Hello, bonjour, and goeiedag!
It is December 2020 and I’m on a bridge in Belgium.
Or at least, it should be Belgium.
Because this is the river Lys,
the river that has formed the border between Belgium and France
since before Belgium was even Belgium,
and that is a very Belgian signpost,
so we’re in Belgium.
Right?
Except - when you look closely at a map of this area,
you’ll see that just before the river gets to the bridge,
the border does something very odd.
*Drunk noises*
So what’s going on here?
Did they just bosh a few Belgian beers before they drew it?
Or is there another explanation,
that actually raises quite an interesting question
about not just this place but all the other river borders on the planet, because...
what happens to a border if the river changes course?
This is the town of Halluin in northeast France,
and this is the town of Menen in southwest Belgium.
They are two sides of the same place,
and in fact originally it was all Halluin,
but then in 1779 Louis XVI of France gave away the northern part of the town
during some negotiations
and since then the border runs straight down the middle of the town square.
Although it’s invisible these days,
you can still see the effects of it here.
On the right, there’s the old douane francaise or French customs house,
while on the left
there’s a more relaxed approach to taxation
and you can probably take a wild guess why so many French people enjoy shopping here.
But of course we’re not here to see any of that.
The main reason I’ve come to Halluin
or Menen
or whatever you want to call it
is because this where the French-Belgian border meets the river Lys and starts to follow it,
which means out of all the river borders in the world
that I could have visited for this video, this one is the most...
easy for me to get to.
But luckily it is also a really good example of the river border problem.
The story starts in 1820 with an agreement that fixed the border between France
and what was then The Netherlands
(because Belgium doesn’t become independent until 10 years later)
and for 20km, from Halluin in the east to Armentieres in the west,
they drew the border along the centre of the river.
And 200 years later the border remains in the exact same place.
The river though has moved,
and that’s not just because of natural processes like erosion and things like meander cutoff,
it’s also the human impact of large-scale canalisation:
the whole thing has been completely rebuilt and rerouted over the years so that we can
send big industrial barges down it.
As a result the border in places like this is now a total mess,
with tiny bits of France left stranded on the Belgian side of the river,
and tiny bits of Belgium on the French side,
while other bits of land have ended up as islands stuck between the old river
and the new canalised route.
So what does this look like in real life?
What do the two countries do with these isolated little pockets of territory?
What possible use could you find for a piece of land that’s over on your neighbour’s side of the river?
Yep it’s the perfect location for that waste management site that your citizens didn’t
want in their back yard.
And it seems it’s not just recycling that gets sent over the river –
a few kilometres east of here there’s a sewage treatment plant,
and then if you go further upstream, there’s another sewage treatment plant,
but this time it’s the Belgians getting their revenge.
I had to look further into this
because if there’s a secret sewage war going on
I want to know about it!
But disappointingly it turns out these sites are managed in cooperation between the two countries.
Ultimately the friendly relationship between Belgium and France
means that the border on the River Lys has never really been a serious problem,
certainly not in recent times.
But other rivers around the world have caused a lot more trouble.
The Rio Grande between Mexico and the US, for example, has provoked several disputes,
including the long-running Chamizal dispute
that almost resulted in the assassination of both presidents during a summit in 1909.
It was eventually settled in 1964 and nowadays both sides have agreed
that the boundary will shift with any natural change in the river
but remains the same in the event of humans changing it.
Meanwhile over in the Himalayas a change in the course of the Gandak River
has left the small village of Susta on the opposite bank to where it started.
India says the border is where the river is
while Nepal (and apparently Google Maps) says it’s where the river was.
Meanwhile the majority Nepalese inhabitants of the village are effectively stuck in a no-mans land
and the dispute continues.
And finally let’s go to the Balkans,
where they do this kind of thing properly,
and the 140km-long border dispute over the river Danube.
This time it’s Serbia who says that the border’s where the river is,
while Croatia (and again, Google Maps) says it’s where the river was.
In both cases that would give the country in question more territory,
as you’d expect,
but thanks to the extreme wiggliness of the river
this uninhabited guitar pick shaped piece of land ends up being claimed by neither side,
so in 2015 a 32-year-old Czech man decided to claim it for himself,
elected himself president,
and named it Liberland.
Meanwhile the border dispute remains unresolved
and about the only thing the two sides agree on
is that they don’t recognise Liberland.
So back to the bridge over the River Lys.
It leads onto an island that is owned and maintained by Belgium,
but the only way of getting on and off it is from France.
At the end of the day that basically means the French have managed to get the Belgians paying for
the upkeep and signage of a French cycle path.
Meanwhile the Belgians,
a bilingual nation who speak perfectly good French,
have put all the signs in monolingual Flemish.
They might be friends
but never underestimate just how much they enjoy annoying each other.
If you’d like to visit Halluin and the River Lys
it’s a 45-minute bus ride from the centre of Lille in northern France.
Both banks of the river have paths that are suitable for bikes, wheelchairs and pushchairs
and if you come in springtime you’ll see lots of yellow iris flowers
that are the origin of the famous fleur de lys,
and apart from the border following where the river used to be
you can also find the border following where the fortifications used to be.
Anyway thank you very much for watching,
I hope you had a great Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever you're celebrating,
I hope we all have a better year next year,
and I’ll see you soon.