Triple Entente

Early 20th-century understandings between France, Russia, and Great Britain Not to be confused with Triple Alliance.

Triple Entente

1907–1917

The Triple Entente (green) and the Triple Alliance (brown) in 1914:

United Kingdom

France

Russia

Status

Informal military alliance

Establishment

1907

History

• Established

1907

• Dissolved

1917

Preceded by

Succeeded by

	Franco-Russian alliance
	Entente Cordiale
	Anglo-Russian entente of 1907

Allies of World War I

The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement") describes the informal understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between France and Britain, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was not an alliance of mutual defence.

The Franco-Japanese Treaty of 1907 was a key part of building a coalition as France took the lead in creating alliances with Japan, Russia, and (informally) with Britain. Japan wanted to raise a loan in Paris, so France made the loan contingent on a Russo-Japanese agreement and a Japanese guarantee for France's strategically vulnerable possessions in Indochina. Britain encouraged the Russo-Japanese rapprochement. Thus was built the Triple Entente coalition that fought World War I.

At the start of World War I in 1914, all three Triple Entente members entered it as Allied Powers against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. On September 4, 1914, the Triple Entente issued a declaration undertaking not to conclude a separate peace and only to demand terms of peace agreed among the three parties. Historians continue to debate the importance of the alliance system as one of the causes of World War I.

Alliance system

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Prussia and its allies defeated the Second French Empire, resulting in the establishment of the Third Republic. In the Treaty of Frankfurt, Prussia forced France to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the new German Empire, souring subsequent relations. France, worried about the escalating military development of Germany, began building up its own war industries and army to deter German aggression.

Russia had previously been a member of the League of the Three Emperors, an alliance in 1873 with Austria-Hungary and Germany. The alliance was part of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's plan to isolate France diplomatically; he feared that France's revanchist aspirations might lead it to attempt to regain its 1871 losses stemming from the Franco-Prussian War. The alliance also served to oppose such socialist movements as the First International, which the conservative rulers found unsettling. However, the League faced great difficulty with the growing tensions between Russia and Austria-Hungary, mainly over the Balkans, where the rise of nationalism and the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire made many former Ottoman provinces struggle for independence. To counter Russian and French interests in Europe, the Dual alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary was concluded in October 1879 and with Italy in May 1882. The situation in the Balkans, especially in the wake of the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War and the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which made Russia feel cheated of its gains made in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78, prevented the League from being renewed in 1887. In an attempt to stop Russia from allying with France, Bismarck signed the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887. This treaty assured that both parties would remain neutral if war broke out. The growing rapprochement between Russia and France and Bismarck's exclusion of Russia from the German financial market in 1887 prevented the treaty from being renewed in 1890, ending the alliance between Germany and Russia. After the forced resignation of Bismarck in 1890, the young Kaiser Wilhelm set out on his imperialist course of Weltpolitik ("world politics") to increase the empire's influence in and control over the world.

Franco-Russian Alliance

Main articles: French Third Republic and Russian Empire

Events leading to World War I

Unification of Germany 1866–1871 Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871 Second Concert of Europe 1871 Great Eastern Crisis 1875–1878 Campaign in Bosnia 1878 Dual Alliance 1879 Boer Wars 1880–1902 Austro–Serbian Alliance 1881–1903 Triple Alliance 1882 Berlin Conference 1884 Bulgarian Crisis 1885–1888 Reinsurance Treaty 1887–1890 Franco-Russian Alliance 1894 First Sino-Japanese War 1894–1895 Anglo-German naval arms race 1898–1912 Fashoda Incident 1898 Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1902 May Coup 1903 Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905 Entente Cordiale 1904 First Moroccan Crisis 1905–1906 Pig War 1906–1908 Anglo-Russian Convention 1907 Young Turk Revolution 1908 Bosnian Crisis 1908–1909 Racconigi Bargain 1909 Second Moroccan Crisis 1911 Italo-Turkish War 1911–1912 Balkan Wars 1912–1913 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 1914 July Crisis 1914
v t e

Russia had by far the largest manpower reserves of all the six European powers, but it was also the most backward economically. Russia shared France's worries about Germany. Additionally, the Russians feared that the Ottomans, who had received assistance from the British under Admiral Limpus, et al., the French, and the Germans to reorganize and modernize the Ottoman armed forces, would come to control the Dardanelles, a vital trade artery that carried two-fifths of Russia's exports.

There was also Russia's recent rivalry with Austria-Hungary over the spheres of influence in the Balkans and after the Reinsurance Treaty was not renewed in 1890, Russian leaders grew alarmed at the country's diplomatic isolation and joined the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894.

France developed a strong bond with Russia by ratifying the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was designed to create a strong counter to the Triple Alliance. France's main concerns were to protect against an attack from Germany and to regain Alsace-Lorraine.

Entente cordiale

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Britain continued its policy of "splendid isolation", with its primary focus on defending its massive overseas empire. However, by the early 1900s, the German threat had increased dramatically, and Britain thought it was in need of allies. London made overtures to Berlin which were not reciprocated, so London turned to Paris and St. Petersburg instead.

