binnenland

Binnenland is a Dutch term meaning the inland or interior parts of a country. In common usage it stands in contrast to the coast (the kust) and to Buitenland, which means foreign countries. The word combines binnen, “inside,” with land, “land,” and is used in both geographic and everyday language to denote areas away from the sea or from the country’s border.

In Dutch, Binnenland is often used to describe regions that lie away from the seaboard or major coastal urban centers. It is not an official administrative unit; rather, it functions as a descriptive label that can refer to rural hinterlands, agrarian zones, or interior provinces depending on context. The term is flexible and its precise scope varies with usage, maps, and planning documents.

The concept also appears in other Dutch-speaking contexts. In Afrikaans, a closely related form meaning inland or interior is used to describe inland areas of a country. In various former Dutch-speaking territories, het Binnenland can denote the interior as opposed to coastal or border regions, though the exact connotations differ by country and period.

Overall, Binnenland serves as a general geographic and linguistic descriptor for the inland parts of a country, rather than a fixed legal region. It is commonly encountered in travel writing, geography, and everyday speech to distinguish interior areas from coastlines and foreign lands. See also: Buitenland.