Abstract
The advent of a liberal government in December 1905 and its confirmation in office by the spectacular electoral landslide of January 1906 did not, as we have seen, interrupt the transformation of Britain’s diplomatic position inaugurated under the conservatives by the Anglo-Japanese alliance and the entente with France. Indeed, the latter was given a further impetus almost at once when, on 31 January 1906, the new foreign secretary, Grey, authorized staff talks between the two countries; and its efficacy in action was made manifest at the Algeciras conference which sat from January to March and which confirmed against German pressure the predominant position of France in Morocco. It is true that no new political commitment was entered into, but the very fact of staff talks — essential if Britain were effectively to come to the aid of France at the outset of a war which might be brief and decisive — was if anything more conclusive: ‘once the British envisaged entering a continental war, however remotely, they were bound to treat the independence of France, not the future of Morocco, as the determining factor. The European Balance of Power, which had been ignored for forty years, again dominated British foreign policy; and henceforth every German move was interpreted as a bid for continental hegemony’.1 The Anglo-Russian agreement of 31 August 1907 was much less a commitment to mutual support and much more a mere settlement of particular issues — Tibet and Persia — but given the Franco-Russian alliance it too pointed in the direction of further involvement.
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Notes
On his relations with Fisher, see A. M. Gollin, The Observer and J. L. Garvin, 1908–1914 (1960).
For the background of the labour movement and its problems, see E. H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (1959).
On Rosebery, see the sympathetic study by Robert Rhodes James, Rosebery (1965).
For Roosevelt’s public intervention at a crisis of Britain’s relations with Egypt, see Max Beloff, ‘Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire’, in The Great Powers (1959).
Stephen Gwynn in his The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring-Rice (2 v. 1929) omitted some of the more critical passages from the ambassador’s wartime letters home.
See for a recent German study of this point, F. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1967),
a translation of his Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961).
On this subject generally, see Max Beloff, Foreign Policy and the Diplomatic Process (Baltimore, 1955).
Esher to Fisher, 1 October 1907. Esher, Letters and Journals, vol. II, p. 249.
The principal first-hand account of the role of the C.I.D. before 1914 is that in Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command, 1914–1918 (London, Allen & Unwin, 1961), vol. 1, part I.
See Dudley Sommer, Haldane of Cloan (1960), chs. 10–15.
Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, vol. II (1967), pp. 539–45.
Z. Steiner, ‘The Last Years of the Old Foreign Office’, The Historical Journal, vol. VI, 1963.
S. R. Mehrotra, ‘On the Use of the Term “Commonwealth”’, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol. 1, No. 1, 1963.
Lionel Curtis (1872–1955), after service in the South African war, held various posts in the Transvaal before returning to England to lecture on colonial history and to devote himself, through the Round Table and other organizations, to promoting his own particular blend of imperialism and dominion autonomy. His books, The Problem of the Commonwealth and The Commonwealth of Nations appeared in 1916.
For Smuts’ later view that it was the magnanimity of Campbell-Bannerman that was decisive, see W. K. Hancock, Smuts (Cambridge, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 213–17.
L. M. Thompson, The Unification of South Africa (Oxford, 1960), p. 24.
Wm. Roger Louis, Great Britain and Germany’s Lost Colonies, 1914–1919 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 25–35.
E. D. Morel (1873–1924) founded the Congo Reform Association in 1904 and was its secretary until 1919. He gave up his prospective liberal parliamentary candidature at the outbreak of the war which he opposed, was one of the founders and first secretary of the Union of Democratic Control and joined the labour party, sitting as a labour M.P. from 1922 to 1924. His career is dealt with sympathetically, in A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble-makers (1957).
Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby (1959), p. 162.
For this reason, he may have been easier for continental scholars to appreciate, see Vladimir Halperin, Lord Milner and the Empire (1952).
Cf. Edward Crankshaw, The Forsaken Idea. A Study of Lord Milner (1952).
Eric Stokes, ‘Milnerism’, Historical Journal, vol. V, 1962.
Milner to John Martin, editor of the Bloemfontein Post, 30 October 1911.
R. Cook, The Politics of John W. Dafoe and the Free Press (Toronto, 1963), p. 37.
Carroll Quigley, ‘The Round Table Groups in Canada 1908-1938’, Canadian Historical Review, vol. XLIII, September 1962.
