Entente Cordiale

Entente Cordiale, (April 8, 1904), Anglo-French agreement that, by settling a number of controversial matters, ended antagonisms between Great Britain and France and paved the way for their diplomatic cooperation against German pressures in the decade preceding World War I (1914–18). The agreement in no sense created an alliance and did not entangle Great Britain with a French commitment to Russia (1894).

The Entente Cordiale was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, France’s foreign minister from 1898, who believed that a Franco-British understanding would give France some security against any German system of alliances in western Europe. Credit for the success of the negotiation belongs chiefly to Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador in London, and to the British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne; but the pro-French inclination of the British sovereign, Edward VII, was a contributory factor.

The most important feature of the agreement was that it granted freedom of action to Great Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco (with the proviso that France’s eventual dispositions for Morocco include reasonable allowance for Spain’s interests there). At the same time, Great Britain ceded the Los Islands (off French Guinea) to France, defined the frontier of Nigeria in France’s favour, and agreed to French control of the upper Gambia valley, while France renounced its exclusive right to certain fisheries off Newfoundland. Furthermore, French and British zones of influence in Siam (Thailand) were outlined, with the eastern territories, adjacent to French Indochina, becoming a French zone, and the western, adjacent to Burmese Tenasserim, a British zone; arrangements were also made to allay the rivalry between British and French colonists in the New Hebrides.

By the Entente Cordiale both powers reduced the virtual isolation into which they had withdrawn—France involuntarily, Great Britain complacently—while they had eyed each other over African affairs: Great Britain had had no ally but Japan (1902), useless if war should break out in European waters; France had had none but Russia, soon to be discredited in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The agreement was consequently upsetting to Germany, whose policy had long been to rely on Franco-British antagonism. A German attempt to check the French in Morocco in 1905 (the Tangier Incident, or First Moroccan Crisis), and thus upset the Entente, served only to strengthen it. Military discussions between the French and the British general staffs were soon initiated. Franco-British solidarity was confirmed at the Algeciras Conference (1906) and reconfirmed in the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911).