AHC: What if a European Economic Community or Union formed more around a Franco-British than a Franc
Oct 24, 2024 1:03:38 GMT
stevep, Max Sinister, and 1 more like this
Post by raharris1973 on Oct 24, 2024 1:03:38 GMT
Here is the assignment: Have an European Economic Community or Union, similar in many respects to the Club of Rome, ECSC and descendent organizations like today's EU and EMU/Eurozone formed more around a Franco-British than a Franco-German core.
I think it is generally accepted that the modern, post-WWII through post-Cold War EU, its practices, and institutional model had as its centerpiece the Schumann Plan and related initiatives to allow Germany's economy to recover and its economy to not go to waste but to transform the Franco-German relationship from traditional conflict to non-traditional cooperation to avoid relapse into future wars. Others indeed had important roles, like the Low Countries and Italy, but the French and West Germans were the two largest of the original partners.
And this idea was not cut from whole cloth, sui generis, only post-WWII. Similar ideas were in the air among some Frenchmen and Germans in the pre-WWII interwar era that simply never gained mass traction or critical mass, facing tough obstacles of political and national sentiment, resentment, competing motives, self-interest, and ambition.
Eventually in the 70s Britain joined the EU, but not the Monetary Union, and spent decades within it.
And the Franco-German way was not the only way for Europe to combine. Britain, France and the Low Countries *without* then occupied Germany formed *a* type of Union in the late forties, the Western Union, through the Brussels Treaty of 1948, primarily focused on military and security affairs more than economics.
And after the Dunkirk disaster, in a rather desperate (too transparently so) bid to dissuade France from making an armistice with Germany, British Prime Minister Churchill proposed a Franco-British Union of uncertain terms but implicitly involving economic and defense integration and common citizenship.
So, how can one plausibly make British-French ties the driving dual core of an alternate European unification project, with Germany or Italy at best being members who are the third or fourth wheels of the process, no matter how wealthy they may be, or possibly with one or both of them being non-participants?
I invite you to be imaginative. Work with any part of the 20th century, not just the immediate WWII aftermath post-1945, you are welcome to inflict divergences on European history far earlier than that, or delay the start of sustained European unity projects until well after their historic timeframe.
I think it is generally accepted that the modern, post-WWII through post-Cold War EU, its practices, and institutional model had as its centerpiece the Schumann Plan and related initiatives to allow Germany's economy to recover and its economy to not go to waste but to transform the Franco-German relationship from traditional conflict to non-traditional cooperation to avoid relapse into future wars. Others indeed had important roles, like the Low Countries and Italy, but the French and West Germans were the two largest of the original partners.
And this idea was not cut from whole cloth, sui generis, only post-WWII. Similar ideas were in the air among some Frenchmen and Germans in the pre-WWII interwar era that simply never gained mass traction or critical mass, facing tough obstacles of political and national sentiment, resentment, competing motives, self-interest, and ambition.
Eventually in the 70s Britain joined the EU, but not the Monetary Union, and spent decades within it.
And the Franco-German way was not the only way for Europe to combine. Britain, France and the Low Countries *without* then occupied Germany formed *a* type of Union in the late forties, the Western Union, through the Brussels Treaty of 1948, primarily focused on military and security affairs more than economics.
And after the Dunkirk disaster, in a rather desperate (too transparently so) bid to dissuade France from making an armistice with Germany, British Prime Minister Churchill proposed a Franco-British Union of uncertain terms but implicitly involving economic and defense integration and common citizenship.
So, how can one plausibly make British-French ties the driving dual core of an alternate European unification project, with Germany or Italy at best being members who are the third or fourth wheels of the process, no matter how wealthy they may be, or possibly with one or both of them being non-participants?
I invite you to be imaginative. Work with any part of the 20th century, not just the immediate WWII aftermath post-1945, you are welcome to inflict divergences on European history far earlier than that, or delay the start of sustained European unity projects until well after their historic timeframe.
