The zinc-ore mine at Kelmis, south of Aachen, had been in use since Roman times, but it suddenly became very important around the beginning of the 19th century, when the Liège industrialist Jean-Jacques Daniel Dony invented a new and highly efficient process for refining zinc. Napoleon — possibly encouraged by the ingenious portable zinc bathtub with built-in water-heater that Dony had given him — awarded him a fifty-year concession to exploit the mine. However, it was the post-Napoleonic settlement of the Congress of Vienna that was responsible for turning Kelmis into a fascinating geopolitical anomaly as well: through an unfortunate drafting error, one article of the treaty assigned the village and its mine to Prussia, and another gave it to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The problem wasn't discovered until the border commissioners got down to serious work in 1816. When the problem was referred to higher authority, it became clear that neither of the mule-like monarchs was going to back up an inch, so the Treaty of Aachen specified that the part of the the commune of Moresnet containing Kelmis and the mine — a triangle with an area of about 3 sq km and 250 residents — would be treated temporarily as a neutral zone. A joint committee would be established to find a more permanent agreement. Of course, anyone who's ever been involved in public administration knows what happens when you do that: in this case, 98 years of inactivity at the highest level while the people on the spot came up with ever more complex workarounds for the problems. Moresnet was clearly one of those political problems where any solution was likely to be more damaging to the people taking the decision than the minor inconvenience of letting it drag on.

During the nineteenth century the mine prospered and Neutral Moresnet acquired various other typical "small-country" industries, such as smuggling, alcohol production, draft-evasion and baby-farming. The village grew to a population of around 4000 by the end, roughly equally divided between Germans, Belgians, Dutch and "neutrals", these last being descendants of the original 250 and officially stateless.

Attempts to resolve the status of the region and eliminate the illegal activities were usually smothered by lobbying from the mining company, which was owned by the prominent Brussels business dynasty, the Mosselmans. Even after the exhaustion of the mine at the end of the century, they carried on refining zinc there, taking advantage of the legal vacuum and favourable tax-regime. The Belgian government was also reluctant to sign an agreement that would have resulted in people who considered themselves Belgian ending up under German rule. In the early twentieth century there were even some attempts to turn Moresnet into an independent country with Esperanto as its official language (Google "Amikejo march" for the proposed national anthem).

The Germans ultimately rendered the whole question moot by invading Belgium in 1914 (and again in 1940 and 1944...). During the two world wars Neutral Moresnet was treated as part of Germany, and from 1920 it and the surrounding villages were assigned to Belgium by the Versailles treaty.

Dröge (like Philip Van Reybrouck, who wrote the Boekenweek gift that year) was obviously prompted to write about Neutral Moresnet by the bicentenary in 2016. His book is a fairly comprehensive history, starting with Napoleon's bath and ending with the Versailles treaty, and with plenty of interesting anecdotal detail as well as a bit more background about the diplomatic and legal situation. He has fun with some of the more colourful characters, like Fanny Mosselman, who bridges the roles of 18th century royal mistress and 20th century businesswoman, and really deserves a book to herself... ( )

Onderzoeksjournalist Philip Dröge, ook gekend van het uitstekende De schaduw van Tambora, doet de hele geschiedenis van Neutraal Moresnet uit de doeken. Boeiend, al stelde ik me verschillende keren de vraag of de "lichte dramatisering", zoals Dröge het in zijn voorwoord noemt, wel nodig was.
Volledige bespreking via http://wraakvandedodo.blogspot.be/2016/08/philip-droge-moresnet.html ( )