In 1904, Britain and France signed a series of agreements, the Entente cordiale, mostly aimed toward resolving colonial disputes. That heralded the end of British splendid isolation. France and Britain had signed five separate agreements regarding spheres of influence in North Africa in 1904, the Entente cordiale. The Tangier Crisis later encouraged co-operation between the two countries from their mutual fear of apparent German expansionism.

Naval race with Germany

Britain, traditionally having control of the seas, by 1909 saw the German navy as a serious threat to its Royal Navy. Britain was well ahead in terms of Dreadnought technology and responded with a major building program. They built a Royal Navy that Germany could never rival. The British sent war minister Lord Haldane to Berlin in February 1912 to reduce friction stemming from the Anglo-German naval arms race. The mission was a failure because the Germans attempted to link a "naval holiday" with a British promise to remain neutral if Germany should become engaged in a war where "Germany could not be said to be the aggressor." Zara Steiner says, "It would have meant abandoning the whole system of ententes which had been so carefully nurtured during the past six years. There was no German concession to counter the fear of German aggression." Essentially, the British reserved the right to join whatever country was attacking Germany even if Germany did not start the conflict, dooming the talks to failure. According to German historian Dirk Bönker, "To be sure, the race was decided early on; political leaders and diplomats learned to bracket it as an issue, and it did not cause the decision for war in 1914. But the naval competition nonetheless created an atmosphere of mutual hostility and distrust, which circumscribed the space for peaceful diplomacy and public recognition of shared interests, and helped to pave the twisted road to war in Europe."

Not an alliance

The Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance and the Franco-Russian Alliance, was not an alliance of mutual defense and so Britain was free to make its own foreign policy decisions in 1914. As British Foreign Office Official Eyre Crowe minuted, "The fundamental fact, of course, is that the Entente is not an alliance. For purposes of ultimate emergencies, it may be found to have no substance at all. For the Entente is nothing more than a frame of mind, a view of general policy which is shared by the governments of two countries, but which may be, or become, so vague as to lose all content".

Anglo-Russian Convention

Russia had also recently lost the humiliating Russo-Japanese War, a cause of the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the apparent transformation into a constitutional monarchy. Although it was perceived as useless during the war with Japan, the alliance was valuable in the European theatre to counteract the threat of the Triple Alliance. Tomaszewski describes the evolution of the triple entente relationship from the Russian standpoint during the period 1908 to 1914 as a progression from a shaky set of understandings that withstood various crises and emerged as a fully-fledged alliance after the outbreak of World War I.

In 1907, the Anglo-Russian Entente was agreed, which attempted to resolve a series of long-running disputes over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet and end their rivalry in Central Asia, nicknamed The Great Game. and helped to address British fears about the Baghdad Railway, which would help German expansion in the Near East.

The entente in operation

The coming into being of the entente did not necessarily fix a permanent division into two opposing power blocs. The situation remained flexible. The alignment of the Russian Empire with Europe's two largest power centres was controversial on both sides. Many Russian conservatives distrusted the secular French and recalled British past diplomatic manoeuvres to block Russian influence in the Near East. In turn, prominent French and British journalists, academics, and parliamentarians found the reactionary tsarist regime distasteful. Mistrust persisted even during wartime, with British and French politicians expressing relief when Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917. An offer of political asylum for the Romanovs was even withdrawn by the British king for fear of popular reaction. Also, France never brought up the subject of asylum with the deposed tsar.

References

Ewen W. Edwards, "The Far Eastern Agreements of 1907." Journal of Modern History 26.4 (1954): 340–55. online
Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800–1914 (3rd ed. 2003) ch 15
Official Supplement (1915). Chapter 7: Declaration of the Triple Entente (Report). American Society of International law. p. 303. JSTOR 2212043.
Edgar Feuchtwanger, Imperial Germany 1850–1918 (2002). p. 216.
Gildea 2003, p. 237.
Ruth Henig, The Origins of the First World War (2002), p. 3.
Norman Rich, Great power diplomacy, 1814–1914 (1992) pp. 244–62
Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (2000) pp. 35–47
John C.G. Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's personal monarchy, 1888–1900 (2004).
Fiona K. Tomaszewski, A Great Russia: Russia and the Triple Entente, 1905 to 1914 (2002)
"Reinsurance Treaty – Germany-Russia [1887]". Encyclopedia Britannica.
George Frost Kennan, The fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the coming of the First World War (1984)
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914 (2012), pp. 124–35, 190–96, 293–313, 438–42, 498–505.
Zara S. Steiner, Britain and the origins of the First World War (1977) p. 95.
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers (2012) pp. 318–19.
John H. Maurer, "The Anglo-German naval rivalry and informal arms control, 1912–1914." Journal of Conflict Resolution 36.2 (1992): 284–308.
Bönker, Dirk (2015). "Naval Race between Germany & Great Britain, 1898–1912". International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
Hamilton, K.A. (1977). "Great Britain and France, 1911–1914". In Hinsley, F.H. (ed.). British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey. Cambridge University Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-521-21347-9.
Fiona K. Tomaszewski (2002). A Great Russia: Russia and the Triple Entente, 1905–1914. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-0-275-97366-7.
Edward Ingram, "Great Britain's Great Game: An Introduction" International History Review 2#2 pp. 160–71 online
Keiger 1983, p. 87.
Gareth Russell (2014). The Emperors: How Europe's Rulers Were Destroyed by the First World War. Amberley. pp. 164–65. ISBN 9781445634395.

