the territorial integrity of the Chinese empire and freedom of trade within had come under pressure from all the European powers, including Germany. Largely to constrain Germany’s behavior and thereby reduce the momentum behind the partition of China, Colonial Secretary Chamberlain initiated Anglo-German alliance talks in March 1898. Even skeptics of the alliance talks like Balfour still hoped to enmesh Germany in the open trading order sustained by Great Britain in the Far East.69 Although the alliance talks failed, the British government did secure an Anglo-German agreement on China in October 1900. The treaty pledged to uphold freedom of trade in China “as far as they can exercise influence,” and both parties committed to “direct their policy towards maintaining undiminished the territorial condition of the Chinese Empire.”70
The main focus of Great Britain’s integration strategy, however, was maritime. Between 1906 and 1911, the British government pursued a naval agreement with Germany. This was a self-conscious effort to create international institutions that restrained Germany from engaging in competitive behavior, namely, challenging Great Britain’s naval supremacy.71 Before and during the Second Hague Conference of 1907, the British government promoted an agreement to limit naval armaments. Although rebuffed by Germany, the Liberal Cabinet in 1908 once again pressed for a naval agreement. Foreign Secretary Grey and David Lloyd George, the chancellor of the exchequer, met with the German ambassador in July to discuss a maritime arrangement. In August, the British directly approached the kaiser, to no avail.72 Talks resumed in 1909 when the Liberal Cabinet responded to German overtures. Two years of largely fruitless negotiations ensued. Before the second Moroccan crisis brought the talks to a close, the two sides only managed to concur on an exchange of information through naval attachés.73
In parallel to seeking the integration of Germany, Great Britain also implemented a hedging strategy. As German naval power began to increase, the Admiralty moved to concentrate the Royal navy in home waters. This process of redistribution accelerated under the leadership of Admiral John Fisher and took on an explicitly anti-German cast.74 “Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England. We must therefore keep a fleet twice as powerful as that of Germany always concentrated within a few hours of Germany.”75 An expansion of the Royal navy occurred alongside concentration. From 1901 to 1905, the Royal navy grew by nine battleships. In February 1906, Great Britain launched the HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary vessel rendering the capital ships of all other navies obsolete. Thereafter, the pace of battleship construction intensified, with Great Britain laying down eight vessels in 1909 and four in each successive year through 1911.76
The nonmaritime element of Great Britain’s hedging strategy was to forge security ties with two European land powers: France and Russia. In April 1904, the newly established Anglo-French entente was more a measure to split Paris and Moscow than a protoalliance aimed at Berlin.77 However, after the first Moroccan crisis erupted in 1905, the Anglo-French entente came to take on an anti-German cast.78 Great Britain concluded an entente with Russia in 1907—a radical change in British foreign policy considering that only a few years earlier the two countries had been bitter imperial rivals in Central Asia and the Far East. The Anglo-Russian entente was an additional insurance against German ambitions. As Edward Grey, the architect of foreign policy under the Liberal Cabinet, put it: “An entente between Russia, France, and ourselves would be absolutely secure. If it is necessary to check Germany it could be done.”79
Autocracy Frames Germany’s Rise
Great Britain had no recourse but to integrate and hedge because Germany was a rising autocracy. Opaque intentions and a lack of access opportunities created an environment in which British leaders could not rely entirely on international institutions to constrain German behavior.
Uncertainty Breeds Mistrust
With foreign policy an exclusive domain limited to the kaiser and his clique, great uncertainty surrounded an ascendant Germany’s ambitions. Writing in 1904, Spring-Rice neatly summarized this conundrum: “Germany is a mystery. Does she simply want the destruction of England … or does she want definite things which England can help her to get?”80 Eyre Crowe, in a 1907 memorandum that was widely circulated within the British government, also pointed to the difficulty of ascertaining German intentions:
It would not be unjust to say that ambitious designs against one’s neighbours are not as a rule openly proclaimed, and that therefore the absence of such proclamation, and even the profession of unlimited and universal political, benevolence are not in themselves conclusive evidence for or against the existence of unpublished intentions.81
Would German expansion be peaceful, and economic in nature, or would Germany seek hegemony over Europe? The answer was fundamentally unclear.82
Unsurprisingly, German intentions became the subject of much debate within the British government. Regardless whether the Conservative or Liberal Party held power, pro- and anti-German groups struggled to assert their respective views. After 1902, Chamberlain and his son, both members of the Conservative Cabinet, argued that German intentions were inimical to Great Britain. Other ministers, however, perceived German ambitions in a more benign light. Foreign Secretary Lansdowne and Balfour, then prime minister, initially remained unconvinced by either side, but Lansdowne’s attempt to use reform of the colonial administration in Egypt as a “test case” for German goodwill brought disillusionment. Angered by Berlin’s recalcitrance, Lansdowne and Balfour became increasingly skeptical of German motivations.83
Disagreement over German intentions divided the Liberal Cabinet elected in late 1905 and became increasingly sharp as the naval arms race with Germany accelerated. During the debate over British naval requirements for 1909, Cabinet members Lloyd George and Winston Churchill rallied other ministers with favorable views of Germany to press for only four new battleships. The anti-German group, which included Grey, insisted that six dreadnoughts were necessary to retain a margin of safety over the German fleet. The debate was heated, and at one point, Grey threatened to resign. Only a compromise brokered by Prime Minister Asquith prevented conflicting assessments of German intentions from tearing the Cabinet apart.84
Within the British government, the balance gradually shifted toward the anti-Germans. This upwelling of mistrust was catalyzed by the autocratic nature of Germany’s regime. The lack of sources illuminating German intentions led British elites to focus on what they could observe: actions abroad and changes in military capability.
Colonial quarrels sparked initial British misgivings about Germany’s trajectory. The kaiser’s interference in relations between the Cape Colony and the Boers, the occupation of Chinese Kiaochow by German forces in 1897, German demands on the Portuguese colonies, and the acrimonious partition of Samoa—all were interpreted by the British Foreign Office as symptomatic of a more fundamental antagonism. By the turn of the century, Great Britain’s career diplomatic corps had become a bastion of anti-German sentiment.85 German assertiveness overseas likewise provoked growing anxiety in successive Cabinets. For Lansdowne and Balfour, German resistance to the consolidation of Great Britain’s position in Egypt appeared a harbinger of deeper ill will. Similarly, Grey regarded the diplomatic crisis triggered by the kaiser’s landing in Tangiers as indicative of enduring German hostility.86
The relentless expansion of the German fleet loomed large in British threat assessments and more than any other factor strengthened the hand of anti-German groups. Based on the technical specifications of the German fleet, Selborne, first lord of the admiralty and originally an advocate of an Anglo-German alliance, concluded in 1902 that “the German navy is very carefully built up from the point of view of a new war with us.”87 Coming to power in the midst of the first Moroccan crisis, Foreign Secretary Grey perceived Germany’s willingness to limit naval armaments as a touchstone of its intentions. The fruitlessness of the naval talks amplified the mistrust Grey already harbored.88
