WI: Oriental Crisis of 1840 turns into war

Have Prussia and Austria stay neutral, and you might develop this into a small- to medium-scale colonial war between France and the UK.
 
And the UK, at the top of its supremacy, wins very easily.

The french were not stupid.

Past 1814/1815, the main axis of France's foreign policy was "never again a conflict against the UK." The french perfectly knew they could not accord it because they had not a single chance of victory.

So in the end, they always bowed down to british demands or even worked for british interests : the oriental crisis of 1840, the war against Russia in 1854-56, the Fashoda crisis, the treaty of Sevres in 1920 (giving all the oil fields to british Irak, contrarily to the Sykes-Picot agreement), the question of Rhineland post WW1, the remilitarization of Rhineland by f... nazy Germany in 1936.
 
And the UK, at the top of its supremacy, wins very easily.

The french were not stupid.

Past 1814/1815, the main axis of France's foreign policy was "never again a conflict against the UK." The french perfectly knew they could not accord it because they had not a single chance of victory.

So in the end, they always bowed down to british demands or even worked for british interests : the oriental crisis of 1840, the war against Russia in 1854-56, the Fashoda crisis, the treaty of Sevres in 1920 (giving all the oil fields to british Irak, contrarily to the Sykes-Picot agreement), the question of Rhineland post WW1, the remilitarization of Rhineland by f... nazy Germany in 1936.

Why/how was allowing Rhineland remilitarization more in Britain's interests than in France's?
 
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