ABSTRACT
A leading historian of Anglo-American relations, David Reynolds, has suggested several legacies. The legacies of France's defeat are equally the legacies of the British decision to carry on the war. Underlying his interpretation of these legacies is a sense of irony where the British experience is concerned: Britain's "finest hour", like France's darkest hour, led ultimately to relative decline. The eclipse of British and French power after June 1940 encouraged the development of anti-colonial movements within the empires and, in the longer term, shifted the global balance of power in favour of the two superpowers, each of which had both ideological and self-interested reasons to undermine the European empires. The rise of the superpowers and the decline of empire affected the defeated and undefeated alike, while the movement towards European integration benefited the defeated French more than the victorious British.
