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The Causes and Consequences of Great Power Conflict 1848–1945

The armed camps: the Dual Alliance and the Franco-Russian alliance

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 1

Overview

What the Franco-Russian military convention provided, russia's ambitions in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean and schlieffen Plan.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Why did France and Russia come together in the 1890s?

Numbers

How did defeat by Japan in 1905 affect Russian policy?

Numbers

Why did Germany feel encircled?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Why did France and Russia come together in the 1890s?

    Model answer

    France needed an ally against Germany and had capital to lend, Russia needed money for railways and industry and had lost German support, so the two isolated powers found each other useful despite the gulf between a republic and an autocracy.

  2. 2

    State what the Franco-Russian military convention provided.

    Model answer

    The convention agreed in 1892 and ratified in 1894 bound each partner to mobilise if any member of the Triple Alliance mobilised, and to fight Germany with all available forces if Germany attacked either of them.

  3. 3

    Why did the alliance of 1894 matter so much to German planning?

    Model answer

    Germany now faced the possibility of war on two fronts at once, which dominated its military thinking and pushed its generals towards a plan for a rapid knock-out blow in the west.

  4. 4

    Explain the French desire for revenge after 1871.

    Model answer

    France had lost Alsace and much of Lorraine and never accepted the loss, so recovery of the provinces remained an unspoken national aim that made friendship with Germany impossible even when no French government intended to attack.

  5. 5

    How strong was French revanchism by 1914?

    Model answer

    Active demands for a war of revenge had faded after the Boulangist agitation of the 1880s, but the grievance survived in education, politics and the press, and it revived after 1911 in the form of a firmer line towards Germany and the extension of military service to three years.

  6. 6

    What were Russia's ambitions in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean?

    Model answer

    Russia sought influence over the Slav states, a friendly government at Constantinople and free passage through the Straits for its grain trade and its navy.

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