Quotulatiousness

October 16, 2023

The Allied Rape Wave of 1944 – War Against Humanity 116

World War Two
Published 12 Oct 2023

Since the earliest days of humanity, where there has been war, there has been rape. This war is no different. As vast armies battle across Europe, the chaos in their wake breeds an epidemic of rape. In its action and its punishment the European rape wave is also highly racialised. It adds up to a storm of suffering.
(more…)

May 14, 2023

Victory at Sevastopol! – WW2 – Week 246 – May 13, 1944

World War Two
Published 13 May 2023

The Soviets push the Axis out of the Crimea this week once and for all. In Italy, the Allies launch a major offensive, and the French make a breakthrough there by week’s end. In China, the Japanese are aiming at Luoyang, but in India at Kohima they’re slowly being pushed back.
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February 25, 2023

Rise of Franco – The Spanish Rif War 1921-1926

Filed under: Africa, Europe, France, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published 24 Feb 2023

The Rif War between Spain and the Rif Republic gave rise to a young Spanish officer named Francisco Franco — who later would become Spanish dictator. After Spain had almost lost the war against the Rifi people, they got help from France and WW1 hero Philippe Pétain.
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September 20, 2021

History-Makers: Maimonides

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Sep 2021

“From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses.” Jump into 1100s Cordoba & Cairo as we take a look at the life of one of the Medieval world’s most boundary-breaking History-Makers: Moses Maimonides!

SOURCES & Further Reading: Great Courses lectures “Jewish Scholar in Cairo: Moses Maimonides” from The History and Achievements of the Islamic Golden Age by Eamonn Gearon and “Maimonides and Jewish Law” from Great Minds of the Medieval World by Dorsey Armstrong. Britannica “Maimonides” https://www.britannica.com/biography/…, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Maimonides” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ma…, The Guide For The Perplexed, Mishne Torah and Commentary on the Mishnah by Maimonides

Special thanks to Yellow/LudoHistory for his assistance in checking over my script. You can check out his livestreams playing historically-inspired videogames over at https://www.twitch.tv/ludohistory
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP

PODCAST: https://overlysarcasticpodcast.transi…

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MERCH LINKS: http://rdbl.co/osp

OUR WEBSITE: https://www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
Find us on Twitter https://www.Twitter.com/OSPYouTube
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March 5, 2021

Colonial Troops Saving Their Masters – WW2 Special

Filed under: Africa, Britain, France, History, India, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 4 Mar 2021

Without the incredible support and sacrifice of troops from British and French colonies, the Allies would be having an even harder time withstanding the Axis onslaught. This episode looks at their formation and their fighting style.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Markus Linke
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Miki Cackowski, Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory​)

Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss
Mikołaj Uchman

Sources:
Photo of French Saharan troops (1932), courtesy of Acln https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…​
Archives du département du Rhône et de la métropole de Lyon
The New York Public Library – Digital Collections
USMC Archives
IWM E 11584, CBM 2264, E 6605, IND 2864, IND 2290, K 1385
Picture of Sudanese Defense Force near Kufra Oasis, courtesy of Major PJ Hurman

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 3”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Philip Ayers – “The Unexplored”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Fabien Tell – “Weapon of Choice”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Fabien Tell – “Other Sides of Glory”
Philip Ayers – “Please Hear Me Out”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
9 hours ago
As regular viewers will know, we try to give the most complete picture of World War Two possible by diving into the multitude of people that took part and seeing it from their unique perspective.

This episode is part of that effort, looking at the colonial troops who fought on the side of their imperial administrators. In a different way, our On the Homefront series is also part of that effort, and we are happy to announce that we have just got started with it again. Check out the latest episode here where Anna looks at the changing role of the Geisha in wartime Japanese society: https://youtu.be/7Y3IYsNC1WM

March 26, 2020

The Deadly Dry Run for WW2 – The Spanish Civil War | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1939 Part 1 of 3

TimeGhost History
Published 25 Mar 2020

After years of political violence and strife, a military coup in 1936 finally brings Spain into all-out civil war. Mass executions and revolutionary upheaval, as the eyes of the world focus on the Iberian Peninsula.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Watch part one of the Spanish Civil War (1936) here: https://youtu.be/ncUkPavahCU

