The Making and Putative Implementation of a British Foreign Policy of Gesture, December 1905 to August 1914: The Anglo-French Entente Revisited

Abstract

Despite tension within the Liberal cabinet between the few partisans of the entente with France and a majority reluctant to admit even the possibility of Britain fighting beside France in a continental war, the minority Liberal Imperialists — R.B. Haldane particularly influential among them — were largely unchecked by their more isolationist colleagues until the watershed of November 1911. Ironically, this earlier period of freedom saw less effective planning to support France than the post-watershed period of closer scrutiny. Using newly available evidence from the Lansdowne and Ilbert papers, this paper examines the means used by partisans of the entente to impose their will on the cabinet during the four “war-in-sight” crises preceding August 1914 — means such as public opinion creation through press manipulation, collaboration with the Conservative leadership, and use of treaty obligations to provide a locus standi. It closes with the argument that the Liberal Imperialists’ earlier lack of interest in Anglo-French planning is best explained by their perception of Russia’s major role in safeguarding France, and the consequent belief that British gestures of support were chiefly that, gestures intended mainly to maintain the connection with Russia, which was of paramount importance to British foreign — mainly imperial — policy at that time.