North Brabant

North Brabant (Dutch: Noord-Brabant [ˈnoːrt ˈbraːbɑnt]), also unofficially called Brabant since 2001, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the west, and the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Limburg to the south. The northern border follows the Meuse (Maas) river westwards, where it mouths into the Hollands Diep strait, part of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta.

History

The Duchy of Brabant was a state of the Holy Roman Empire established in 1183 or 1190. It developed from the Landgraviate of Brabant and formed the heart of the historic Low Countries, part of the Burgundian Netherlands from 1430 and of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1482, until it was dismembered after the Dutch revolt. After the War of Independence, Catholics in the Southern Netherlands were systematically and officially discriminated against by the Northern Protestant government until the second half of the 20th century, which had a major influence on the economic and cultural development of the southern part of the Netherlands. Present-day North Brabant (Staats-Brabant) was adjudicated to the Generality Lands of the Dutch Republic according to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, while the reduced duchy remained in existence with the Southern Netherlands until it was conquered by French Revolutionary forces in 1794.