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When Britain and France Almost Merged into One Country (2017)
- tus88 7y agoI thought they meant when the King of England was an actual frenchman and French was the upper-class language of the UK.
- drchewbacca 7y agoThere were many more claims too, if Henry V had lived longer it might have happened then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_throne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...
- hodgesrm 7y agoIndeed. When I saw the headline I thought it was about the Middle Ages. :)
- Merrill 7y ago1066? Lucky for us that Britain and France didn't get along or the US War of Independence would not have succeeded.
- seisvelas 7y agoSincere question here - was it really that lucky? Other colonies that didn't separate seem to have a similar (occasionally even higher) standard of living than the US. Were a lot of really good things caused by the independence of the US? Just off hand, it seems like slavery likely would have ended much sooner and the rise of fascism in Europe could have been greatly abated with a non-independent US. Of course, it's impossible to know what would have been, but it makes me wonder.
- Merrill 7y agoThe US would not have developed as fast if it had continued to be a British colony. A major cause of the War of Independence was that when Britain took control of the Ohio after the French and Indian War, the crown claimed the right to all negotiations with the Indian tribes and prevented the colonists from buying and/or seizing Indian land in the Ohio River Valley. Recall that Washington had been to the headwaters of the Ohio. He and others were well aware of the rich lands west of the Appalachian chain. Also, many of the financiers of the war were also land speculators before and after the war. The officers of the war formed the Society of the Cincinnati, and many of them were granted land west of the Appalachians. The net result was the rapid expansion westward from 1790 through the 1800s. This expansion and development of the lands, forests and mines was aided by rapid immigration from many countries in Europe, not just the British Isles. As a British Colony, the US would not have been as available to other Europeans, and development would have been slower. Possibly slavery would have ended more quickly, but Britain also supported the South, rather than the North. The South's cotton fed the British textile factories. After the Civil War, Britain went on to develop cotton plantations in Egypt as a replacement source.
- carty76ers 7y ago> As a British Colony, the US would not have been as available to other Europeans, and development would have been slower. Do you have a source for this? My understanding is that in 1775, the British colonies of America were the fastest growing and most populous of the British empire. So if the war happened, why would this not continue to be the case?
- simonh 7y agoThey would have continued to grow rapidly, but almost certainly not as rapidly as they actually did. Also it's unlikely they would have expanded their territory as quickly for the reasons already given. The desire for territorial expansion was a major driver for independence. It's also hard to imagine the Louisiana Purchase occurring under the British crown.
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- ekianjo 7y agoThere would have been other allies most probably if it were not for France.
- walshemj 7y agoWell 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.
- barry-cotter 7y agoThe French Revolution post dates the American one and without French support the American Revolution would have failed. The French monarchy spent so much money supporting the Americans it basically bankrupted them and without naval support the Royal Navy would have had a much easier time moving troops. > The expanded French fleet, in combination with the Spanish, outnumbered the British one and was able to temporarily gain sufficient command of the Atlantic to prevent Lord Cornwallis and a large British army, besieged by George Washington and 5,800 French regulars at Yorktown on the Chesapeake Bay in 1781, from being evacuated or reinforced by sea, forcing Cornwallis to surrender. This was the decisive battle of the war that ended with the Peace of Paris in 1783. Washington himself handsomely acknowledged the significance of the French contribution in a letter to Admiral De Grasse in which he said, “You will have observed that whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting vote in the present contest” (Lloyd 1965, p. 174). The Canadian historian W. J. Eccles (1987, p. 153) is even more explicit: “French initiative, French tactics, French ships, French guns and men achieved that unexpected and decisive victory. The Americans could not have done it on their own.” ... > The war also had very severe consequences for France’s much more disorderly fiscal system, where the finance minister Calonne and his predecessor Necker together borrowed over 900 million livres in the decade from 1777 to 1787 (Doyle 1988, pp. 43– 52). The situation was so bad that Calonne informed Louis XVI that no fiscal remedies could be found without a complete overhaul of the society and administrative system of the ancien régime, leading to the summoning of the Estates-General in 1789 and the outbreak of the French Revolution. Power and Plenty, Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke