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Sources:
(Kutxa Photograph Library) – Brigadas de Navarra Photos,
EBNZ; HansenBCN – Emblem of Spanish Legion,
Foto Kutxateka – Eibar in Ruins,
Herbert Behrens / Anefo – Guernica Painting,
Dorieo – Battle of Brunete,

From the Noun Project:
noun_Death by Icon Island,
noun_soldier by Wonmo Kang,
noun_Arm Sling by Sergey Demushkin,
noun_Government by Adrien Coquet,

Photos from Color by Klimbim

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Julius Jääskeläinen
– Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Watchman” – Yi Nantiro
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “One More Thought” – Johan Hynynen
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 hour ago
Just in terms of the complexity of things, researching and writing this episode has been my biggest challenge so far. So much happens and at such a fast pace that it’s difficult to understand everything as it is, let alone get it into a chronological video that actually makes sense! The amount of actors both nationally and internationally gives you a feeling that you are writing about a continental, or even global, war rather than one in a relatively small country. It is this way for several reasons, a lot of which you’ll know if you watched our last episode on the Second Spanish Republic. But we’d be interested to see what you guys think about the Spanish Civil War? Why was it so complicated? Why does it hold so much significance beyond Spain’s borders? Why did it get so violent so quickly? Let us know what you think, we want to hear your opinions.

Cheers, Francis.

February 6, 2020

The rise of the Saadi Empire of Morocco

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes outlines the rise of a Morocco-based Islamic empire that beat the Portuguese and established a thriving smuggling network with England:

Panoramic view of the Old Medina in Fez, Morocco.
Photo by Michal Osmenda via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1500 you would have thought that Morocco’s golden ages were firmly in the past. The Portuguese in 1415 had conquered Ceuta, on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, with minimal resistance. Over the next century they had then spread their influence across the Moroccan coastline, building forts, establishing small trading colonies, and interfering in local politics. Faced with constant raids, coastal towns like Safi, Massa, and Azammur submitted themselves to Portuguese vassalage in exchange for protection. And when local rulers failed to please them, the Portuguese installed new ones or even took direct control. A disunited Morocco was at the mercy of Portuguese colonial ambition — a source of grain destined for Portugal’s population, and of horses and patterned cloths for it to exchange in sub-Saharan Africa for gold and slaves.

In the 1510s, however, a new dynasty arose in Sus, in the south-west of the country, claiming direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. These sharifs, the Saadi dynasty, began to fill the vacuum left by ineffective leadership from the sultans in Fez and Marrakech. And to address the massive power imbalance between themselves and the Portuguese, they began to cultivate sugar, selling it to other Europeans — Spanish, French, Genoese, Dutch, and English — in exchange for gunpowder weapons.

The English were especially expert smugglers, frequently able to sneak past the Portuguese fleets to where they could trade directly with the Saadis. Merchants from the Hanseatic league even approached the English government about using English mariners to get iron shot to Morocco. Their request was denied — Elizabeth I and her ministers were always careful never to explicitly allow the munitions trade, even in private letters, and often publicly disavowed it — but it was common knowledge among London’s merchants that the government supported the smuggling. This was partly about having a supply of sugar independent of Portuguese and Spanish control, but it was also a matter of national security. Because hidden among the sugar, marmalade, candied fruits, and almonds that the English transported from Morocco, were also copper and saltpetre — crucial materials for England’s own gunpowder weapons (I still haven’t quite worked out why England needed to import copper, given it had its own deposits in Cornwall, but it seems to have been important and a secure supply of saltpetre was definitely essential).

Both sides benefited from the arrangement. By the mid-1540s, the Saadis had bought the firearms and artillery necessary to take Marrakech and Fez, effectively unifying the country, and had earned sufficient wealth to buy the allegiance of the Moroccan population, providing grain during periods of intense famine. With that allegiance, they began isolating the Portuguese forts along the coastline, denying them access to food, workers, and trade. From the perspective of the Portuguese crown, the forts thus lost their economic value, while becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. Rather than providing Portugal with Moroccan grain, the forts increasingly needed grain from Portugal. With the added pressure of Saadi sieges, now aided by massive artillery, Portugal began to lose their footholds, abandoning many of the rest. Thus, in the space of a few decades, the export of sugar (and saltpetre) by the Saadis had put the mighty Portuguese empire on the back foot.

