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Splendid isolation is a term used to describe the 19th-century British diplomatic practice of avoiding permanent alliances from 1815 to 1902. The concept developed as early as 1822, when Britain left the post-1815 Concert of Europe, and continued until the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the 1904 Entente Cordiale with France.
British national interest rejected German control of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Grey warned that to abandon its allies would be a permanent disaster: if Germany won the war, or the Entente won without British support, then, either way, Britain would be left without any friends.
The following Austro-Russian talks were sabotaged by Austria-Hungary's refusal to abandon any of the demands on Serbia [126] As a preparatory move in case a war did break out, and Britain were to become involved, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the British Admiralty, ordered the British fleet not to disperse as planned, [147] arguing that news ...
France's informal alignment with Britain and its formal alliance with Russia against Germany and Austria eventually led Russia and Britain to enter World War I as France's allies. [26] [27] Britain abandoned its policy of splendid isolation in the 1900s, after it had been isolated during the Second Boer War. Britain concluded agreements ...
The Germans accepted the risk of British intervention; in common with most of Europe, they expected it to be a short war while their London Ambassador claimed civil war in Ireland would prevent Britain from assisting its Entente partners. [30] On 3 August, a German ultimatum demanded unimpeded progress through any part of Belgium, which was ...
In 1914 the war was so unexpected that no one had formulated long-term goals. An ad-hoc meeting of the French and British ambassadors with the Russian Foreign Minister in early September led to a statement of war aims that was not official, but did represent ideas circulating among diplomats in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, as well as the secondary allies of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro.
HMS Dreadnought.The 1902, 1904 and 1907 agreements with Japan, France and Russia allowed Britain to refocus resources during the Anglo-German naval arms race. In explaining why Britain went to war with Germany, British historian Paul Kennedy (1980) argued that a critical factor was the British realisation that Germany was rapidly becoming economically more powerful than Britain.
Turner, John, ed. Britain and the First World War (1988). Williams, John. The Home Fronts: Britain, France and Germany 1914-1918 (1972) Britain: pp 49–71, 111-33, 178-98 and 246-60. Wilson, Trevor. The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (1989) excerpt and text search 864pp; covers both the homefront and the battlefields