- hos234 7y agoThey are all related. From Niall Ferguson's- The Square and the Tower "The Times noted in 1863, the history of the Saxe-Coburgs showed ‘how much one success leads to another in Princely life’. Augusta of Saxe-Coburg’s grandchildren included not only both Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, but also Ferdinand, who married the Queen of Portugal, and Leopold’s son, namesake and heir to the Belgian throne. The Saxe-Coburgs were further linked by marriage to the Orléans family and the Habsburgs. Moreover, Victoria and Albert’s eldest child was not the only one to marry royally: all but one of their nine children did. Thus, besides Frederick William of Prussia, Queen Victoria’s sons-in-law included Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and Henry of Battenberg, whose brother Alexander became prince of Bulgaria, while her daughters-in-law included Princess Alexandra of Denmark and Princess Marie, daughter of Tsar Alexander II and sister of Tsar Alexander III. By the time the future Nicholas II arrived in London for his first visit to England, in 1893, a family reunion had come to resemble an international summit: 'We drew into Charing Cross. There we were met by: Uncle Bertie [the future Edward VII], Aunt Alix [Alexandra of Denmark], Georgie [the future George V], Louise, Victoria and Maud [his sisters, the last of whom would marry Prince Carl of Denmark, later Haakon VII of Norway] … Two hours later Apapa [Christian IX of Denmark], Amama and Uncle Valdemar [of Denmark] arrived. It is wonderful to have so many of our family gathered together … At 4.30 I went to see Aunt Marie [wife of Alfred, duke of Saxe-Coburg] at Clarence House and had tea in the garden with her, Uncle Alfred, and Ducky [their daughter, Victoria Melita].3 When this last married Ernest Louis, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt the following year, the guests included an emperor and empress, a future emperor and empress, a queen, a future king and queen, seven princes, ten princesses, two dukes, two duchesses and a marquess. They were all related" "In 1894, Queen Victoria was pleased to be addressed as ‘Granny’ by the future Tsar Nicholas II, after his betrothal to yet another of her granddaughters, Alix of Hesse.6 With ‘Willy’ (her grandson William II of Germany) corresponding cheerfully with his cousins ‘Nicky’ and ‘George’,7 it seemed for a time as if the vision that had inspired Leopold I had been realized: from Athens to Berlin, from Bucharest to Copenhagen, from Darmstadt to London, from Madrid to Oslo, from Stockholm to Sofia and even in St Petersburg, the Saxe-Coburgs ruled."
- henrikschroder 7y agoTo say that it's the Saxe-Coburgs who rule all of Europe is... charitable. You could claim it's the other way around, after all, pretty much every single European monarch and royal house is somewhere in the British order of succession. (Norway #73, Yugoslavia #103, Sweden #283, Denmark #321, Greece #565, Spain #699, The Netherlands #1160, Belgium #1345, Luxembourg #1687, Liechtenstein #1916, Romania #4146, etc... There's even a Napoleon in there. And a million German princes.)
- lordleft 7y agoIt'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_throne#/British_claims_(1707-1800) https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/English_claims_to_the_French...
- joaksl 7y agoIt'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 7y agoThe "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 7y agoBy “standard American accent” I think he meant Southern accent.
- squiggleblaz 7y agoHe 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.
- SI_Rob 7y agoOr, "How William The Bastard became William The Conqueror"
- peteretep 7y agoA more interesting transformation is William of Orange leading "the Dutch invasion of Great Britain" vs "The Glorious Revolution" as we now call it.
- squiggleblaz 7y agoWell I mean, it's some invasion when it starts because Parliament sends you a letter saying "Hey come invade us, and we'll give you the crown". I mean, who's in charge? Is a country just its prince?
- mcv 7y agoFrom the Dutch perspective, it doesn't exactly feel like we invaded and conquered England. It was more like our Stadhouder emigrating to another country. The big victory over England that we remember was the victory at Chatham[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_the_Medway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_the_Medway
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoThat didn't exactly bring union, despite Norman French being the language of the ruling elite for hundreds of years. That actual Frenchman (William the Conqueror) had a son (Henry I) whose plans for succession tipped us into The Anarchy that was, in part, the Norman French wars of succession and part 15 year civil war. Not a very unified union. :)
- blaesus 7y agoEspecially the "Angevin Empire"[0], when Kings of England also ruled large portions of Kingdom of France. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angevin_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angevin_Empire
- hos234 7y agoThey should have pitched a Franco-British football team. Might have sealed the deal.
- viburnum 7y agoYugoslavia probably would have won a World Cup by now. It’s a shame.
- Engineering-MD 7y agoThey would first needed to have made a brutish football team (I.e unite the English, Welsh and Scottish ones)
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago> 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?
- frozenport 7y ago“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.”
- roywiggins 7y agoHistory has not been kind to Pétain, and deservedly so.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agohttps://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ Apparently I'm the odd one out that had never heard of this guy.
- jacquesm 7y agoEvery country had its characters like Pétain, the Dutch had their own share of them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_collaborators_with_Nazi_Germany 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.
- smacktoward 7y agoIndeed, 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).
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago> 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_ 7y agoI 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
- roywiggins 7y agoThe 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 7y agoYes! 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.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoDo not know this. But U.K. is a better country with relative autonomy. The refugee policy is just too extreme at that time. And fundamentally the social policy is different. But back to today i think if you look at the poll, it is not the conservatives that win (39%) but the divide between labour and social democrats (splitting with a joint % of 45%+).