January 31, 2020

The little-known golden age of “The Xeriffe” in the 17th century

Filed under: Books, Economics, Europe, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes discusses the economic snapshot of 17th century Europe (and parts of the wider world) provided in the work of Giovanni Botero:

… I’ve spent the past couple of days reading the work of an Italian geographer, Giovanni Botero. His 1590s treatise, on The Strength of all the Powers of Europe and Asia (translated into English in 1601 as The Traveller’s Breviat) tries to provide a comprehensive account of the relative strengths of all the world’s great powers. It can be a bit dry — at times it’s a bit like reading a table of statistics, but in paragraph form, as he goes through every country’s population, geography, and industries, as well as their manpower, the sizes and qualities of their armies and navies, their political systems, taxes, and geopolitical situations. Yet in all that information, we get a snapshot of what characteristics stood out internationally, at a point that was midway through England’s crucial century of change.

I thought I had a pretty good general grasp of the economic history of Europe and the west in the post-Middle Ages period, but Anton mentions something I didn’t know anything about:

Panoramic view of the Old Medina in Fez, Morocco.
Photo by Michal Osmenda via Wikimedia Commons.

Yet there was another region that Botero singled out in terms of its technological and economic achievements, which I had never heard mentioned before: the land of “The Xeriffe”.

The term is usually rendered as sharif, denoting a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad via his grandson, Hasan ibn Ali. In 1600, the title was claimed by the rulers of the Saadi Empire, centred around Fez, in present-day Morocco. Botero claimed that its cities were of marble and alabaster, decorated with great lamps of brass. In Fez in particular were “200 schools of learning, 200 inns, and 400 water mills, every one driven with four or five wheels”, from which the ruler derived a substantial rent. The city also featured “600 conduits, from whence almost every house is served with water.” Indeed, he noted that “the inhabitants are very thrifty, given to traffic [commerce], and especially to the making of clothes of wool, silk, and cotton.”

So here was a remarkable city. One that was wealthy, populous, somewhat industrialised, and given to trade. It was a centre of learning for the entire region, especially under the long rule of one of its sultans, Ahmad al-Mansur “the Golden” and his immediate successors: the library they amassed forms one of the major surviving collections of Islamic manuscripts on literature and science (which was captured during a war in the seventeenth century, and has been in Spain ever since). The Saadi Empire even had some military might: during its rise it successfully contended with Portugal, and it had a large arsenal of gunpowder weapons, which it put to use in conquering parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. It maintained friendly commercial and diplomatic links with both England and the Dutch Republic, uniting with them in their opposition to Spain.

And yet, the Saadi Empire is never mentioned as an efflorescence [defined as “temporary bubblings up of innovation and economic growth, which ultimately resulted in stagnation or decline”]. It doesn’t even feature in debates about the causes of the Long Divergence — the centuries-long reversal of economic fortunes between northwestern Europe and the Islamic world. The latest major book on the reversal, by Jared Rubin (which is excellent, by the way), is entirely devoted to comparisons with the Ottoman Empire, not discussing Morocco even once. That may just be a product of which sources are most readily available in English, or because there are currently quite a few excellent Turkish economic historians, like Şevket Pamuk or Timur Kuran. It’s also possible that the descriptions of Fez’s wealth were exaggerated, or that there are straightforward explanations for its relative economic decline. But, if we’re to fully understand the causes of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, I think the rise and fall of the Saadi Empire is another efflorescence we need to seriously consider.

December 28, 2018

“Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves” strikes again

Filed under: Africa, Europe, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn on the latest use of the ridiculous “lone wolves” excuse for terrorism:

A week before Christmas two young ladies from Scandinavia vacationing in Morocco – Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway – were brutally stabbed and decapitated and then had the final moments of their lives uploaded as triumphal snuff videos to Facebook, Twitter, 4Chan and Reddit, the Four Horsemen of the Social-Media Apocalypse.