Andrew, Christopher. Théophile Délcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale, 1898–1905 (1968).
Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914 (2012), pp. 124–35, 190–96, 293–313, 438–42, 498–505.
Coogan, John W.; Coogan, Peter F. (Jan 1985). "The British Cabinet and the Anglo-French Staff Talks, 1905–1914: Who Knew What and When Did He Know It?". Journal of British Studies. 24 (1): 110–31. doi:10.1086/385827. JSTOR 175447. S2CID 145736633.
Fay, Sidney Bradshaw. The Origins of the World War (2nd ed. 1934) vol 1 pp 105–24, 312–42; vol 2 pp 277–86, 443–46 online
Henig, Ruth Beatrice (2002). The origins of the First World War (Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26185-6)
Keiger, John F.V. (1983). France and the Origins of the First World War. Macmillan International Higher Education. ISBN 978-1-349-17209-2.
Kennan, George F. The fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the coming of the First World War (Manchester UP, 1984).
Kronenbitter, Günther (August 15, 2019). "Alliance System 1914". 1914–1918 online:International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Retrieved October 25, 2019.
Langhorne, Richard (1971). "VII. The Naval Question in Anglo-German Relations, 1912–1914". The Historical Journal. 14 (2): 359–70. doi:10.1017/S0018246X0000964X. ISSN 0018-246X. JSTOR 2637960. S2CID 159469947.
MacMillan, Margaret. The war that ended peace: The road to 1914 (2013) pp 142–211.
Maurer, John H. (1992). "The Anglo-German Naval Rivalry and Informal Arms Control, 1912–1914". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 36 (2): 284–308. doi:10.1177/0022002792036002004. ISSN 0022-0027. JSTOR 174477. S2CID 154834335.
Murray, C. Freeman. The European Unity League in the past before the war (1914)
Neilson, Keith. Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford, 1995).
Schmitt, Bernadotte E. (1924). "Triple Alliance and Triple Entente, 1902–1914". American Historical Review. 29#3: 449–73. JSTOR 1836520.

Sontag, Raymond. European Diplomatic History: 1871–1932 (1933), basic short summary online
Steiner, Zara S. Britain and the origins of the First World War (1977).
Tomaszewski, Fiona. "Pomp, Circumstance, and Realpolitik: The Evolution of the Triple Entente of Russia, Great Britain, and France." Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas vol. 3 (1999): 362–80. in JSTOR, in English
Tomaszewski, Fiona K. A Great Russia: Russia and the Triple Entente, 1905–1914 (Greenwood, 2002); excerpt and text search
White, John Albert. Transition to Global Rivalry: Alliance Diplomacy & the Quadruple Entente, 1895–1907 (1995) 344 pp. re France, Japan, Russia, Britain

Primary sources

Scott, James Brown (1918). "Lord Haldane's Diary of Negotiations Between Germany and England in 1912". The American Journal of International Law. 12 (3): 589–96. doi:10.2307/2188240. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2188240. S2CID 246010587.

v t e International relations (1814–1919)
Great powers	Austria-Hungary France Germany Italy Japan Russia United Kingdom United States
Alliances	Triple Alliance Dual Alliance Triple Entente Franco-Russian Alliance Entente Cordiale Anglo-Russian Convention Anglo-Japanese Alliance League of the Three Emperors Eight-Nation Alliance Balkan League
Trends	European balance of power Ottoman decline Eastern question Spread of nationalism Sovereign debt French–German enmity Revanchism Pax Britannica New Imperialism Scramble for Africa Egyptian Lever In Asia Great Game Scramble for China Open Door Policy Meiji era Pan-Slavism Great Rapprochement Second Industrial Revolution Industrial warfare
Treaties and agreements	Congress of Vienna Treaty of Versailles (1871) Treaty of Frankfurt Treaty of Berlin Reinsurance Treaty Treaty of Paris Treaty of Björkö Taft–Katsura agreement Hague Conventions Martens Clause Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty Racconigi agreement 1917 Franco-Russian agreement
Events	Formation of Romania Unification of Germany Unification of Italy Great Eastern Crisis Congress of Berlin Berlin Conference Kronstadt–Toulon naval visits Weltpolitik Naval arms races Anglo-German Dreadnought German Naval Laws Austro-Italian Fashoda Incident Annexation of Hawaii Venezuela Naval Blockade Alaska boundary dispute First Moroccan Crisis Algeciras Conference Agadir Crisis Treaty of Fes Bosnian Crisis July Crisis
Wars	Russo-Turkish Anglo-Egyptian First Sino-Japanese Spanish–American Banana Wars Philippine–American Boxer Rebellion Second Boer Russo-Japanese Italo-Turkish Balkan Wars First Second Albanian Revolts First Second Third World War I

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