Historian Robert Tombs on the 1,000-Year Rivalry Between Britain And France

Tombs frames Brexit and the EU as mirror-image French and British strategies for reclaiming lost great-power status, a rivalry rooted in a millennium of conflict.

• Rivalry forged identity: Historian Robert Tombs cites a 19th-century French historian's view that the French "came to realize they were French through fighting the English," starting in the Hundred Years' War.
• Brexit as mirror-image nationalism: Tombs argues European integration is France's route to reclaiming great-power status (Paris leading 500 million people), while Brexit was Britain's opposite route to the same goal—so France needs Brexit to fail.

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