Fortunately, if you were thinking of getting a little nervous about your next holiday in the Maghreb, this bloody double-murder was the work of merely another “lone wolf”:

    In a press conference in Rabat yesterday, police and domestic intelligence spokesman Boubker Sabik labelled the suspects “lone wolves”…

Wait a minute: “lone wolves” plural? You mean, the wolf wasn’t lone? No, indeed:

    What ‘lone wolf’ gang did before Scandinavian tourist beheadings

There’s a whole gang of lone wolves?

    A motley crew of “lone wolves”, including two street vendors, a plumber and a carpenter, hunted backpackers to kill in the Moroccan mountains.

At last count, nineteen “lone wolves” have been arrested for the double-murder. That’s a rugby team plus bridge four of lone wolves. They’re the least lonesome lone wolves in town.

And are they really that “motley”? (See photo above for representative three-nineteenths of the lone wolf pack.)

For almost a decade, I have made mocking reference to Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. But there’s no point to jokes, is there? Because, as absurd as they are, you wait a year or two and everybody’s doing them entirely straight-faced. The phrase “lone wolf” was created by the Pansy Media to ward off the suggestion that all these lone wolves might have something in common. Just as “all politics is local”, all jihad is lone. And, if you use the phrase often enough, it has such a pleasing anesthetizing effect you don’t even notice that you’re sitting there typing, perfectly seriously, about a gang of nineteen lone wolves.

Same number as the 9/11 hijackers, by coincidence. But we hadn’t yet taken refuge in such halfwit evasions.

Needless to say, the decapitation video went “viral”. Among those who were “spammed” with pictures of the severed heads were the mums of the girls, whose first Christmas without their beloved daughters was further enlivened by social-media enthusiasts posting snaps of the decapitated women to their mothers’ Facebook pages. But Big Social Brother knows its priorities: It was too busy banning Robert Spencer, whose Jihad Watch website is one of the few remaining outlets that doesn’t take refuge in platitudinous drivel about “lone wolves”.

July 3, 2018

French North Africa in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Africa, France, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 2 Jul 2018

Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco were all part of French North Africa before and during World War 1. They all contributed in material and men to the war effort and the French colonial soldiers were praised for their bravery.

April 16, 2018

The Empire of Mali – The Twang of a Bow – Extra History – #1

Filed under: Africa, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 14 Apr 2018

While the old Ghana Empire waxed wealthy due to taxes on trade passing through its lands, the new Empire of Mali born in its stead had expanded borders that included vast lands of gold…

January 15, 2017

QotD: Like the Bourbons, the Guardian learns nothing and forgets nothing

The Bourbons, said Talleyrand, learned nothing and forgot nothing. Sometimes it seems as if our modern liberals are just like the Bourbons. Here, for example, is a headline from the U.K.’s hard-line liberal newspaper, the Guardian:

FAR-RIGHT PARTY STILL LEADING IN DUTCH POLLS, DESPITE LEADER’S CRIMINAL GUILT.

What was the crime of which the far-right leader — Geert Wilders — was guilty? It was incitement to discrimination; in other words, not even discrimination itself. He had discriminated against no one, but made a speech in which he called for “fewer Moroccans.” Significantly, the Guardian gave no further details of what Wilders meant by this — whether, for example, he proposed that fewer Moroccan immigrants should be allowed into the Netherlands, that the illegal Moroccan immigrants should be deported, or that Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent should be deprived of their citizenship and forcibly repatriated. For the Guardian, it hardly seemed to matter.

More significant still was the Guardian’s inability, even after the victory of Donald Trump in the United States—which must, in part, have been attributable to a revolt against political correctness — to see that the conviction of Wilders on a charge so patently designed to silence the fears of a considerable part of the population couldn’t possibly reduce his popularity. By illustrating the moral arrogance of the political class against which Wilders’s movement is a reaction, the charge might actually make him more popular.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Incitement to Hypocrisy: The Netherlands unevenly applies a law forbidding provocation”, City Journal, 2016-12-28.