Lord Lothian by J. R. M. Butler (1960), while a sympathetic study of the man and his opinions, is conceived on too small a scale to deal with his many-sided contribution to the history of his times.
Undated pamphlet (probably 1910 or 1911) entitled Imperial Union and Federation for the United Kingdom, written by Kerr. Lothian Papers, Box 210.
Quigley, loc. cit.; J. Eayrs, ‘The Round Table Movement in Canada, 1909–1920’, Canadian Historical Review, XXXVIII, March 1957.
See also J. R. M. Butler, Lord Lothian (1960), ch. III.
On the relationship between tariff reform and social reform in the thinking of Joseph Chamberlain, see Peter Fraser, Joseph Chamberlain (1966), pp. 286 ff. Cf. Koebner and Schmidt, Imperialism, ch. X.
A. M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge U. P. 1962), ch. V.
On the general position of European socialism in relation to imperialism and international relations at this period, see James Joll, The Second International (1955).
For a general presentation of imperialist and anti-imperialist ideas in fictional form, see John Buchan, The Lodge in the Wilderness (1906).
See the biography, John Buchan, by Janet Adam Smith (1965).
See Ramsay MacDonald, The Awakening of India (1910),
The Government of India (1919).
See J. A. Cross, Whitehall and the Commonwealth, British departmental Organization for Commonwealth Relations, 1900–1966 (1967), and in C.H.B.E., vol. III, ch. XI, by J. E. Tyler, ‘Development of the Imperial Conference, 1887–1914’, and ch. XIX, by R. B. Pugh, ‘The Colonial Office, 1801–1925’.
J. A. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin (Melbourne, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 480–501.
The Elgin-Churchill relationship has been fully explored in Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office (London, Macmillan, 1968).
J. E. Kendle, ‘The Round Table Movement, New Zealand and the Imperial Conference of 1911’, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol. III, 1965.
I. H. Nish, ‘Australia and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. IX, 1963.
On the 1909 conference and its results, see W. G. B. Tunstall, ‘Imperial Defence, 1897–1914’, C.H.B.E., vol. III, ch. XV.
H. G. Wells, The New Macchiavelli (1911), Penguin edn, p. 267.
R.J. Moore, Liberalism and Indian Politics, 1872–1922 (London, Arnold, 1966), p. 81.
S. R. Mehrotra, India and the Commonwealth, 1885–1929 (1965), pp. 51, 56–8.
M. N. Das, India under Morley and Minto (London, Allen & Unwin, 1964), p. 70.
On the divisions over India in British politics, see S. R. Wasti, Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement (Oxford, 1964), p. 10.
Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1967), pp. 120 ff.
I. R. Hancock, ‘The 1911 Imperial Conference’, Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, vol. XII, October 1966, pp. 356 ff.
E. Thompson and G. T. Garratt, Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India (1934), pp. 585–7.
Only Kerr of the Round Table group seems to have favoured Indian representation in the proposed imperial parliament. Kerr to Brand, 18 April 1912 and 25 April 1912 (Brand Papers). See his article ‘India and the Empire’, The Round Table. September 1912.
Lord Hardinge, My Indian Tears (1948), pp. 32–3.
John Marlowe, Late Victorian, The Life of Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson (1967), pp. 42, 89.
Protection for the United Kingdom including Ireland was also the burden of L. S. Amery, The Case Against Home Rule (1912).
The Latin American policy of Woodrow Wilson is fully treated for American sources in Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson, vol. 2 (1956).
C.H.B.E., vol. III, pp. 702-10; Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, Statesmen and Sea Power (Oxford, 1946), pp. 279–83;
The subject is treated in detail in A. C. Bell, The Blockade of Germany, an official history printed for official purposes in 1937 and publicly released in 1961 (H.M.S.O.).
The mood of the time is best captured in H. G. Wells’s novel, Mr Britling Sees It Through, published in September 1916.
A. Marwick, The Deluge (1965), pp. 27, 49.
H. G. Wells, Mr Britling Sees It Through (London, Cassell, 1916), p. 425.
Max Beloff, The Balance oj Power (Montreal, 1968).
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Beloff, M. (1987). The Empire and the Ententes. In: Britain’s Liberal Empire 1897–1921. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18957-1_4
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