Abstract
Britain was the most successful of the nineteenth-century European powers in expanding its territory overseas, but that very success brought an increasing nervousness and sense of vulnerability as well as prestige and status as a world power. As early as the 1830s, the possession of India had led to growing fears about the threat of Russian expansion in Central Asia. The development of intense imperial rivalry with France in Africa and Asia, disagreements with the United States over the Canadian-American boundary and over Central America, pressures from Germany to make colonial concessions, and the perception that the Russian threat had extended to Manchuria and China as well as the Middle East caused the British to reconsider their whole diplomatic position. They decided that they were no longer able to stand aloof from the alliances of the other European powers and alone defend their interests against a number of potential enemies. When the attempt to conclude an agreement with Germany failed, they made an alliance with Japan in 1902 to help protect their interests in the Far East and settled their differences with the United States in 1902 and 1903, with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. Although the memories of years of rivalry and friction could not be expunged, Britain’s relations with France and the USA steadily improved.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Quoted in Keith Wilson in K. M. Wilson (ed.), British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Policy: From Crimean War to First World War (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 180.
P. M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Fontana, 1989), p. 314.
Quoted in H. Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (London: Longman, 1983), p. 247.
Quoted in Z. S. Steiner, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 115.
Quoted in J. M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 7.
Quoted in A. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914–1940 (London: Edward Arnold, 1995), pp. 37–8.
Quoted in M. L. Dockrill and J. D. Goold, Peace without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences, 1919–1923 (London: Batsford, 1981), p. 19.
Quoted in A. Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 15.
E. C. J. Hahn, ‘The German Foreign Ministry and the Question ofWar Guilt, 1918–1919’, in C. Fink (ed.), German Nationalism and the European Response, 1890–1945 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985).
Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 18–19.
Cf. Hagihara Nobutoshi’s comment in Ian Nish (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 100.
Quoted in Roger F. Hackett, Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 285.
Quoted in Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Feminist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 142.
Quoted in Paul Dukes, October and the World (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 96.
John Tully, Cambodia under the Tricolour (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 1996), p. 169.
Copyright information
© 2001 Margaret Lamb and Nicholas Tarling
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lamb, M., Tarling, N. (2001). The First World War. In: From Versailles to Pearl Harbor. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3772-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3772-8_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-73840-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-3772-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)