ghent

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Capital city of the province of East Flanders, Belgium
Flemish Gent French Gand City (pop., 2000 est.: 224,180), capital of East Flanders province, northwestern Belgium. One of the chief towns of the medieval county of Flanders, Ghent was one of the largest towns in northern Europe by the 13th century. Its prosperity was based on its manufacture of luxury cloths, which were famous throughout Europe. It began to decline in the late 16th century, when its cloth was unable to compete with England's. Its economy revived with the introduction of cotton-spinning machinery (in particular, a power loom smuggled out of England), and it subsequently became the centre of the Belgian textile industry. Ghent has many fine museums, notably the Museum of Fine Arts, which contains a treasury of paintings by Flemish masters who lived and worked in Ghent during the 16th and 17th centuries. Belgium's second largest port, it is also a horticultural centre
{i} port city in Belgium; name of several towns in the United States; family name

Related Terms

Pacification of Ghent
(Nov. 8, 1576) Declaration by which the northern and southern provinces of the Low Countries put aside their religious differences and united in revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs. As the first major expression of national consciousness in The Netherlands, it called for the expulsion of Spanish troops from the Low Countries, the restoration of provincial and local prerogatives, and an end to the persecution of Calvinists. The Spanish governor soon resumed hostilities, however, and religious differences within the region caused a split in 1579 between the Calvinist north (the Union of Utrecht) and the Catholic south (the Union of Arras). The general union ended in 1584