- everdev 7y ago> U.K. is a better country Not proveable, relevant or helpful
- jacquesm 7y agoJudging by all the countries I've lived in every country will have things it is better in than others and the reverse. No country has it all and objectively comparing countries is extremely hard. The happiness indicator for residents is one of the best ways that I know of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2019_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2019_re...
- dalemyers 7y agoThe 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.
- zabzonk 7y agoIt's probably the most multi-racial and integrated country in the world. After all, the favourite British dish is curry.
- roywiggins 7y agoThe 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.
- UncleSlacky 7y agoThe 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 7y agoThat 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.
- maelito 7y agoWe shouldn't exclude the possibility of a frexit and then a new union.
- rsynnott 7y agoEr, yes, we probably should; both are implausible.
- TMWNN 7y agoMacron 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-macron-uk-yes-no-brexit-vote-mistake https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/21/emmanuel-macro...
- squiggleblaz 7y agoMost 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 7y agoThey would have been stronger to fight evil empires
- dijit 7y agoAt least the UK is seen by many to have been an evil empire.
- mr_toad 7y ago“ The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.”
- walrus01 7y agoIt'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
- gerdesj 7y agoJudging 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 7y agoNormandy evacuation? Dunkirk is nowhere near Normandy. It's close to the border with Belgium.
- Iv 7y agoI don't know what their source is, but I remember reading about it in one of Charles de Gaulle's book.
- casefields 7y agoThere’s hyperlinks linking to sources throughout the article.
- jariel 7y agoThe 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 7y agoWell, 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.
- jariel 7y agoI see what you are saying ... but the 'movement of people' was not actually controlled by anyone at the time. Boundaries in 2019 tilt more ethnic than merely administrative. Even within nations, there are often material boundaries between ethnic groups and cultures. The 1066 invasion did nothing immediately to shape the cultural landscape as there were no masses of people coming along. (Of course, the new William made a whole host of changes which did affect culture ultimately, but that took time). The previous invasion waves of the Angles, Saxons, Danes conversely did 'really change things'. I wonder if Napoleon 'never happened' - maybe we'd see a different chunk of 'departements' in France, with places like Brittany being their own, somewhat distinct administrative union. Yes - administrative boundaries are always fuzzy, but they are no means fiction. If they were fiction then the Habsbourg's wouldn't have had a problem holding onto their piecemeal empire. The Greeks have a well defined culture even though even during antiquity - they were never a single political unit. Similarly, 'Germanic' people have been living in the are since long before Roman era and again - no political unit. Same for a few others. It's not so obvious with the UK or France, but there are still real boundaries. If you sliced off most of the South of France / Cote D'Azure and Brittany (it's Celtic), I suggest you'd be looking at something resembling a natural state. In fact - Europe in 2019 is fragmenting further and further along cultural lines. Catalonia, Scotland. Belgium is deeply divided between Flemish and Walloon to the point where the Federal State is almost frozen, and yet the local regions somehow function. In fact, looking into the material issues between Flemish/Walloon yields I think the greatest insight into why cultural boundaries exist, and not just administrative ones. As for 'Britain-France' - I don't see why there is any 'scope' at all. Why not 'Britain-Netherlands'? Or 'Britain-Germany'? "If the administration wanted to, they could've succeeded." I don't agree: they would have been about as successful as Lenin's attempt to abolish that ultra-bourgeois entity 'the family' by instituting a 5 day week wherein husbands and wives get different days off so they never see each other. It would have been mostly a disaster. I don't see what Churchill or DeGaulle would ever pragmatically agree on anything. There is clearly a 'natural' scope of some kind of integration over there, which is at the European level! The EU or EEC in some kind of configuration makes a lot of sense. We can debate the details but some kind of coordination is highly rational at least in some way. The EU started as an economic cartel because that's what made sense, it's the part that still makes the most sense.
- jasonjei 7y agoHad 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 7y agoCurious to understand more about this. Can you point me to some material/links if it's okay please?
- goodcanadian 7y agoA 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.
- squiggleblaz 7y agoWell, with the rUK at 48 million and France at 42 million, I guess they would have been much more equal. Probably England and France would have had about the same number of seats in Parliament. It probably would eased the Quebec situation quite a bit. But once they wanted to go their separate ways, I think it would have happened fairly smoothly.
- jayess 7y ago> 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.
- nl 7y agoRather 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#Capital_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty#Capita... [2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1929-01-01/threat-anglo-american-naval-rivalry https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1929-0... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Japanese_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Japanese_Alliance
- ww520 7y agoEh, 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 7y agoShameless 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
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]