Hello and welcome the fire of learning England and France today the two nations get along comparatively pretty well not always I to eye on everything but you could definitely say their overall friends this was not always the case this friendship comes after over 800 years of animosity certainly not always at war in that time but from the Middle Ages to Napoleon.
England and France always had an eye on each other and were rarely afraid to settle their grievances the old-fashioned way what was the reason for this bitter endless rivalry well we can consider a number of factors religion played a role for a while later on after the Protestant Reformation spread across Europe in the 1500s Catholics and Protestants overall developed hard feelings for each other which often led to brutal conflicts conflicts from which France emerged remaining Catholic and England Protestant the two nations also differed politically and philosophically from time to time and when one nation was shaken up the other felt the effects the most obvious example of this being the widespread effects of the French Revolution which England attempted to counter and of course when about any two groups of people finding themselves right next to each other geographically they tend to compete for land power and resources through war and conflict England and France are no exception but we can find examples of all of these things across the globe what makes the rivalry between England and France unique was the competition for quite simply world domination let's back up and start at the beginning prior to each other England and France's greatest enemy was the Vikings who ravaged both of these nations while they were still evolving into the ones we know today England a part of an island took the harder hit but France suffered as well and in 911 ad the French King actually gave a Viking warlord named Rollo an area of land in the north to settle down in as tribute.
This region became known as Normandy the land of the Northmen why am I telling you this because these Normans preceded the conflicts between England and by the middle of the 11th century the Normans have become a mix of French and Vikings retaining the Viking spirit for exploration and conquest but speaking French and having adopted French culture Christianity and military reforms the Duke of Normandy was technically a subject of the French king but realistically the Normans were an independent nation in the year 1066 the Normans under Duke Guillaume invaded England and Guillaume better known as William the Conqueror became King of England this Norman conquest resulted in a lot of changes in England in language law culture etc but most relevantly politically because the king of England was the Duke of Normandy and therefore technically a French subject tension over power became inevitable as England was drawn into the complicated politics of France of the day in 1154 in a very stereotypically medieval situation after a succession crisis known as the anarchy henry ii became King of England and Duke of Normandy but had also because of inheritance already ruled these lands here as Duke of Aquitaine and count of Anjou and thus ruled what is referred to by historians as the owner of an empire as you can see these lands cut right through France and the rights over these lands as well as the rights to the thrones of England and France themselves became the source of conflict for much of the medieval era the most notable medieval conflict between England and France was the Hundred Years War another term invented by historians which actually refers to four separate wars over the period of 116 years England was victorious in the early phases of the war but in the final war the French achieved their ultimate goals that is to say retaining territorial integrity and political independence and effectively won the war the wars were very draining to both nations but at the end of them we see the transformation of these two into true recognizable nation-states however the English were not necessarily done after the Hundred Years War and in fact the monarch would claim the title of king or queen of France until 1803 when it was dropped in favour of the deposed monarchy as Europe entered the Renaissance the rivalry between England and France did not wither but the focus was about to change from localized squabbles to the competition to conquer the new world or really worlds that the Europeans were beginning to chart around the Year 1000 AD a group of Vikings under Leif Ericson became the first Europeans to reach the Americas everyone ignored this and in 1492 the Spanish under Christopher Columbus became the first Europeans to reach the Americas Spain and Portugal quickly became the first nations to establish settlements and claim territory in the new world of America as well as Africa and Asia and as time went on the Dutch Swedish Russians and of course English and French would enter the game as well these nations specifically Spain Portugal England and France could realistically be called the first world powers in the sense that they were the first nations to be able to have influence and project military power across the globe the English and French were late to the game comparatively but by the Year 1700 it was clear that they would be the most major world players specifically in North America and South Asia Africa would not be heavily colonized until almost two centuries later Spain and Portugal were in decline Sweden and the Dutch had been knocked out Russia was not heavily involved in colonization and focused more on its own contiguous territories and the rest of Europe did not or could not make much effort toward colonization a number of conflicts emerged.