August 14, 2014

Who is to blame for the outbreak of World War One? (Part ten of a series)

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Europe, France, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

We’re edging ever close to the start of the Great War (no, I don’t know exactly how many more parts this will take … but we’re more than halfway there, I think). You can catch up on the earlier posts in this series here (now with hopefully helpful descriptions):

  1. Why it’s so difficult to answer the question “Who is to blame?”
  2. Looking back to 1814
  3. Bismarck, his life and works
  4. France isolated, Britain’s global responsibilities
  5. Austria, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan quagmire
  6. The Anglo-German naval race, Jackie Fisher, and HMS Dreadnought
  7. War with Japan, revolution at home: Russia’s self-inflicted miseries
  8. The First Balkan War
  9. The Second Balkan War

The Balkans were the setting for two major wars among the regional powers (Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Rumania, and the Ottoman Empire), but the wars had not spread to the rest of the continent. This run of good luck was not going to last much longer. We turn our attention to Britain, France, and Russia … as unlikely a set of allies as you’d find in the 1880s, now in the process of discovering a common threat in Europe.

Sir Edward Grey and Britain’s progress from “splendid isolation” to official ambivalence

The British government had spent most of the previous century staying out of continental disputes, only rarely becoming politically or militarily involved. Late in the nineteenth century, this began to change, and Britain started paying closer attention to what was happening on the continent and moving slowly toward re-engagement. While the British and the French had spent more time as enemies or as mutually distrustful neutrals, France was now looking across the Channel for much more than mere neutrality.

Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary 1905-1916

Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary 1905-1916

A key figure in negotiating Britain’s relationship with France was Sir Edward Grey, who was Foreign Secretary from 1905 onwards (despite the minor difficulty of speaking no other languages and having no interest in visiting other countries). In retrospect, the degree of freedom he was allowed in this role is amazing, especially as he didn’t seem to think he was required to let the prime minister, the cabinet, or parliament know what he was doing until he’d arranged things largely to his own satisfaction. Huw Strachan assigns most of the responsibility for the deepening relationship with France to Grey:

Sir Edward Grey had become foreign secretary on the formation of the Liberal government in December 1905, and remained in post until the end of 1916, so becoming the longest-serving holder of the post. Sir Edward brought diplomatic gravitas to his work in 1914. He had already convened the meeting of ambassadors that had contained and concluded the two Balkan wars of 1912-13. When the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on June 28 prompted a third Balkan crisis, it seemed unlikely to have any direct effect on British interests, but Sir Edward might still prove central to its resolution. If the “concert of Europe”, the international order created in 1814-15 after the Napoleonic wars, still had life, the foreign secretary was the person best placed to animate it.

Sir Edward’s qualifications for such responsibility were of recent coinage. Notoriously idle as a young man, he had been sent down from Oxford, but returned to get a third in jurisprudence. He entered politics as much through Whig inheritance as ambition. He spoke no foreign language and, when foreign secretary, never travelled abroad – or at least not until he had to accompany King George V to Paris in April 1914. He seemed happier as a country gentleman, enjoying his enthusiasms of fishing and ornithology. His first wife increasingly refused to come to London, remaining at Fallodon, the family seat in Northumberland. Their life together was chaste and childless, but not unaffectionate.

Soon after becoming Foreign Secretary, Grey was careful to assure Russian ambassador Count Alexander Benckendorff that he wanted a closer and less fraught relationship with St. Petersburg. Britain’s long-running dispute with the expanding Russian Empire in Asia stood in the way of any co-operation between the two great powers: the “Great Game” across central Asia had been in progress for nearly a century and neither side trusted the other. British concerns that any advance of Russian interests across that vast swathe of land were part of long term plans to destabilize the Indian frontier and eventually to absorb India. Whether these fears were realistic is beside the point: they had driven Raj policy in India despite the low chance of them turning into actual dangers. The disagreements were partially settled with the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907, where both Russian and British regional interests were codified:

Formally signed by Count Alexander Izvolsky, Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, and Sir Arthur Nicolson, the British Ambassador to Russia, the British-Russian Convention of 1907 stipulated the following:

  1. That Persia would be split into three zones: A Russian zone in the north, a British zone in the southeast, and a neutral “buffer” zone in the remaining land.
  2. That Britain may not seek concessions “beyond a line starting from Qasr-e Shirin, passing through Isfahan, Yezd (Yazd), Kakhk, and ending at a point on the Persian frontier at the intersection of the Russian and Afghan frontiers.”
  3. That Russia must follow the reverse of guideline number two.
  4. That Afghanistan was a British protectorate and for Russia to cease any communication with the Emir.

