There's a dozen good reasons why they'd turn down such a proposal, the first and foremost two reasons in my mind being France's large population would change the entire spectrum of British government, and the other being France was only a decade out from WW2, and was laden with rebuilding efforts and a large colonial empire in the midst of collapse.
The French people never would have gone for it either. They'd just finished booting out the Germans, they wouldn't give up soverignty to the British. Some sort of political union would work, but joining them outright is laughable. Britain actually stood to gain much more out the deal than France in the long term.
Posted by Eldrad (Member # 8578) on :
Nothing in that article said that he was trying to sell the country, per se, but the idea is still hilarious to me.
Posted by Bella Bee (Member # 7027) on :
I imagine that Anthony Eden just assumed Mollet was joking.
But French pop music would have improved immensely, and British food would have been much better far sooner. So it wouldn't have been all that bad.
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 5108) on :
quote:Originally posted by Eldrad: Nothing in that article said that he was trying to sell the country, per se, but the idea is still hilarious to me.
Poetic license. Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
And the misleading present tense of your thread title is also "poetic license"?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Eh. Britain was claiming the crown of France as late as 1820. And the idea of a union was floated by Churchill in the darkest days of 1940, as a desperate measure to keep France in the war by assuring them of British commitment. From the point of view of Great-Power politics, which in those days France and Britain still thought they could play, it's not so stupid.
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 5108) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: And the misleading present tense of your thread title is also "poetic license"?
No, the misleading present tense in the title was sensationalist journalism designed to get people to enter the thread for a possible quick laugh before moving onto more relevant and important subjects.
Posted by JoeH (Member # 5958) on :
I saw the title and knew the article it was referring to. I appreciated the poetic license/sensationalist journalism. The title and Bella Bee's post brightened up my day, so thank you both.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Well, they'd already had Canada out of wedlock. I think it would have been the only decent thing to do.
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 5108) on :
You make a good point, pooka. Of the two, I think France has been the least involved in recent times, so I hope they're at least paying child support.
quote:Originally posted by JoeH: I saw the title and knew the article it was referring to. I appreciated the poetic license/sensationalist journalism. The title and Bella Bee's post brightened up my day, so thank you both.
Glad I could be of service. I thought Bella Bee's comment was funny as well.
Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
Reality really is stranger than fiction.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
mmm. I think this would have turned France into a European quebec.. always whining for indpendance while sucking on the commonwealth's teat.
Plus they would have insisted everything in every commonwealth nation be in both languages.
The UK dodged a bullet.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I don't think it'd be quite like that, for several reasons.
One, it never would have lasted. As soon as the immediate threat was over, and their empires both collapsed anyway, there'd be no real reason to stay together, especially with US forces bolstering west Germany. It would have been a marriage of covenience, and it would not have lasted. They'd have been divorced after a decade.
Two, Quebec has a large, large English speaking minority, whereas France is comprised entirely of French people. There's a difference between being a nation of one people that have been that way for a thousand years joining another nation, and a half formed nation that has changed hands three different times in a hundred years and doesn't have the power to make any of its demands stick.
Three, population. The UK at the time had 50 million people, France had a bit over 40 million. It would put them on roughly equal footing. This is all academic anyway, because the French people never would have gone along with this, but if they had joined it would have been as equals, after a fashion, not as subservients. They would have been able to band together to take a huge swath of parliament for themselves.
The UK would have gotten some goodies out of the deal. For example, especially once the UK lost India, France's farmland would have been a boon to waterlocked, net food importer Britain. It would've saved them a lot of money and kept them secure. Besides, it's misleading to say Quebec is "sucking at the commonwealth's teat" when they produce billions of dollars worth of economic production for Canada. They do their part. France would have done its part.
I wouldn't say they dodged a bullet, but it's just as well they didn't bother with it. I think in the end, given how everything turned out, the UK would have gotten far more out of it than France, but they both ended up doing just fine.
Posted by SoaPiNuReYe (Member # 9144) on :
Did the citizens of France not even know about this proposal? This is pretty hilarios.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Considering it was all locked up in secret documents, I'd say it's a fair bet that no more than a dozen or so people probably knew about it.
Not sure if I get why people think it's so funny.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
France and England would be very peculiar bedfellows, Lyrhawn. That they would consider "getting together" is astonishing and rather humorous.
Someone is going to use this in a sci fi story. I have a premonition.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Agreed it'd be peculiar. But give the war had only recently ended, both nations were torn by the greatest war in recent memory, the Soviet Union seemed to be at their doorstep, and their colonial empires were crumbling around the edges, "getting together" doesn't sound that odd as an idea someone might toss out.
It might have been more astonishing if the idea had actually gone anywhere.
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