effort in two world wars was to show. Coopera-
tion between the Dominions and the mother
country, however, was voluntary, based on a
variety of changing institutions devised to meet
no more than immediate needs.
The most striking aspect of Britain’s world pos-
ition in 1900 was the contrast between the
appearance of its world power and its reality.
Anyone looking at a map of the world with the
British Empire painted red might well think that
Britain dominated the world. This was certainly
not the case.
The security of the British Isles and the empire
came to depend on three circumstances: in North
America on peaceful good relations; in eastern
Asia on the assistance of an ally; in Europe on a
continued ‘balance of power’ between the great
continental nations.
Even with the largest navy, Britain could not
continue relying entirely on its own strength and
on temporary allies whose own interests happened
to coincide with Britain’s at any particular
moment of crisis. There was a widespread feeling
that Britain was over-committed and that some
change of course in its foreign relations would be
essential. There were those who favoured an
alliance with Germany. But the Germans proved
coy. They saw no advantage in helping Britain
against Russia, except perhaps if Britain were to
pay the price of sharing its empire with Germany.
An alliance was never really on the cards and dis-
cussions about such a possibility ceased in 1902.
Others thought the sensible course for Britain
would be to reduce the number of potential
opponents all over the world. A successful start
was made by removing all possibility of conflict
with the US. On the British side, the readiness to
defend British interests in the Americas by force,
against the US if necessary, was abandoned early
in the twentieth century. The British government
signified its willingness to trust the US by allow-
ing the Americans control of the future Panama
Canal, by withdrawing the British fleet from
the Caribbean, and by leaving the Dominion of
Canada, in practice, undefended. On the US’s
side the idea that the absorption of Canada was
part of the US’s manifest destiny faded.
Britain liquidated with equal success the long-
drawn-out imperial rivalry with France in many
parts of the world. As late as 1898 it had seemed
possible that Britain and France would be at war
again, as they had been in the early nineteenth
century. There was very little love for Britain in
France, where Britain was most bitterly con-
demned during the South African War. But the
French government made its prime objective the
control of Morocco. In April 1904 Britain and
France settled their imperial differences, France
promised Britain support in Egypt and Britain
would support the French in Morocco. From this
mutual pact grew the French entente cordiale
when Germany flexed its muscles in the Moroccan
crisis of 1905 and 1911, objecting to being left
out of the carve-up. Over the next three years the
Liberal government found itself enmeshed in a
‘moral’ alliance with military promises, but not in
a treaty by which the French could automatically
require Britain to join it in a war with Germany.
Britain’s attempt to reach a settlement with its
most formidable opponent in the world arena,
Russia, was far less successful. Russia’s occupation
of Manchuria in China, which began in 1900,
alarmed the British government. The China
market was seen as vital to Britain’s future pros-
perity. Unable to check Russia, or to trust it,
Britain concluded an alliance with Japan in 1902.
This alliance marks a significant stage in the
history of Western imperialism. In the division of
empire the European powers had been locked in
rivalry and confrontation one against the other,
though this rivalry had not led to war between
them since the mid-nineteenth century. It was the
Africans and Chinese, the peoples whose lands
were parcelled up, who had suffered the ravages
of war. The Europeans, though fiercely competi-
tive among themselves, acted in this their last
phase of expanding imperialism on the common
assumption that it was their destiny to impose
European dominion on other peoples. Now, for
the first time in the new century, a European
power had allied with an Asiatic power, Japan,
against another European power, Russia.
In the Middle East Britain was determined to
defend against Russia those territorial interests
which, in 1900, before the age of oil had properly
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THE BRITISH EMPIRE 37
