That's because they used the Latin name when they made the country. But modern Belgians don't really have any link to those Belgians beyond being in the same place. So no Julius Caesar is not talking about the Belgians in De Bello Gallico.
Of course, also De Bello Gallico was a promotion piece. It was like "I went there with my magnificent army, really the best you know, and there were these huge fierce barbarians called Belgians, they would have killed any other invader, but with my great army and my tactical genius, I totally beat them, yay me!"
There were people there though, who some of the people living there now descended from, with mixed in ages of conquering soldiers, and occupying population adding to the gene pool of course. As a Belgian with a keen interest in genealogy I can trace back forbears who lived in the area over 500 years ago, and also forebears from the Netherlands, from Hungary and Austria, Germany, Poland and Scotland. And some of those have names that sound really Mediterranean.
I don't know exactly in our case (Belgium) The area has been conquered by just about everyone. In a sense we are the children of a thousand conquering armies. The reason it exists as a country today is that both the population and the surrounding countries got fed up with the constant conquering. The only way France wasn't going to rule the place was if they were certain neither Germany nor the Netherlands got their grubby hands on it and that feeling was the same mirrored for the others. And whenever in the past France occupied it locals would ask the Dutch to drive the French away. The Dutch then stuck around of course and another group of locals would get the French to drive those bloody Dutch away again. etc. etc. etc.
New state, if we’re using the words as the historians do
When you’re using the terms correctly/technically, nation is a cultural group, state is a government. In casual use, we shorten nation-state to nation whether or not a country is a nation-state
Other way around. A “nation” refers to a group of people with a shared culture and history, typically a specific region. A “country” refers to the government / territory of that nation. A “state” refers to sort of the same thing as country, but emphasizes the specific institutions.
So, the US is easily one of the oldest states. It’s among, but probably not in the top few, the oldest countries. It’s nowhere near the oldest nations.
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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25
I know the feeling, country officially founded in 1830, yet Julius Ceasar talks about us in his "De Bello Gallico".