Ostend

Ostend began as a fishing village at the eastern end of an island between the North Sea and a coastal lagoon. Granted market rights in the thirteenth century, it grew into a small town whose people depended on the sea for their living. The restless shoreline also threatened them: in 1395 the inhabitants chose to build a new town farther inland, behind substantial dikes.

The harbour's strategic position made Ostend a much-contested stronghold during the Eighty Years' War. Dutch rebels held the town against a Spanish siege from 1601 to 1604, a long and exceptionally costly struggle that ended with its surrender. In the eighteenth century Ostend gained importance as an outlet for the Austrian Netherlands. Emperor Charles VI granted the Ostend Company a monopoly on trade with Africa and the East Indies, but British and Dutch diplomatic pressure brought the company's dissolution in 1727.