McG of H,

"...If the war back then had gone the other way, and the British and the colonials who backed them, had won, I think the chances are that the rest of North America would now be predominantly French speaking. And referred to as "the EU"..."

Why so?

The French had, effectively been elbowed out of Canada years before (THE AWI was an attempt to avoid paying taxes, to pay -retrospectively - for the American bit of that war, after all).
With no need for fleets patolling the American station, with the American woods providing timber for shipyards to build 'Humphry's' Type frigastes for the RN (and with the crews to man them), with American supplies cut off to the French Republicans and Napoleon and with additional regiments recruited in the Americas...are you sure there wouldn't be bits of Normandy, Anjou, Poitiers etc. speaking English (or at least Franglais) and calling themselves British?

(Hey, they've been the enemy for the better part of the last thousand years:- I can dream can't I?


As for the original topic, there was one American historian (Shelby, Sheldon, something like that) who made the statement that before the ACW, the phrase was always "The United Stares are..." After the war, this became "The United States is..."

Walrus