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"This volume offers a multifaceted selection of studies on 19th-century Belgian reformers and initiatives they instigated to solve the ´social question´ by ´civilising´ and moralising the lower classes. Around 1850 Belgium was continental Europe´s most heavily industrialised state. From the mid-century until the Belle Époque many international social reform associations were based in Belgium, as well as their main international actors. This book aims to place the history of social, moral and educational reform in Belgium during the long 19th century within a broader European perspective. This collection of contributions by both young and established scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds not only fills some gaps in Belgian historiography, but also offers a better understanding of broad epochal processes such as the bourgeois civilising offensive, the expansion of educational action and the historical growth of welfare states.

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Social and educational reform in ´a great small country´ from a European perspective dr. Christoph De Spiegeleer (Liberaal Archief/Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Part I - International environment and transnational processes

´To sup sorrow with the poor.´ Modern social reform around 1900 in Europe

Pr.dr. Christianne Smit (Utrecht University)

Educational internationalism in Belgium, 1850-1914

Pr.dr. Christophe Verbruggen (Ghent University), Amandine Thiry (Ghent University/Université Catholique de Louvain) and Thomas d´Haeninck (Ghent University/University of Maastricht)

The intellectual mobility of Auguste Wagener (1829-1896) in a transnational network of social reform. A cross-border history

Thomas D´Haeninck (Ghent University/University of Maastricht)

´The opposite of Dante´s hell?´ The transfer of ideas for social housing at international congresses in the 1850s-1860s

dr. Carmen Van Praet (Liberaal Archief/Ghent University)(re-print)

Part II - Catholic and secular education

Catholic fundraising for educating the poor

dr. Stijn van den Perre (Ghent University)

Putting the province on the road of progress? The Belgian Ligue de l´enseignement ´s failure to integrate the countryside

dr. Christina Reimann (University of Gothenburg)

Part III - Social-pedagogical analyses

The child, the body and the bath: a cure for the future? Child care initiatives in 19th-century Belgium

dr. Lieselot De Wilde , Pr. dr. Bruno Vanobbergen and Pr. dr. Michel Vandenbroeck (Ghent University)

A social-pedagogical analysis of participatory initiatives in Ghent during the nineteenth century

Evelyne Deceur, Pr. dr. Angelo van Gorp and Pr. dr. Maria Bouverne de Bie (Ghent University)

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Christoph De Spiegeleer, Liberas/Liberaal Archief

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