ABSTRACT
In diplomatic terms, the year 1905, when this chapter begins, was a turbulent one. The previous year Britain and France had sought to end decades of bitter colonial rivalry between them by signing the entente cordiale, an agreement that settled all in one go a range of outstanding imperial issues that had long bedevilled relations between the two countries. In formal terms the new treaty did little else – it certainly was no alliance – but there were many who hoped that such an agreement, if adopted in good faith, would ultimately lead not just to better relations between the two former foes, but even to a period of mutual cooperation and close friendship. In Berlin, where a perpetual state of Franco-British hostility had long been taken for granted and was looked upon as a necessity for Germany’s freedom of action on the global stage, this prospect was viewed with something akin to alarm. Accordingly, the decision was taken by those in charge of German foreign policy to nip this incipient friendship in the bud by challenging one of the central provisions of the new Entente, namely the right of Britain and France to come to a settlement over the future status of Morocco without consulting other powers. Germany’s démarche was made public in March when Kaiser Wilhelm II landed at Tangiers and proclaimed his intent to uphold Moroccan sovereignty. The ensuing crisis seemingly brought Europe to the brink of war. In naval terms, the spat over Morocco brought about an outpouring of correspondence in which Germany was explicitly identified as the Royal Navy’s most obvious future opponent and France, the foe of old, was recast as a likely ally in the impending struggle. Whether this reclassification was a significant moment of change or merely a symbolic expression of a transformation that had been in progress for some time depends upon on how one reads the documentation of previous years. Arguably, as Chapter 2 has already shown, this appraisal was merely the culmination of a trend of thought that had already been given form by Custance, Battenberg and Selborne in the period 1900-1904. However, there is no denying that the Moroccan Crisis increased both the immediacy and the intensity of the issue and gave it much greater public prominence. It was
also the case that, once the tensions over Morocco had died down, there was no restoration of the status quo ante: a residual and lasting sense was left in the public and the broader official mind of an Anglo-German naval rivalry. In that sense, the First Moroccan Crisis was a critical moment in the development of British naval policy. However, the dispute over Morocco, dramatic and high profile though it was, was not the only international crisis acting as a driver of Admiralty thinking in this period. Another major diplomatic development that was crucial for the Royal Navy’s consideration of how to frame a response to German maritime expansion was the separation of Norway and Sweden. These two countries had been unified in dynastic, if not governmental, terms in 1814. While this arrangement had functioned relatively satisfactorily for many years thereafter, at the start of the twentieth century growing tensions began to surface and in 1905 the unity of the two nations began to fall apart. The impending break-up led to a flurry of diplomatic activity. Norway naturally sought international recognition as an independent state and while this was not in itself greatly controversial, discussions over this matter allowed other Scandinavian issues of various kinds to be put onto the diplomatic agenda. One of these was the question of the political status of the Baltic.1
