Noord-Brabant

Noord-Brabant, English North Brabant, provincie (province), southern Netherlands. It is the second largest of the country’s provinces, extending northward from the Belgium border, between the provinces of Zeeland (west) and Limburg (east), to the Maas (Meuse) and Merwede rivers. It is drained by the Mark (Merk) and Dommel rivers and the Zuidwillemsvaart and Wilhelmina canals. Its capital is ’s Hertogenbosch.

Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age remains attest to early occupation of the area; there were ancient Roman camps along the Maas. After the Middle Ages, the division between east and west (discernible in two different Iron Age groups) was continued in political divisions: the barony of Breda to the west and the Meierij van ’s Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc) to the east, both subject to the duchy of Brabant. The affinities of the west still lie with Belgium and France, and those of the east with the Rhineland. Nearly all the inhabitants are Roman Catholic.

The province’s fertile coastal lands, flooded in 1953, support wheat and sugar beets; the more acid, poorly drained riverine lands are mostly pasture. The southern heaths contain woods, many recently planted conifers, small lakes, and peat bogs. The poor soils support restricted mixed farming, including the raising of sheep. Extensive heathlands were reclaimed in the 19th century, and several new settlements were established in the raised bogs of De Peel (southeast of Deurne), where the sale of peat was combined with horticulture and cattle raising. Reclamation slackened after 1900; immigration from rural areas has been heavy, and more than half the population now is urban. Formerly, Bergen op Zoom was the centre of the marshlands, Breda of the riverlands, and ’s Hertogenbosch of the inner sandy areas, but the largest provincial communities now also include the industrial centres at Tilburg and Eindhoven. Area 1,962 square miles (5,082 square km). Pop. (2009 est.) 2,434,560.