Pleidooi voor een pluridisciplinaire, meertalige en transnationale benadering voor de studie van het Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (1815-1830): Het intellectuele parcours van J.-F.-X. Würth (1800-1874) als casus

Centring on the life and work of Jean-François-Xavier Würth (1800-1874), this introduction gives a brief overview of the main themes addressed in the various contributions of this special issue. As one of professor Kinker’s most diligent students, the Luxemburger Würth began writing several didactic works when he was still enrolled at the University of Liège. His first textbooks appeared during the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and closely observe the guidelines set out in King William I’s language policy. Würth continued to write after the Belgian Revolution but the new political situation forced him to rely on a different discourse. His historiography Histoire abrégée des Liégeois (1833) is representative of the new direction he took. This work serves as the starting point of this introduction, which deals with the tradition of a local (Liège-centric) historiography, the institutional history of the two State Universities in Ghent and Liège, ‘Belgian’ literature in the French-speaking south, literary translation practices and exchanges between the north and the south, and the complex literary and cultural interaction that took place in what is known today as the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion. Taking advantage of different disciplines and perspectives, we aim to bring the turbulent period during and just after the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands into sharper focus.