Empire loss reoriented Germany and France toward supranational European integration

Evidence

First, the dissolution of empires had lasting consequences for the conception of the nation-state. Central and Eastern Europe (especially Poland) and Algeria had been of equivalent significance for Germany and France as parts of larger ‘imagined geographies’ that nurtured fantasies of territorial expansion, provoked policies of colonial settlement and national assimilation, and sustained national imperial identities. After the loss of these territories, imperial concepts of the nation-state lay in shambles, and the place of the nation in the world had to be redefined. Thereafter, West Germany and France oriented themselves towards a supranational integration of Western Europe – an orientation that complemented their new self-conceptions as post-imperial nations, which emerged with the integration of expellees and repatriates. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 37

Categorization

• XREF: A causal substitution/reorientation claim: what happens to national identity when the external territorial axis of solidarity collapses — relevant to the reader’s question about solidarity after threat removal. — connects to: Algeria’s loss paradoxically produced a stronger postcolonial France — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 8; Postwar European states shrank to metropolitan cores and turned toward supranational integration. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 65

Broader Connections

• Algeria’s loss paradoxically produced a stronger postcolonial France #exemplifies (0.82) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 8