Culture of a French-Occupied England
- Thread starter The B
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Even if we suspend the problem of the Royal Navy, and even if the French are crazy enough to try to annex the place to France (something they didn't do with Spain), there's no chance at all of English going away this late. Quebec still speaks French, despite it being a much smaller population and having centuries of British rule.
King Helü of Wu
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Netherland did it, and latter the British called the Dutch occupation "Glorious Revolution."
If France did the same, Britain was going to pretend that it's an indigenous catholic restoration and entirely deny that the French had ever conquered them.
If the conquest take place after Protestantism have already established itself, then probably very little would change.
If France did the same, Britain was going to pretend that it's an indigenous catholic restoration and entirely deny that the French had ever conquered them.
If the conquest take place after Protestantism have already established itself, then probably very little would change.
There is a major difference though between the Glorious Revolution and a successful French invasion. The result of the Glorious Revolution was the almost immediate subordination of the Dutch national interest to the English. This was inevitable because England was so much larger than the Netherlands it came to dominate the union, just as it did when a Scottish King became King of England in 1603. If France had taken over England however, France would have been the dominant party for exactly the same reason and the long term results would likely have been either a French dominated official union (a la Anglo-Scottish union) or the rapid splintering of that union (a la Anglo-Dutch union)
The Glorious Revolution wasn't the English pretending it's an indigenous choice. It was an indigenous choice. Parliament invited the guy. There's absolutely no way they would do that with France.
No, thats how English speakers mentally retconned it in their minds after the fact. It was about as much of their own free will as the Norman invasion.
England is NOT going to be Frenchified with a Napoleonic POD. Ignoring all issues of plausibility, a permanent Napoleonic conquest of England would result in English nationalism that would probably make that of the Poles pale in comparison.
Best way to do this, IMHO, is to have the "English" side win the Hundred Years War, and for the royal family to continue living in Paris thereafter. And even then, you'll probably get an England where the upper and middle classes speak French and most peasants speak English.
Okay, other than the fact that English Parliamentarians invited him in and ensured that there would be little resistance against William (In England at least. There was much more resistance in Ireland)
William invaded with assurances of English support, without that, he would never have invaded. He also only brought in 21K ground troops, far too few if he expected no support from within England. Furthermore, a large portion of those troops were English mercenaries in the first place. (In fact, most of the forces were mercenaries of some sort, and not Dutch at that.)
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Keeping the above in mind, it's one thing to invite over the Statholder over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel (and Husband of the ruling English monarch's daughter), it's another to allow your (much stronger) regional rival to take control over your country.
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Who are the people who did this? What did they do to ensure there was little resistance (beyond the Dutch propaganda campaign to attract the protestants support).
It should also be mentioned that while in theory James had far more troops than Wilhelm those troops where spread out across the kingdom most of which could not be gathered before William would have beat him. And the nationality of mercenaries really doesn't matter when it comes to who they fight for.
We'll go with the Napoleonic conquest here...
Firstly, I very much doubt such a conquest would take the whole island decisively. The enmity between Britain and France is long-standing, and I can't see acquiescence on any long-term basis - particularly if Napoleon's European client states are anything to go by. There's always going to be a low- or-high-level anti-French mood whatever happens, and at the first sign of Imperial weakness you'll get anti-French activity.
I can't see the Napoleonic empire ever being so secure that Britain could be left ungarrisoned. Expect partisan activity in the countryside for two or three generations, assuming the empire survives and thrives.
Most likely, British governance would be entrusted to a collaborationist government at arm's length, backed by a certain number of French occupying forces. If Nappy can persuade George IV to stay on as a puppet, all the better - it rules out legitimist British restoration movements, and maintains the veneer of British sovereignty. Even at the highest levels, though, I doubt there would be any large scale adoption of French culture. Instead, you'll see the dominant cultural force being a passive British nationalism - not only as a reaction to the aforementioned subjugation, but as a way to emphasise the regime's legitimacy by ideologically placing it as far as possible from France.
At the lower level, the easing of trade restrictions with France might bring a certain level of French material influence to life in Britain. Wine becomes cheaper and more widely available.
What would happen is that Ireland would be gifted her independence much earlier, and possibly set up as a Bonaparte client state. If there's Francophilia anywhere in the British Isles, it'll be in Ireland - expect the Irish middle classes to enthusiastically embrace all things French post-independence.
Firstly, I very much doubt such a conquest would take the whole island decisively. The enmity between Britain and France is long-standing, and I can't see acquiescence on any long-term basis - particularly if Napoleon's European client states are anything to go by. There's always going to be a low- or-high-level anti-French mood whatever happens, and at the first sign of Imperial weakness you'll get anti-French activity.
I can't see the Napoleonic empire ever being so secure that Britain could be left ungarrisoned. Expect partisan activity in the countryside for two or three generations, assuming the empire survives and thrives.
