'Mijn man moet dagelijks zoowel zijn leven te pand stellen voor het Vaderland als de andere' : nationale identificatie in armenbrieven uit bezet België, 1914-1918

During the First World War in occupied Belgium, against a background of deprivation and social shifts and -tensions, a tipping point was reached in patterns of national identification. The Belgian national sentiment peaked. At the same time, an anti -Belgian Flemish nationalism developed. Although since the historiography of the interbellum, we assumed that the war served as a catalyst for Belgian patriotism, not much concrete research was done into this supposed intensification of Belgian national feelings among broad sections of the population. The existing research is predominantly top down and mainly focused on Flemish nationalism. In recent years, more in-depth research was done and this article aims to contribute to this by looking at the concrete functions and meanings of national identification in the daily lives of people under occupation. In concrete terms, we look at the discursive, strategic construction of national identity in requests for help sent to charities (in particular the National Aid and Food Committee) and people of standing. Within the context of poor relief during the occupation, this discourse acted as a social, strategic and emotional practice and the authors of these letters employed different strategies to use identification processes in their interaction with social workers. In this context, national identity also became linked with notions of equal distribution and social justice within the community, as well as with other fundamental forms of identification. By looking at this strategic use and these various links, we aim to obtain a more complete and in-depth picture of the actual functions of national identification among impoverished sections of the population within the specific social, historical and economic context of occupied Belgium