
When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017) - smacktoward
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/dunkirk-brexit/536106/
======
tus88
I thought they meant when the King of England was an actual frenchman and
French was the upper-class language of the UK.

~~~
lordleft
It's so interesting to consider the deep, Norman French character of the
British Monarchy. From the immense impact of French on English vocabulary, to
the French mottos of the British Crown ("Dieu et Mon Droit") and the Order of
the Garter...to the fact that British monarchs claimed themselves kings of
Frances FOR CENTURIES:
[https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/English_claims_to_the_French...](https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/English_claims_to_the_French_throne#/British_claims_\(1707-1800\))

~~~
joaksl
It's even more recent than the norman french from a 1000 years ago. The
standard english accent ( King's English ) was intentionally "effeminized" to
mimic the french language in the 1800s ( when french was viewed as lingua
franca and "cultured"). It's one of the reasons why Standard American accent
and Standard British accent diverged. The standard american accent was the way
the brits used to speak.

~~~
learc83
The "Standard American accent" is just vaguely midwestern, and it's not how
the British used to speak. There is some support for it being closer than some
modern British accents, e.g., they are both rhotic.

~~~
keiferski
By “standard American accent” I think he meant Southern accent.

~~~
squiggleblaz
He meant what he said, thinking about the accent you get on contemporary tv
and in today's cinema. He's wrong, but the view that American English is a
better guide to Early Modern English pronunciation than British pronunciation
is widespread.

I think there's many holes in the theory, based on a much-too-simple view, but
there probably had been some enlightenment to be derived from the theory up
till about seventy years ago (I don't mean the old American stage accent - the
mid-Atlantic accent - I mean the normal American accent on the street). If you
started with RP and then added standard AmE to that, you probably would have
felt you made lots of progress to your understanding of EMnE - Americans
retain lots of r's and their "a" had probably a more conservative distribution
in some sense. Their accent is more strongly influenced by non-rhotic English
than rhotic parts of Britain, though.

Nowadays, their "o" has innovated and "a" has innovated in many respects too.
Americans have kept reducing distinctions before r, so that they say "shirly"
instead of "surely" and no distinction is made between long and short vowels
before /r/. The length distinction has weakened further, so that the claim
often seen "English doesn't have long-short vowels, but tense-lax vowels",
though not accurate, is less unfair now than it would have been a century ago.
The rounded vowels have caught up with, and in many cases overtaken, the drift
forward started earlier in England. (I'm pretty sure America is planning to
outdo Greek with the number of sounds that merge as /i/.)

No language stands still, especially not in a highly mobile empire. Colonial
lag applies to the periphery, but America is now surely the centre of English
development.

------
roywiggins
The deal fell apart at the end of June, and by July the Brits bombed out the
French navy (killing 1300) as the French refused to turn it over to the
British.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-
el-K%C3%A9bir](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir)

~~~
emmelaich
Yes! It would not have lasted long.

> _a British naval attack on French Navy ships at the naval base at Mers El
> Kébir on the coast of French Algeria. The bombardment killed 1,297 French
> servicemen, sank a battleship and damaged five other ships, for a British
> loss of five aircraft shot down and two crewmen killed._

------
walrus01
It's also theoretically possible that they could be a single country, if Henry
V had not died at a very young age.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V_of_England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V_of_England)

------
nl
_Rather than look for union with a devastated continent, Britain’s destiny lay
West, in a special relationship with the United States._

This seems obvious to us now, but at the time it was anything but.

It's worth noting the historical context here. After WW1, the US and Britian
were seen as rivals, and there was a naval arms between the two. It's
unfortunate that there isn't a lot of history written about this, but you can
see the shadows of it in things that don't make sense otherwise.

For example, the Wikipedia page for 1922 Washington Naval Treaty[1] says: _The
risk of war with the United States was increasingly regarded as merely
theoretical, as there were very few policy differences between the two
Anglophone powers_ , and as late as 1929 _Foreign Affairs_ was still writing
articles like _The Threat of Anglo-American Naval Rivalry_.

