PODs to make UK and France solid allies

What kind of PODs would make France and UK, long rivals in Western European goepolitics, long-running allies?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Er, is this a DBWI?

I assume he means pre-1900.

If Russia had become much stronger in Eastern Europe, to the point of dominating Germany by the early 1800s, France and the UK might have felt compelled to join forces. It was always Britain's general policy to prop up the second-strongest power on the Continent as a check against the strongest one.
 
I assume he means pre-1900.

If Russia had become much stronger in Eastern Europe, to the point of dominating Germany by the early 1800s, France and the UK might have felt compelled to join forces. It was always Britain's general policy to prop up the second-strongest power on the Continent as a check against the strongest one.

"Long-running allies" is more or less how I'd describe Britain and France's relationship for most of the period between 1815 and 1882. You see them cooperating on the eastern crisis in the 1820s, on Belgium and the Iberian civil wars in the 1830s (a cooperation ruined by the eastern Crisis of 1840), you have the "Liberal Entente" of the 1840s (ruined by the Spanish Marriages), you have the cooperation during the Crimean War, you have Cobden's treaty; you have Palmerston and Napoleon III being the best of buddies for years; you have Britain's support for France in the War in Sight crisis in 1875; you have them cooperating during the Eastern Crisis in 1877-1878.

Now, they weren't in any sense reliable allies to each other, and there were plenty of periods of distrust, suspicion, and mutual hostility. But on the whole, France and Britain generally tended to be aligned together more than they opposed each other, and each generally saw the other as their most important potential ally.
 
England and France will ally in the face of a common threat. To get a long lasting Alliance you either need a changing gallery of such rivals, or one so powerful they simultaneously cannot beat it nor can they ignore it.

The earliest example of such a possible power is Habsburg Spain, and it did manage to get France and England on the same side several times. A Centralized HRE would be another candidate no matter who ruled it. Russia and Germany have served this purpose historically.
 
Is it possible for them to have a lasting alliance throughout most of the Late Middle Ages?

Does having the same monarch count as an alliance? LMA really suggests the Englishkings beating the Valois for the control of the Kdm of France and then drifting towards a permanent residence on the continent. France, after all, is simply bigger and richer.
Meanwhile the English barons realize that an absentee king is better than a meddling one and manage to create some kind of insular self-rule.
 
Does having the same monarch count as an alliance? LMA really suggests the Englishkings beating the Valois for the control of the Kdm of France and then drifting towards a permanent residence on the continent. France, after all, is simply bigger and richer.
Meanwhile the English barons realize that an absentee king is better than a meddling one and manage to create some kind of insular self-rule.

That would be an interesting POD, i'll say.
 
The easiest answer to give is: the existence of a European power that poses more of a threat to both France and the UK than the two pose to each other. It's not like France and the UK were never allies even counting pre-Entente: they teamed up against the Habsburg Empire of Charles V and subsequently against Spain and the Netherlands.

Of course, alliances in the face of mutual threats are probably not the same as solid alliances - I assume you probably want the sort of cultural exchange that occurred between France and the UK post-Entente.

I can think of several PODs that could produce longer alignments that, over time, would result in greater linkages between the two countries:

1) The Habsburgs replacing their marriage policy for one that doesn't result in such a terrible genetic outcome. Even if it does nothing to improve Spain's prospects in the medium-run, continued Habsburg rule over Spain would likely result in a continued Austria-Spain axis, which would be more likely to generate a counterbalancing England/UK-France axis.

2) Had Louis XIV managed to save James II in the Glorious Revolution, that could well have created a Catholic Franco-UK axis against the other members of the Grand Alliance (esp. as James II would pretty much be at the mercy of the French).

3) The Metternichian system fails catastrophically post-1815 (maybe with a more insistent Alexander I of Russia pushing his goals in cooperation with Prussia), which would initially likely result in a counterbalancing alliance of Austria and Britain but will eventually probably see France substituting for Austria as the latter's domestic politics become increasingly unacceptable for UK liberals.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Hmmm... could you have some kind of situation where both become non-Catholic and are the only major powers to do so?
 
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