ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Foreign Office still fretted aboutRussia. Worries about its long-standing ambitions in Asia, and particularly their implications for Britain’s control over India, lay behind Britain’s unusual initiative for an alliance with Japan, which was signed in January 1902. The Foreign Secretary, the Marquess of Lansdowne, believed that Britain’s naval presence in the Far East needed strengthening if existing imperial and commercial links were to be secured. Although expenditure on the navy increased by 80 per cent in the years 1897-1904, the Russian threat in Asia was still judged stronger than Britain could meet alone. By the Anglo-Japanese alliance, of five years’ duration in the first instance, both nations agreed to remain neutral if one of the signatories went to war with only one other power but to intervene if more than one were involved. Parliament was startled by an agreement which some MPs considered exotic. Lansdowne confirmed that its purpose was essentially defensive. He hoped to develop a range of limited regional agreements which did not threaten the overall status quo and indicated that Britain had no offensive designs in the relevant area.
