# NBC Nightly News: France offered to merge with the UK.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 16, 2007, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135 "2007-01-16T00:28:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/1 "2007-01-16T00:28:29Z")
I heard on the NBC Nightly News tonight that the British Archives ‘declassified’ certain documents that indicate back in the 50’s, the French Government offered (or at least petitioned to discuss) that France and the UK merge into one nation–in essence an annexation into one mega-Anglo-Frankish country.
At one point, I remember Brian Williams saying that “. . . France offered to acknowledge the Queen of England. Upon hearing of this new information, one researcher reportedly fell faint onto his feet!”
Does anyone have a cite for this one? This one seems a little too farfetched, but then again, not too far from fiction.
Tripler
Wow, the Merovingian in _The Matrix_ must be confused on accents now!
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Jim)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/2 "2007-01-16T00:46:48Z")
A bit more info on it [here](http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=428838&in_page_id=1770) .
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/3 "2007-01-16T00:48:53Z")
Not a cite, but I can confirm the story was also on the BBC news. Terrible journalism, riddled with stupid stereotypes.
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/4 "2007-01-16T00:58:41Z")
[BBC scoop.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6261885.stm)
> [@Beeb](#):
>
> Formerly secret documents unearthed from the National Archives have showed Britain and France considered a “union” in the 1950s.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/5 "2007-01-16T01:39:07Z")
Scoop? Maybe they should have done some, you know, research and reporting in the 1980s.
[http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2157364.ece](http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2157364.ece)
> [@](#):
>
> Documents describing the reaction of British civil servants were among secret papers opened to the public 20 years ago but not discovered until now.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/6 "2007-01-16T01:42:04Z")
From what I read, it sounds like the proponents of the plan hoped that consolidating the world’s last two major colonial powers could preserve some vestige of the pre-war world order.
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/7 "2007-01-16T02:02:03Z")
Scoop? Churchill mentioned his willingness to merge with France in the dark summer of '39. It is one of those ideas proposed from time to time by ruling-class people.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/8 "2007-01-16T02:03:54Z")
England’s claim to rule France lasted until George III, so by that basis, Queen Elizabeth II could be construed to be the rightful Queen of France, anyway. Even aside from that, the current Jacobite pretender claims the title of King of France.
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/9 "2007-01-16T03:12:10Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
Even aside from that, the current Jacobite pretender claims the title of King of France.
[/QUOTE]
I assume based on descent from Mary Queen of Scots, who had also been Queen of France?
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/10 "2007-01-16T03:53:19Z")
Primarily, it’s from conquest: Henry V conquered most of France and was named heir to Charles VI of France. He also married Catherine, who was in line for the French throne. Henry died a little before Charles, but England still claimed France. The French disagreed.
In addition, after Henry’s death, Catherine married Owen Tudor, whose grandson Henry became Henry VII. So the English kings after Henry VII could trace a lineage through her.
Mary Queen of Scots was a direct descendant of Henry VII, so had the connection through Catherine. Her son James became James VI, but his father was an English noble with no connection to the throne of France.
Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom considered themselves rulers of France until George III surrendered the claim.
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### Author:  [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/11 "2007-01-16T08:26:59Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
Mary Queen of Scots was a direct descendant of Henry VII, so had the connection through Catherine. Her son James became James VI, **but his father was an English noble** with no connection to the throne of France.
[/QUOTE]
While Darnley’s father held an English title, it looks as if he was more than a bit Scottish - as his parents names indicate.
[http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/biographies/lorddarnley.html](http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/biographies/lorddarnley.html)
> [@](#):
>
> Darnley (who would also later be given the titles of Duke of Albany, Earl of Ross, and King Consort of Scotland) was born at Temple Newsam in Yorkshire. He was the eldest son of Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox and Lady Margaret Douglas. Via his mother he was a great-grandson of the English King Henry VII: he and Mary, Queen of Scots shared Margaret Tudor as a grandmother. This placed him close to the succession to the Crown of England after Queen Elizabeth, though not quite as close as Mary, Queen of Scots. He was also, via his father, a descendant of a daughter of James II of Scotland and thus rather more distantly in line for the throne of Scotland.