A separate treaty was drawn up to resolve disputes regarding Tibet. However, these terms eventually proved problematic, as they “drew attention to a whole range of minor issues that remained unsolved”.

Anglo-Russian spheres of influence in Persia, 1907 (via Wikipedia)

Anglo-Russian spheres of influence in Persia, 1907 (via Wikipedia)

While the convention did not resolve every outstanding issue between the two imperial powers, it smoothed the path to further negotiations on European issues. One of the things the two had to consider was the expansion of German activity in Ottoman territory, especially the Baghdad Railway project, which threatened to extend German influence deep into the oil producing regions of Mesopotamia just as Britain was contemplating switching the Royal Navy from coal to oil. German engineers and financiers had already proven their worth to the Ottomans by building the Anatolian Railway in the 1890s, connecting Constantinople with Ankara and Konya.

Vernon Bogdanor’s recent History Today article explains Grey’s role in bringing Britain into the war alongside the French and Russians:

The growth of German power posed a challenge to an international system based on the Concert of Europe, developed at the Congress of Vienna following the defeat of Napoleon, whereby members could call a conference to resolve diplomatic issues, a system Britain, and particularly the Liberals in government in 1914, were committed to defend. Sir Edward Grey had been foreign secretary since 1905, a position he retained until 1916, the longest continuous tenure in modern times. He was a right-leaning Liberal who found himself subject to more criticism from his own backbenchers than from Conservative opponents. In his handling of foreign policy his critics alleged that Grey had abandoned the idea of the Concert of Europe and was worshipping what John Bright had called ‘the foul idol’ of the balance of power. They suggested that he was making Britain part of an alliance system, the Triple Entente, with France and Russia and that he was concealing his policies from Parliament, the public and even from Cabinet colleagues. By helping to divide Europe into two armed camps he was increasing the likelihood of war.

On his appointment in December 1905 Grey had indeed maintained the loose Anglo-French entente of 1904, which the Conservatives of the previous government had negotiated. He extended that policy by negotiating an entente with France’s ally, Russia, in 1907. In 1905 France was embroiled in a conflict with Germany over rival claims in Morocco. The French had essentially said to Lord Lansdowne, Grey’s Conservative predecessor: ‘Suppose this conflict leads to war – if you are to support us, let us consult together on naval matters to consider how your support can be made effective.’ The Conservatives had responded that, while they would discuss contingency plans, they could not make any commitments.

Grey continued the naval conversations and extended them to include military dialogue. He informed the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, and two senior ministers of these talks, but not the rest of the Cabinet. Nevertheless, Britain could not be committed to military action without the approval of both Cabinet and Parliament. In November 1912, at the insistence of the Cabinet, there was an exchange of letters between Grey and the French ambassador, Paul Cambon, making it explicit that Britain was under no commitment, except to consult, were France to be threatened. In 1914, furthermore, the French never suggested that Britain was under any sort of obligation to support them, only that it would be the honourable course of action.

Romancing the bear, romancing the lion: France breaks out of imposed isolation

As I discussed back in part four of this series, the French had been left diplomatically isolated in Europe by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, but that began to change as Kaiser Wilhelm II took the throne and started imposing his will on German foreign policy. French money opened opportunities for French diplomacy, to the long-term benefit of French security. The Franco-Russian alliance was signed in 1894, signifying the end of French encirclement (Bismarck’s policy) and the start of German encirclement (Kaiser Wilhelm’s nightmare).

Britannia and Marianne dancing together on a 1904 French postcard: a celebration of the signing of the Entente Cordiale. (via Wikipedia)

Britannia and Marianne dancing together on a 1904 French postcard: a celebration of the signing of the Entente Cordiale. (via Wikipedia)

Anglo-French diplomatic efforts took longer to come to fruition, but by 1904, the Entente Cordiale was more than just a pleasant diplomatic nicety, although it fell short of the full alliance France had hoped for. Among other things, the agreement traded French acceptance of Britain’s position in Egypt for British acceptance of France’s position in Morocco, along with some border adjustments in west Africa, fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland, and other issues. The Entente also allowed the two great powers to avoid being involved in the Russo-Japanese War (discussed in part seven), where they were each allied to the opposing powers. Each side saw the agreement in rather different terms, with the French believing it was the next best thing to an alliance, but as British foreign ministry staffer Eyre Crowe expressed it: “The fundamental fact of course is that the Entente is not an alliance. For purposes of ultimate emergencies it may be found to have no substance at all. For the Entente is nothing more than a frame of mind, a view of general policy which is shared by the governments of two countries, but which may be, or become, so vague as to lose all content.”

