Rhineland
The Rhineland (German: Rheinland [ˈʁaɪ̯nˌlant] ⓘ; Dutch: Rijnland; Kölsch: Rhingland; Latin: Rhenania) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Historically, the term "Rhinelands"[1] refers to a loosely defined region encompassing the land on the banks of the Rhine, which were settled by Ripuarian and Salian Franks and became part of Frankish Austrasia.
The term covered the whole French annexed territory west of the Rhine (German: Linkes Rheinufer), but also included a small portion of the bridgeheads on the eastern banks.
In 1822 the Prussian administration reorganized the territory as the Rhine Province (Rheinprovinz, also known as Rhenish Prussia), a tradition that continued in the naming of the current German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia.
The southern and eastern parts are mainly hill country (Westerwald, Hunsrück, Siebengebirge, Taunus and Eifel), cut by river valleys, principally the Middle Rhine up to Bingen (or very rarely between the confluence with the Neckar and Cologne[4]) and its Ahr, Moselle and Nahe tributaries.
Some of the larger cities in the Rhineland are Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Koblenz, Krefeld, Leverkusen, Mainz, Mönchengladbach, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Oberhausen, Remscheid, Solingen, Trier and Wuppertal.
As the central power of the Holy Roman Emperor weakened, the Rhineland disintegrated into numerous small independent principalities, each with its separate vicissitudes and special chronicles.
[citation needed] The chaos and barriers in a land divided and subdivided among many different petty principalities gave way to a rational, simplified, centralized system controlled by Paris and run by Napoleon's relatives.
The most important impact came from the abolition of all feudal privileges and historic taxes, the introduction of legal reforms of the Napoleonic Code, and the reorganization of the judicial and local administrative systems.
There was limited resistance; most Germans welcomed the new regime, especially the urban elites, but one sour point was the hostility of the French officials toward the Roman Catholic Church, the choice of most of the residents.
Decades later workers and peasants in the Rhineland often appealed to Jacobinism to oppose unpopular government programs, while the intelligentsia demanded the maintenance of the Napoleonic Code (which stayed in effect for a century).
In January 1923, in response to Germany's failure to meet its reparations obligations, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr district, strictly controlling all important industrial areas.
North Rhine-Westphalia is one of the prime German industrial areas, containing significant mineral deposits (coal, lead, lignite, magnesium, oil, and uranium) and water transport.
