandias, leaving it a
diminutive, unimportant nation of temporal and unstable affluence,
subject to the whims and power-plays of its larger, more industrialized
neighbors. Like the Germans of the late 1930's, their aggression began
with a legitimate (if distorted) complaint. Glorious, upright Mother
Belgium had been raped again and again. That these feelings of injury
and lost wealth has survived for so many generations, provided a rather
grim example of the dangers inherent in an inbred culture which shuts
out change, clinging instead to a proud and class-conscious society.
In fairness, the pattern of outside domination and disrespect had
continued until the all too recent past. Their bitterness was not
wholly unjustified. That their own oppression of the Africans during
the days of the ivory trade had been a major source of their one-time
wealth, was not (like the skeletons in so many national closets)
something they tended to weigh into the balance.