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### Author:  [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/12 "2007-01-16T11:35:27Z")
Images of the 1956 file have been posted on the TNA website.
[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/142.htm?homepage=news](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/142.htm?homepage=news)
It is not at all obvious that what was being proposed was ever a full union, although there is the ambiguity that the documents give more details about the second, watered-down set of proposals than about the first. Moreover, as the officials were fully aware, membership of the Commonwealth was then - and still is - not the same as acknowledging the Queen as head of state. Any other practical implications would probably have been rather less than the current ‘union’ between the UK and France as members of the EU.
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Scoop? Maybe they should have done some, you know, research and reporting in the 1980s.
[/QUOTE]
That it was missed isn’t really that surprising. It was just one file among thousands of others. The class of the Dominion Office archives in which it was filed (DO 35) contains 10,914 items, each of which would have to be ordered up individually. And there are 228 other Dominion Office classes. And there are other departments with even larger archives, such as the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office, in which it could have been filed. Its [description in the catalogue](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5842532&SearchInit=4&CATREF=DO+35%2F5264) is actually reasonably informative, but that catalogue is notoriously difficult to browse and hitting on it using the search facility would have taken a great deal of luck and/or throw up lots of other, irrelevant results as well. For historians to find this sort of stuff is much more difficult, time-consuming and downright boring than you might think. Of course, if the proposal had been taken really seriously, it would have left a much more obvious archival trail.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/13 "2007-01-16T12:08:14Z")
All kinds of ideas get floated about. This particular one was made moot by, among other things, the _tous azimut_ defense policy de Gaulle pushed for in the fifties, capped by France’s 1968 withdrawl from NATO.
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### Author:  [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/14 "2007-01-16T14:46:06Z")
How would language have worked in the merged UK/France state? Would English be the language of bureaucracy? Would the new state be bilingual, or would English be dominant?
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/15 "2007-01-16T14:51:15Z")
[QUOTE=elmwood]
Would the new state be bilingual, or would English be dominant?
[/QUOTE]
\
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### Author:  [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/16 "2007-01-16T17:18:57Z")
France and the UK were about to invade Egypt and re-take the Suez Canal in the fall of 1956, and knew they would face American opposition. The French proposal sounds like a desperate attempt to yoke the two countries together and make sure that the Brits wouldn’t back out, with the claptrap about joining the Commonwealth and recognizing the Queen as bribes.
In the end, it went down as the French feared: the two countries seized the canal, the United States squawked and threatened to pull support for the British pound, and Britain caved and turned the canal over to UN peacekeepers. The French thereafter went their own way in foreign and defense policy.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/17 "2007-01-16T17:40:39Z")
[QUOTE=elmwood]
How would language have worked in the merged UK/France state? Would English be the language of bureaucracy? Would the new state be bilingual, or would English be dominant?
[/QUOTE]
Welcome to Canada. 😃
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/18 "2007-01-16T17:49:57Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
the current Jacobite pretender claims the title of King of France.
[/QUOTE]
Really? I was under the impression that the current pretender doesn’t even claim the title “King of England.”
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/19 "2007-01-16T18:31:58Z")
Queen Elizabeth II would have a good claim to the throne of France except for the matter of Salic law applying in France. (See the discussion of this matter at the start of Shakespeare’s play Henry V, and see also events in the recent movie Marie Antoinette). In countries governed by Salic law, daughters cannot inherit the throne, or pass the throne to their descendants. Salic law also applied in Hanover, and that’s why Quen Victoria did not become Queen of Hanover at the same time as she became Quuen of the UK.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nbc-nightly-news-france-offered-to-merge-with-the-uk/388135/20 "2007-01-16T18:33:12Z")
[QUOTE=APB]
That it was missed isn’t really that surprising.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, obviously. I was just making a sarcastic comment about the use of the word “scoop” in this context.
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