Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

We shall mention at least a dozen efforts to bridge the gap which was slowly forming in the European “concert of the Powers.” First in chronological order were the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887. In a series of notes England, Italy, Austria, and Spain agreed to preserve the status quo in the Mediterranean and its adjoining seas or to see it modified only by mutual agreement. These agreements were aimed at the French ambitions in Morocco and the Russian ambitions at the Straits.

A second agreement was the Anglo-German Colonial Treaty of 1890 by which German claims in East Africa, especially Zanzibar, were exchanged for the British title to the island of Heligoland in the Baltic Sea. Subsequently, numerous abortive efforts were made by the Kaiser and others on the German side, and by Joseph Chamberlain and others on the British side, to reach some agreement for a common front in world affairs. This resulted in a few minor agreements, such as one of 1898 regarding a possible disposition of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, one of 1899 dividing Samoa, and one of 1900 to maintain the “Open Door” in China, but efforts to create an alliance or even an entente broke down over the German naval program, German colonial ambitions in Africa (especially Morocco), and German economic penetration of the Near East along the route of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway. German jealousy of England’s world supremacy, especially the Kaiser’s resentment toward his uncle, King Edward VII, was ill concealed.

Somewhat similar negotiations were conducted between Germany and Russia, but with meager results. A Commercial Agreement of 1894 ended a long-drawn tariff war, much to the chagrin of the German landlords who enjoyed the previous exclusion of Russian grain, but efforts to achieve any substantial political agreement failed because of the German alliance with Austria (which faced Russia in the Balkans) and the Russian alliance with France (which faced Germany along the Rhine). These obstacles wrecked the so-called Bjorko Treaty, a personal agreement between the Kaiser and Nicholas made during a visit to each other’s yachts in 1905, although the Germans were able to secure Russian consent to the Baghdad Railway by granting the Russians a free hand in northern Persia (1910).

Four other lines of negotiation arose out of the French ambitions to obtain Morocco, the Italian desire to get Tripoli, the Austrian ambition to annex Bosnia, and the Russian determination to open the Straits to their warships. All four of these were associated with the declining power of Turkey, and offered opportunities for the European Powers to support one another’s ambitions at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. In 1898 Italy signed a commercial treaty with France, and followed this up, two years later, by a political agreement which promised French support for the Italian ambitions in Tripoli in return for Italian support for the French designs in Morocco. The Italians further weakened the Triple Alliance in 1902 by promising France to remain neutral in the event that France was attacked or had to fight “in defense of her honor or of her security.”

In a somewhat similar fashion Russia and Austria tried to reconcile the former’s desire to obtain an outlet through the Dardanelles into the Aegean with the latter’s desire to control Slav nationalism in the Balkans and reach the Aegean at Saloniki. In 1897 they reached an agreement to maintain the status quo in the Balkans or, failing this, to partition the area among the existing Balkan states plus a new state of Albania. In 1903 these two Powers agreed on a program of police and financial reform for the disturbed Turkish province of Macedonia. In 1908 a disagreement over Austrian efforts to construct a railway toward Saloniki was glossed over briefly by an informal agreement between the respective foreign ministers, Aleksandr Izvolski and Lexa von Aehrenthal, to exchange Austrian approval of the right of Russian warships to traverse the Straits for Russian approval of an Austrian annexation of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All this tentative goodwill evaporated in the heat of the Bosnian crisis of 1908, as we shall see in a moment.

After 1905 the recurrent international crises and the growing solidarity of the coalitions (except for Italy) made the efforts to bridge the gap between the two coalitions less frequent and less fruitful. However, two episodes are worthy of attention. These are the Haldane Mission of 1912 and the Baghdad Railway agreement of 1914. In the former, British Secretary of State for War Lord Haldane went to Berlin to try to restrain Tirpitz’s naval program. Although the German Navy had been built in the hope that it would bring England to the conference table, and without any real intention of using it in a war with England, the Germans were not able to grasp the opportunity when it occurred. The Germans wanted a conditional promise of British neutrality in a continental war as a price for suspension of the new naval bill. Since this might lead to German hegemony on the Continent, Haldane could not agree. He returned to London convinced that the Germany of Goethe and Hegel which he had learned to love in his student days was being swallowed up by the German militarists. The last bridge between London and Berlin seemed down, but in June, 1914, the two countries initialed the agreement by which Britain withdrew her opposition to the Baghdad Railway in return for a German promise to remain north of Basra and recognize Britain’s preeminence on the Euphrates and Persian Gulf. This solution to a long-standing problem was lost in the outbreak of war six weeks later.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRISES, 1905-1914

The decade from the Entente Cordiale to the outbreak of war witnessed a series of political crises which brought Europe periodically to the brink of war and hastened the growth of armaments, popular hysteria, nationalistic chauvinism, and solidity of alliances to a point where a relatively minor event in 1914 plunged the world into a war of unprecedented range and intensity. There were nine of these crises which must be mentioned here. In chronological order they are:

1905-1906

The First Moroccan Crisis and the Algeciras Conference

1908

The Bosnian Crisis

1911

Agadir and the Second Moroccan Crisis

1911

The Tripolitan War

1912

The First Balkan War

1913

Second Balkan War

1913

The Albanian Crisis

1913

The Liman von Sanders Affair

1914

Sarajevo

The first Moroccan crisis arose from German opposition to French designs on Morocco. This opposition was voiced by the Kaiser himself in a speech in Tangier, after the French had won Italian, British, and Spanish acquiescence by secret agreements with each of these countries. These agreements were based on French willingness to yield Tripoli to Italy, Egypt to Britain, and the Moroccan coast to Spain. The Germans insisted on an international conference in the hope that their belligerence would disrupt the Triple Entente and isolate France. Instead, when the conference met at Algeciras, near Gibraltar, in 1906, Germany found herself supported only by Austria. The conference reiterated the integrity of Morocco but set up a state bank and a police force, both dominated by French influence. The crisis reached a very high pitch, but in both France and Germany the leaders of the more belligerent bloc (Théophile Delcassé and Friedrich von Holstein) were removed from office at the critical moment.

The Bosnian crisis of 1908 arose from the Young Turk revolt of the same year. Fearful that the new Ottoman government might be able to strengthen the empire, Austria determined to lose no time in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been under Austrian military occupation since the Congress of Berlin (1878). Since the annexation would permanently cut Serbia off from the Adriatic Sea, Aehrenthal, the Austrian foreign minister, consulted with Serbia’s protector, Russia. The czar’s foreign minister, Izvolski, was agreeable to the Austrian plan if Austria would yield to Izvolski’s desire to open the Straits to Russian warships, contrary to the Congress of Berlin. Aehrenthal agreed, subject to Izvolski’s success in obtaining the consent of the other Powers. While Izvolski was wending his way from Germany to Rome and Paris in an effort to obtain this consent, Aehrenthal suddenly annexed the two districts, leaving Izvolski without his Straits program (October 6, 1908). It soon became clear that he could not get this program. About the same time, Austria won Turkish consent to its annexation of Bosnia. A war crisis ensued, fanned by the refusal of Serbia to accept the annexation and its readiness to precipitate a general war to prevent it. The danger of such a war was intensified by the eagerness of the military group in Austria, led by Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorff, to settle the Serb irritation once and for all. A stiff German note to Russia insisting that she abandon her support of Serbia and recognize the annexation cleared the air, for Izvolski yielded and Serbia followed, but it created a very bad psychological situation for the future.