ABSTRACT
Britain’s alliance with Japan, which was inaugurated in 1902, was a relationship between an established power and a rapidly growing Asian country which had won a high reputation because of its successes in the war with China and its spectacular industrial development over a few decades. Britain had benefited from the favourable tariff rates which had applied in Japan for half a century; but they were due to lapse in 1911 when the Anglo–Japanese commercial treaty of 1894 was due for reconsideration. Britain’s security in East Asia depended on the Royal Navy. The instability in China brought about a change in Britain’s confidence in Japan. Britain’s worries about the future of its stake in China surfaced in the major crisis over the Twenty-One Demands which Japan placed before the weakened regime of Yuan Shihkai early in 1915.