But of course nothing came of this rivalry. In the 1920s and '30s Britian and
the US were the two great economic and military powers, but there was nothing
for them to fight over (except perhaps the Anglo-Japanese alliance[3], but the
British gave that up pretty easily)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty#Capita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty#Capital_ships)

[2] [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/1929-0...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/1929-01-01/threat-anglo-american-naval-rivalry)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-
Japanese_Alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Japanese_Alliance)

------
UncleSlacky
The idea came up again in 1956, during the Suez crisis, though with an
alternative option of joining the Commonwealth:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/15/france.eu](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/15/france.eu)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That would have been a particularly interesting alternative timeline, as right
after Eden rejected both of Mollet's proposals France looked firmly to Europe,
signed the Treaty of Rome and we know where that led...

A Franco-British Union is (probably) unlikely to have continued with the moves
to progress the Coal and Steel Community toward the Treaty of Rome. The
alternative play of course would have been a far more Europhile UK within the
Franco-British Union.

------
jasonjei
Had this happened, it makes you wonder if this UK-France union would have
similar issues to what is experienced in Quebec, Canada and to the non-French
speaking Canada.

~~~
sudsred
Curious to understand more about this. Can you point me to some material/links
if it's okay please?

~~~
goodcanadian
A good place to start is probably Wikipedia:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_sovereignty_movement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_sovereignty_movement)

I would caution, however, that there aren't any big issues on a day to day
basis. It is more of a simmering undercurrent of separatist sentiment that
waxes and wanes with time.

Edit: one might compare it to the "problems" experienced by Scotland within
the UK.

------
hos234
They should have pitched a Franco-British football team. Might have sealed the
deal.

~~~
viburnum
Yugoslavia probably would have won a World Cup by now. It’s a shame.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
> the origins of European integration—and the reasons why Britain ultimately
> pulled away

Anyone who was around for the UK's going into the then-called CEE (sporting
all of 6 members) in the 70s will find little surprise at the current drama
...

(There were some Frenchmen worried it was an US submarine ...)

~~~
Terr_
I always think of this "Yes, Minister" scene, which aired... gosh, 38 years
ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvYuoWyk8iU&t=1m08s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvYuoWyk8iU&t=1m08s)

------
ww520
Eh, I thought it's about the Hundred Years' War where the kings of England
claimed the throne of French and succeeded in taking half of France including
Paris at one time.

------
hobblegobber
Shameless self plug - I wrote about this and a few more interesting tidbits
here - [https://medium.com/trench-full-of-dead-men](https://medium.com/trench-
full-of-dead-men)

------
jayess
> the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this
> declaration of indissoluble union

The claimed goal was to end future nationalism, but such a "indissoluble
union" would in the long term lead to such nationalism.

------
maelito
We shouldn't exclude the possibility of a frexit and then a new union.

~~~
rsynnott
Er, yes, we probably should; both are implausible.

~~~
TMWNN
Macron admitted in 2018 that the French would probably have voted to leave the
EU in a UK-style referendum.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/21/emmanuel-
macro...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/21/emmanuel-macron-uk-
yes-no-brexit-vote-mistake)

~~~
squiggleblaz
Most people who become national leaders are not as foolish as Cameron. And a
lot has changed since then. And without a ditch to separate them from their
fellows across the way, it's likely that any attempt to Frexit would result in
the EU being destroyed and then recreated. People live in the border zones -
they're not just distant marches.

------
sergekamga
They would have been stronger to fight evil empires

------
OnlineGladiator
> Marshal Pétain, 84 years old and the great hero of World War I, believed it
> was his duty to save France from total destruction and accept an armistice
> with Germany. Britain was doomed, he said, and union would be “fusion with a
> corpse.” Another minister concluded: “Better be a Nazi province. At least we
> know what that means.” Reynaud later wrote in his memoirs, “Those who rose
> in indignation at the idea of union with our ally were the same individuals
> who were getting ready to bow and scrape to Hitler.”

Wow. I knew that England and France have historically disliked each other, but
preferring to be a Nazi province?

