id author title date pages extension mime words sentences flesch summary cache txt en-wikipedia-org-6454 History of the Netherlands - Wikipedia .html text/html 36615 3039 67 A widening cultural divide grew between the Franks remaining in the north and the rulers far to the south in what is now France.[49] Salian Franks continued to reside in their original homeland and the area directly to the south and to speak their original language, Old Frankish, which by the 9th century had evolved into Old Dutch.[18] A Dutch-French language boundary came into existence (but this was originally south of where it is today).[18][49] In the Maas and Rhine areas of the Netherlands, the Franks had political and trading centres, especially at Nijmegen and Maastricht.[49] These Franks remained in contact with the Frisians to the north, especially in places like Dorestad and Utrecht. Dutch political history from the middle of the 19th century until the First World War was fundamentally one of the extension of liberal reforms in government, the reorganization and modernization of the Dutch economy, and the rise of trade unionism and socialism as working-class movements independent of traditional liberalism. ./cache/en-wikipedia-org-6454.html ./txt/en-wikipedia-org-6454.txt