It's also theoretically possible that they could be a single country, if Henry V had not died at a very young age.
When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
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Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#32I thought they meant when the King of England was an actual frenchman and French was the upper-class language of the UK.
Or, "How William The Bastard became William The Conqueror"
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
1066? Lucky for us that Britain and France didn't get along or the US War of Independence would not have succeeded.
There would have been other allies most probably if it were not for France.
Well you would have had to have a similar revolution to the French revolution and not sure if any other countries are good candidates.
More to the point if George III had wanted to recover the lost colonies as much as he was anti catholic - the war of 1812 might well gone very differently.
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK is a country full of hatred, racism and xenophobia. I say this as a Brit. It's not better than France in any way, shape or form. France is not without its issues either though. Both countries need to be better.
It's probably the most multi-racial and integrated country in the world. After all, the favourite British dish is curry.
That is hilarious. Are you really suggesting that our favourite dish is evidence of successful multi-racialism and integration?
Come to Yorkshire. Integrated is the last word I'd use to describe Bradford, Huddersfield, Dewsbury...
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#35[flagged]
> The refugee policy is just too extreme at that time. Eh? What, precisely, about the E.U. refugee policy is just “too extreme”? Which aspect of it? By the way, outside the hard right there’s little evidence that it was a big deal for Brexit voters, who tended to be more concerned with inter-EU migration and/or tabloid fluff (ie the EU’s sinister plot to ban kettles and jam).
[dead]
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every country had its characters like Pétain, the Dutch had their own share of them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_collaborators_w... 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.
Indeed, and one of them, Norway's 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 ).
Relevant: https://www.norwegianamerican.com/norsk/the-coining-of-quisl...
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.
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably the most multi-racial and integrated country in the world. After all, the favourite British dish is curry.
The UK population is ~87% white. The US is at 77%. As to relative degrees of integration, I don't know how you'd measure it, but the UK has its own serious struggles on that front.
Brazil is 47% (declared) white, and still with a lot of racism. Neither of these countries can be considered fully integrated.
That is, unfortunately, still far away from everyone.
And until we live in a society that separates us from them, we will not be able to achieve that.
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#38Judging 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?
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#39The 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.
Re: When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably the most multi-racial and integrated country in the world. After all, the favourite British dish is curry.
That is hilarious. Are you really suggesting that our favourite dish is evidence of successful multi-racialism and integration? Come to Yorkshire. Integrated is the last word I'd use to describe Bradford, Huddersfield, Dewsbury...
I was born in Halifax, and my brother lives there. Seems OK to me. But I speak from the perspective of someone that lives in London, in Wood Green, and you could not get anywhere more diverse and yet integrated.