~~~
jacquesm
Every country had its characters like Pétain, the Dutch had their own share of
them
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_collaborators_w...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_collaborators_with_Nazi_Germany)
see here for a whole slew of Dutch), it was the same in almost every country
the Nazi's attacked and even some where it did not.

~~~
smacktoward
Indeed, and one of them, Norway's Vidkun Quisling
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling)),
was so notorious his name become synonymous with betraying your country. To
this day, in multiple countries, all you have to say to indicate that you
think someone would be happy to trade loyalty for power is to call them a
_quisling_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling)).

~~~
verandacoffee
Relevant: [https://www.norwegianamerican.com/norsk/the-coining-of-
quisl...](https://www.norwegianamerican.com/norsk/the-coining-of-quisling/)

Unfortunately the caption is omitted, but is at least retold just below the
middle of the article: 'It depicts Quisling arriving to audience before
Hitler. His right arm raised in the Nazi salute, he announces “I’m quisling!”
to which the doorman asks: “And your name?”'

The original caption was just (if I remember correctly):

\- I’m quisling! \- And your name?

The cartoon was printed in Sweden, in Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning,
which was edited by Torgny Segerstedt, one of too few outspoken anti-nazis
among Swedish editors.

------
gerdesj
Judging by some of the comments here, I perceive a general lack of
understanding about how history works 8) The human experience (barring some
amusing drug related experiments) generally has things happen first and those
things become history.

Now, those things are related in some way from past to future and the relation
might be fact (ie "true"), false news, wibble or bollocks. That is actually a
closed set there - wibble covers an infinite number of cases and so does
bollocks.

So here's some wibble.

According to "1000 years of annoying the French" which is a book written by a
Francophile Brit about the relationship between France and the UK, the
Normandy evacuation is/was seen as abandonment and near treachery by the
French. That's a point of view I can understand (Brit here) when you look
through other people's eyes at that event and try to see it as they would.

All sources I have ever read about the relationship between Charles de Gaulle
and Churchill detail a fraught but necessary arrangement. Also, that Churchill
was (rabidly) in favour of a united Europe and CdG was not.

Where is the source(s) for this article?

~~~
DonaldFisk
Normandy evacuation? Dunkirk is nowhere near Normandy. It's close to the
border with Belgium.

------
jariel
The article was somewhat misrepresentative of the real nature of the Union
proposal, in that it was by far mostly a French initiative, motivated by
wartime/panic diplomacy geared to keep some French forces in the fight.

I'm an English Canadian living in Quebec, who has lived in France and the UK
... and the very name 'Franco-British Union' has to make any reasonable person
laugh out loud ...

Right from the outset, the very first argument would be: "Why not British-
Franco Union?" !

It's really interesting to see how contemptuously ignorant a certain class of
intellectuals can be when the decide to magnanimously ignore the obvious
issues of integrating vastly different systems (wartime pragmatism not
withstanding of course - desperate times call for desperate measures).

France is super secular, they hate monarchies, while the UK has a 1000 year
old Monarchy, a State Religion, no constitution and arguably the oldest
Parliamentary body in the world. A House of Lords and peerage system. And
that's just the very start of the conversation.

Here in Quebec we argue over the language used on stop signs, and every other
thing. Watching French and English diplomats trying to actually manage the
real details of such a union would be funnier and more surreal than a Monty
Python film.

Yes, we all have a lot in common, but there's a lot that's different as well,
which why we have different administrative and cultural regions around the
world in the first place.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Well, the administrative regions we have are mostly the result of a previous
invasion. And the cultural regions are based on the movement of people
permitted by the previous invasions, and the requirements of the current
invaders. France is a unified whole mostly as a fiction. Sometimes those
fictions come apart at the seams - as in Scotland and Catalonia. Other times,
an alternative administration can really smooth things out - as in
contemporary China, France and Germany (deliberately subdivided to prevent the
seams from ripping by building patches rather than merely stitching things
together).

Britain-France would've had lots of scope. Past monarchs, local loyalties,
language differences. If the administration wanted to, they could've
succeeded.

