After Brexit what will be retained

Subject: After Brexit what will be retained,

One of the effects of Brexit was our desire to escape the clutches of German hegemony in the guise of the EU.
It's useful therefore to read European history, and the rise and fall of the Hapsburg empire with its seat in Austria but influenced by the German states and especially the power of Prussia.

The conquests of Napoleon which tore the continent apart led to the amalgamation of the countries lying to the east under the titular political control of Austria, countries such as Hungry, and Galicia, Transylvania and further south, Croatia. Metternich the German diplomat, the schemer the supreme fixer with his complicated political treaties, tying the threads with a semblance of legal continuity. And Russia prodding the surrounding nations, taking bits here and there through conquest and threat of conquest, a continent in continual flux with dynastic assumptions leveraging the imbalances.
Up until the two world wars these nations were always jockeying for advantage. Boundaries drawn and redrawn, nations one moment subservient to this power, the next under the rule of another. Flux and counter flux with the common denominator, men dying in their thousands and, as the killing machines became more efficient, in their millions.
The Iron and Steel Community, the Free Trade Area, the EEC and now the European Union have been a spectacular success in unifying all these disparate nations supplementing each with a common interest, a common economic union with trade and free movement blurring the nationalistic differences.
Sitting off the continent proper these islands were protected from the pervasive influence of national grievance and were allowed to evolve our own concept of parliamentary democracy. Our expansion was in the Far East, Africa and to a lesser extent the Americas. Trade and exploitation were our modus operandi, mainly driven by private companies it relied on a business structure based on the law of contract and a substructure such as roads and railways to exploit the trade.
As we seek to extricate ourself from our short dalliance with Europe we must understand the fundamental philosophical difference between the way European nations think. Their history of turmoil and confrontation, now reaching this safe harbour of economic and structural tranquility, which the EU represents.
Federalism, the subservience of nationalism is the corollary of a thousand years of conflict which we in Britain never felt the pressure to assuage in the same way.
Our nationalism will lead us into many false dawns but at least, like the child leaving home for the first time there is the excitement as well as the fear of the unknown which once again as we come of age we cast off the sureties of parental conformity with its structured "I know what's best for you" diktat. Our mind has become dull with the conformity, we have forgotten how to function as an independent nation, leaving much of the decision making to the EU Commission and the European Courts. This  has been a safe haven with many benefits. General high quality standards, good labour laws, a set of progressive environmental sign posts which might have been overlooked by our traditional obsession with dumping regulation in search of profit.
It can only be hoped that our brief flirtation with a large family, ( the nations of Europe) which of necessity requires compromise and a wider more consolatory view will be retained.