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Y320: From Colonialism to Independence: The British Empire 1857–1965

The British Empire and its impact on international relations: European rivalry, isolation and the First World War

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  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on imperial rivalry with European powers, colonial confrontations, Splendid Isolation and its end, the Second Anglo-Boer War, earlier colonial wars and the Empire’s part in and position after the First World War.

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Which colonial confrontations most strained Britain's relations with other European powers?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How did the Empire involve Britain in European rivalry in the nineteenth century?

    Model answer

    Defence of the route to India made the fate of the Ottoman Empire a British interest and set Britain against Russian expansion in the Eastern Question and in the Great Game across Persia and Afghanistan, a rivalry managed at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where Disraeli checked Russian gains and acquired Cyprus as a base.

  2. 2

    Which colonial confrontations most strained relations with other European powers?

    Model answer

    The meeting of Marchand and Kitchener at Fashoda on the Upper Nile in 1898 brought Britain and France to the brink of war before France withdrew, German intervention in the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911 tested the new entente, and the German naval programme turned imperial rivalry into a direct threat to British security.

  3. 3

    Explain what was meant by Splendid Isolation.

    Model answer

    It described the late Victorian preference, associated with Salisbury, for avoiding binding peacetime alliances so that Britain could act as its worldwide interests dictated, relying on naval supremacy and on holding the balance in Europe rather than on continental commitments.

  4. 4

    Why and how did Britain abandon Splendid Isolation?

    Model answer

    The Boer War revealed how friendless and militarily stretched Britain was, while the German fleet and Russian pressure in Asia exceeded what the navy could cover alone; Britain therefore made an alliance with Japan in 1902 to guard its Far Eastern interests, settled colonial quarrels with France in the Entente Cordiale of 1904 and with Russia in the convention of 1907 over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet.

  5. 5

    What was the international impact of the Second Anglo-Boer War?

    Model answer

    It cost over £200 million and required some 450,000 imperial troops to defeat two small republics, the concentration camps drew condemnation across Europe and from British radicals, and the war left Britain diplomatically isolated, which prompted the creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1902 and the search for the ententes.

  6. 6

    What did earlier colonial wars reveal about imperial power?

    Model answer

    Defeats such as the destruction of a British column by the Zulu at Isandlwana in 1879 and the fall of Khartoum in 1885 caused political crises at home out of all proportion to their strategic weight, showing how far imperial prestige had become a domestic political commodity that governments could not afford to lose.

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