>>2709250Britain's ruling class didn't see themselves as "British" in a nationalist fashion, which I would presume France did. They were, broadly speaking, cosmopolitan liberal free-trade types with a handful of "protectionist" imperial-preference guys who only wanted free trade with 70% of the planet. As such, "America is going to eat your empire and you are going to become an American vassal" wasn't that scary an outcome, especially since America allowed Britain to believe that it was a particularly special partner. (America tells every country that they've got a special relationship, but Britain
actually believes it)
One view would be that WW2 was a choice between Britain letting Germany conquer continental Europe and Britain keeping her empire, or mortgaging her empire to America to protect free trade. Britain chose the latter (which, truthfully, it must be said is the noble and correct choice.)
"Britain" as a nation state was created around 1945 when it became clear that an island that was once just the central point of a sprawling trade empire was going to have to develop a national economy when America took over and stopped giving them preferential treatment. Look at any Churchill speech and note how he speaks of
England, note how even into the 1960s and 1970s produce was stamped
made in England,
made in Scotland, and so on. This is because Scotland and England never ceased to be nations - like a weaker Austria-Hungary they were two separate nations under one political arrangement.
Scotland's ruling class were desperate to become "British", it's true, but England was the dominant partner and was quite content to remain English, and Scotland's working class were quite content to remain Scottish. Northern Ireland is an even more awkward hanging nail, it had its own parliament until the 1970s because it wasn't ever really part of Britain-proper.
For more on this, see David Edgerton's "the rise and fall of the British nation". Despite the title, it's not a right-wing screed, it's a serious work of history looking at the construction and destruction of a national economy in the British isles. It explains the rise of Scottish/Welsh nationalism (when the "British" economy is dismantled, the material conditions for "Britishness" are undermined) and the religious reverence for the NHS (it's th
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