In the 18th century which spilled over into other theaters most notably as I said the Americas India and the coasts of Africa the most important of these words was what is called the Seven Years War known in America as the French and Indian War where it would actually last for nine years from 1754 to 1763 the war remains one of the most significant in world history as essentially an 18th century world war leading one side England or more correctly at this point Britain and on the other France hanging in the balance the fate of the world itself if one side decisively won here it would affect not only Europe not only America and India but also even later colonisation in Africa Oceania and the rest of Asia in 1763 Britain emerged victorious in all theatres and thus happily sat upon its place as the world's unchallenged top colonial power but France was not done and quite unhappy about this with later support a rebellion in the British American colonies that became the American War of Independence which as they intended dealt a major blow to the British Empire nevertheless the British Empire recovered and even sought out new lands like Australia and New Zealand while the rest of Europe failed to keep up the 18th centuries sometimes referred to as the second Hundred Years War because the two powers were quite frankly in constant conflict following the French and Indian War as I said France was clearly on the losing end and by the end of the century economic strain related to this constant militarism was a major contributing factor to the French Revolution which toppled the ancien régime and established the French Republic at first Britain laughed but when events became more serious the king and queen were executed and the new republic established itself by defeating the major powers of Europe Britain recognized this situation was serious when Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Republican government and crowned himself Emperor of the French it was clearly very serious France now challenged not only Britain but the whole of Europe as the military genius Napoleon Bonaparte said about intending to create an empire extending across Europe for a time he was basically successful in doing so but that Britain was one of his main targets he was never successfully able to reach it Britain was naturally Napoleon's most powerful rival and was the force rallying Europe against him he was very nearly successful in defeating them but following the naval Battle of Trafalgar Napoleon's plans to conquer Britain were put aside and he focused on continental Europe instead however Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815 it's really around this time that 800 years following the Norman conquest of England the infamous anglo-french rivalry begins to wind down Europe entered into a period sometimes referred to as Pax Britannica the British peace lasting from 1815 to 1914 in which very few major wars were fought Britain was the world's leading power in this time and pursued its imperial ambitions and while France did indeed to build a colonial empire and remained a very powerful and influential nation it never really challenged Britain again in the ways it had in the past in fact the Napoleonic Wars were really the last time Britain and France went to war with each other from here on out in fact they'd be fighting on the same side which was foreshadowed by their joint efforts in the Crimean War against Russia and so this great rivalry started to come to a close after 1815 the two powers started to set aside their differences and even began to work together but why well there are a number of reasons that cooperation would be strategically favourable but the big reason occurring in the latter half of the 1800s was Germany Germany for most of its history consisted of a collection of fragmented microstates called the Holy Roman Empire with Austria and Prussia being the only nations within that Empire capable of projecting power beyond their borders to a major extent by the 1800s most of the old European nations were experiencing some form of major change including Germany in 1871 Prussia had won the debate against Austria over who would be the master of the German lands and then defeated France in a war allowing the Germans to unify and evolved into the modern nation we know today as Germany Germany wasted no time and throwing its weight around and quickly established itself as a major power this was naturally worrying to Britain and France and they decided it would be in their best interest to set aside their differences to prevent Germany from taking advantage of any weaknesses the awkward newfound friendship between Britain and France was cemented when they stood together as allies in both world wars and continued to during the Cold War and into the modern day as the two nations still largely find cooperation to be in their best interest with their tense rivalries long behind them though the modern age has seen Britain and France work as partners in some parts of the world the remnants of anglo-french enmity can still be found the most obvious example of this is in North America specifically in Canada when the British defeated the French and the French and Indian or in North America they took the majority of its mainland holdings except for Louisiana which was given to Spain and later sold to the United States.
The British were not successful in assimilating the local French populations of the territory which they annexed and these people are the people we know today as French Canadians I plan to cover this more in a future video but the term french-canadian tends to refer to the descendants of the French colonists in North America prior to the Seven Years War in general they typically see themselves as their own group less related to the European French so if someone immigrated from France to Canada today they wouldn't really be considered as a part of the same cultural linguistic or even ethnic group in the United States though in some parts of the country the language is still spoken and the culture remains alive ethnic French Canadians such as those whose history was in Louisiana or Michigan and those who emigrated later including my family are largely assimilated as full Americans in Canada however French culture remains distinct from British Canadian culture historically in Quebec and Acadia in particular the french-canadian people have emphasized marrying only within their group remaining Catholic and retaining their culture and language despite external forces though not quite this strict these days this resilience is why the French presence in North America did not disappear in fact it nearly led to a split in Canada on multiple occasions the most famous incident being in 1995 when Quebec took a vote on its independence the we vote amounted to forty nine point four two percent of the population with no amounting to fifty point five eight percent a very close vote and the issue is still debated to this day a conflict stemming for almost a thousand years and the solutions to concerns as far back as the 1700s still in some areas remain unresolved and hotly debated I hope you enjoyed this video if you did come check out some of my other stuff and subscribe to see more informative videos in the future I have another documentary project coming up soon a complete history of the Roman Empire.
