The significance of the Agadir Crisis in changing British attitudes towards France, 1911 [Ressource électronique] / Bonnie White

Master of art : Histoire : University of New Brunswick : 2003

Bibliogr. p. 131-135

The Agadir Crisis of 1911 serves as a point to gauge how British attitudes and policies towards France changed both before and after it. For the past eighty years Agadir's significance has been judged in relation to the First World War, rather than in relation to the European world from 1909 to 1912. Studies of Agadir's significance have been dominated by the German act o f gun-boat diplomacy and the first occasion where the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance were pitted against one another in battle array. Unfortunately, the hindsight of the First World War has clouded Agadir's true significance as an effect and not a cause. The German action of sending the gunboat Panther to Agadir did not cause a change in Anglo-French relations; rather, it was the changes that occurred following the Anglo-German naval scare o f 1909 and the failure of the Haldane Mission in 1912 that forced the British government to re-evaluate her relationship with France. From 1909 to 1912 the increasing power of the German nation and the threat she posed to Britain resulted in the British government turning to France in search of a general understanding. By focusing on Anglo-French relations in 1911 and 1912, this thesis demonstrates that the Agadir crisis tried the boundaries of the Entente Cordiale and unlike any event before or after it, shook the very foundation upon which the Anglo-French entente rested.