Limburg (Netherlands) replaces Duchy of Limburg
19th century
The modern boundaries of Dutch Limburg, along with its neighbour, Belgian Limburg, were basically set during the period after the French revolution, which erased much of the "ancien regime" of Europe, with all its old boundaries and titles. These two provinces were part of a new French département, named (like many départements) after the river running through it, "Meuse-Inférieure", meaning simply "lower Maas".
Following the Napoleonic Era, the great powers (the United Kingdom, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire and France) left the region to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. A new province was formed which was to receive the name "Maastricht" after its capital. The first king, William I, who did not want the medieval name to be lost, insisted that it be changed to "Province of Limburg". As such, the name of the new province was derived from the old Duchy of Limburg that had existed until 1795 on the east bank of the Meuse river.
When the Catholic and French-speaking Belgians split away from the mainly Calvinist northern Netherlands in the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the Province of Limburg was at first almost entirely under Belgian rule. However, by the 1839 Treaty of London, the province was divided in two, with the eastern part going to the Netherlands and the western part to Belgium, a division that remains today.
With the Treaty of London, what is now the Belgian Province of Luxembourg was handed over to Belgium and removed from the German Confederation. To appease Prussia, which had also lost access to the Meuse after the Congress of Vienna, the Dutch province of Limburg (excluding the cities of Maastricht and Venlo because without them Limburg's population equalled that of the Province of Luxembourg, 150,000), was joined to the German Confederation between 5 September 1839 and 23 August 1866 as the Duchy of Limburg. On 11 May 1867, the Duchy, which from 1839 on had been de jure a separate polity in personal union with the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was reincorporated into the latter with the 1867 Treaty of London, though the term "Duchy of Limburg" remained in some official use until February 1907. Another idiosyncrasy survives today: the head of the province, referred to as the "King's Commissioner" in other provinces, is addressed as "Governor" in Limburg.