Baarle-Nassau

Geschiedenis

Baarle-Nassau is a municipality and town in the southern Netherlands, located in North Brabant province. It had a population of in. The town is the site of a complicated borderline between Belgium and Netherlands, with numerous small exclaves of Belgium, some of which contain counter-exclaves of the Netherlands.GeographyTopography550pxTopographic map of the municipality of Baarle-Nassau, June 2015.The border with Baarle-Hertog, BelgiumBaarle-Nassau is closely linked, with complicated borders, to the Belgian exclaves of Baarle-Hertog. Baarle-Hertog consists of 26 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are 22 Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also six Dutch exclaves located within the largest Belgian exclave, one within the second-largest, and an eighth within Zondereigen. The smallest Belgian parcel, H22, measures 2,632m2.The border's complexity results from numerous medieval treaties, agreements, land-swaps and sales between the Lords of Breda and the Dukes of Brabant. Generally speaking, predominantly agricultural or built environments became constituents of Brabant, while other parts devolved to Breda. These distributions were ratified and clarified as a part of the borderline settlements arrived at during the Treaty of Maastricht in 1843.