Most likely, British governance would be entrusted to a collaborationist government at arm's length, backed by a certain number of French occupying forces. If Nappy can persuade George IV to stay on as a puppet, all the better - it rules out legitimist British restoration movements, and maintains the veneer of British sovereignty. Even at the highest levels, though, I doubt there would be any large scale adoption of French culture. Instead, you'll see the dominant cultural force being a passive British nationalism - not only as a reaction to the aforementioned subjugation, but as a way to emphasise the regime's legitimacy by ideologically placing it as far as possible from France.
At the lower level, the easing of trade restrictions with France might bring a certain level of French material influence to life in Britain. Wine becomes cheaper and more widely available.
What would happen is that Ireland would be gifted her independence much earlier, and possibly set up as a Bonaparte client state. If there's Francophilia anywhere in the British Isles, it'll be in Ireland - expect the Irish middle classes to enthusiastically embrace all things French post-independence.
You could also have Prince Louis succeed in guetting on the english throne in 1216 if king John I does not die as soon as he did.
You could also have Henry V's campaign of 1415 turn into a total disaster as it nearly did before the french made the mistake of offering a pitched battle at Azincourt.
Remember his army was plagued by dysentry.
Imagine then Henry dying in fight or from illness and many people in England are going to question the legitimacy of the Lancaster usurpers.
You can have some kind of 2 roses war start 35 years sooner. During this time, the French quickly settle their own civil war. The burgundian dukes are forced into submission and dispossessed of most of their principalities.
And in the mid 1420's, you have a french kingdom which is also ruling the burgundian low countries and which successfully launches an invasion and conquest of England.
France with the low countries being 5 times as populated as Britain, you can have some kind of massive colonisation the kind of which the Normans did in Normandy or the English and Scots in Ireland (which led to english language becoming the language of irish people).
Later than those dates would, I think, be too late.
You could also have Henry V's campaign of 1415 turn into a total disaster as it nearly did before the french made the mistake of offering a pitched battle at Azincourt.
Remember his army was plagued by dysentry.
Imagine then Henry dying in fight or from illness and many people in England are going to question the legitimacy of the Lancaster usurpers.
You can have some kind of 2 roses war start 35 years sooner. During this time, the French quickly settle their own civil war. The burgundian dukes are forced into submission and dispossessed of most of their principalities.
And in the mid 1420's, you have a french kingdom which is also ruling the burgundian low countries and which successfully launches an invasion and conquest of England.
France with the low countries being 5 times as populated as Britain, you can have some kind of massive colonisation the kind of which the Normans did in Normandy or the English and Scots in Ireland (which led to english language becoming the language of irish people).
Later than those dates would, I think, be too late.
This is less true than people think. The Norsemen who were given the Duchy of Normandy in 911 largely intermarried with local Frenchwomen (or their children did), and they weren't very numerous to begin with. Most of the people of Normandy were in fact descended from the pre-invasion Gallo-Roman people. Only a handful of coastal towns had significant Viking settlement. By 1066, many generations later, there definitely weren't many people of full Viking ancestry in William's army.
I agree with this. If the union lasted permanently, though, I think the English language would eventually decline in use. In a hypothetical England where French is the language of power, the rise of public education would hurt English, just as it did Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic in OTL.
Yes, but those were minority languages in a land where English (the tongue of the masses) simply overcame them, whereas French never had the demographic numbers to topple English as the common tongue. Having French "insisted upon" probably wouldn't work, since the local and minor nobility would likely speak English just as much as French (gotta be able to talk to the peons, after all), and those same English speakers have enough numbers to simply cross their arms and say, "We can't understand you, mate". Without drastically altering the demographics of what we know as England, French will never truly supplant English as the common language; you can have it established as a co-official language like in Belgium, but that's it.
However, were enough English speakers to die off (war, disease, poor adaptation to climatic shift, etc.), that would be a different story. Likewise, if a large enough movement of Gallo-Roman speakers were to migrate to Britain during the Anglo-Saxon migration period, you might have French established early and big enough to subvert English as the common tongue.
Irish was not a minority language in Ireland as recently as 1800. Nor was Welsh in Wales at that time. Language shift doesn't have to require major demographic change. What typically happens is that one language becomes perceived as the language of prestige, and then parents decide that it's not worth it to transmit other, "lower" languages to their children. There is often a lot of mental conditioning behind this; in state-run schools all over the world, children are often punished for speaking non-official languages, and they can often internalize the notion that these languages are inferior. This is basically what happened to Irish and Welsh, and to the regional languages of France and Italy as well.
Speaking of Belgium, Brussels became predominantly French-speaking precisely through this kind of phenomenon. Over the course of the 19th century, its population went from being overwhelmingly Flemish-speaking to predominantly French-speaking, even though there was not much migration from francophone areas. French was the prestige language, and so the Flemings of the city started speaking it at home. Today, even though it's officially a bilingual city, only a small percentage of the city's population speaks Flemish.
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