The Port and City of Ostend and the process of state consolidation in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a geopolitical approach

Before the eighteenth century's second half the port and city of Ostend was quite isolated from the Southern Netherlands' (Belgium) urban centres. This isolation had an important impact on that city's maritime industries. In the eighteenth century's second half, the Austrian regime's state consolidation project in the Southern Netherlands launched the so-called transit policy. This policy redrew the geopolitical map and geared Ostend in the country's economy.