French public opinion was still ambivalent at best about Britain — the PR and humanitarian disaster that was the Boer War had only just faded from the headlines, and there was still much resentment over the Fashoda incident — but the French government recognized the importance of gaining British support (and the British government was conscious of how low their international reputation had gone). Huw Strachan:

The previous Conservative government had in 1895 moved from “splendid isolation” to embrace the need to form alliances. But it was Sir Edward who narrowed these options by excluding the possibility of a deal with Germany. As a Liberal Imperialist, concerned by the evidence of British decline in the South African war, Sir Edward increasingly fixed Britain to France and then to Russia. The latter relationship may have looked frayed by 1914, but that with France was buttressed by military and naval talks. The result was not so much a balance of power in Europe as the isolation of Germany.

Moroccan crises and using the Kaiser as a bargaining chip

The First Moroccan Crisis of 1905-6 was a potential flashpoint between the Entente Cordiale and the German Empire. Germany was hoping to split the Entente or at least to gain territorial concessions in exchange for a resolution. Kaiser Wilhelm was on a cruise to the Mediterranean and had been intending to bypass Tangier, but the situation was manipulated by the Foreign Office in Berlin so that he eventually felt he had to put in an appearance. In The War That Ended Peace, Margaret MacMillan describes the scene:

Although Bülow had repeatedly advised him to stick to polite formalities, Wilhelm got carried away in the excitement of the moment. To Kaid Maclean, the former British soldier who was the sultan’s trusted advisor, he said, “I do not acknowledge any agreement that has been come to. I come here as one Sovereign [sic] paying a visit to another perfectly independent sovereign. You can tell [the] Sultan this.” Bülow had also advised his master not to say anything at all to the French representative in Tangier, but Wilhelm was unable to resist reiterating to the Frenchman that Morocco was an independent country and that, furthermore, he expected France to recognize Germany’s legitimate interests there. “When the Minister tried to argue with me,” the Kaiser told Bülow, “I said ‘Good Morning’ and left him standing.” Wilhelm did not stay for the lavish banquet which the Moroccans had prepared for him but before he set off on his return ride to the shore, he found time to advise the sultan’s uncle that Morocco should make sure that its reforms were in accordance with the Koran. (The Kaiser, ever since his trip to the Middle East in 1898, had seen himself as the protector of all Muslims.) The Hamburg sailed on to Gibraltar, where one of its escort ships accidentally managed to ram a British cruiser.

Tension rose so high that both Germany and France were looking to their mobilization timetables (France cancelled all military leave and Germany started moving reserve units to the frontier) before the diplomats were able to agree to meet at the conference table rather than the battlefield. The Algeciras Conference lasted from January to April, 1906, and the French generally had the better of the negotiations (with support from Britain, Russia, Italy, Spain, and the United States) while the Germans found themselves supported only by the Austro-Hungarian delegation. France ended up making a few token concessions, but overall retained their position in Morocco.

The Agadir Crisis of 1911 was the second incident in Morocco, where Germany tried a little bit of literal gunboat diplomacy with the gunboat SMS Panther. The port of Agadir was closed to foreign trade, but the Panther (and later the light cruiser SMS Berlin) was sent to “protect German nationals” in southern Morocco from rebel forces. A minor problem turned out to be that there were no conveniently threatened Germans in the region. Margaret MacMillan:

The Foreign Ministry only got round to getting support for its claim that German interests and German subjects were in danger in the south of Morocco a couple of weeks before the Panther arrived off Agadir, when it asked a dozen German firms to sign a petition (which most of them did not bother to read) requesting German intervention. When the German Chancellor, Bethmann, produced this story in the Reichstag he was met with laughter. Nor were there any German nationals in Agadir itself. The local representative of the Warburg interests who was some seventy miles to the north started southwards on the evening of July 1. After a hard journey by horse along a rocky track, he arrived at Agadir on July 4 and waved his arms to no effect from the beach to attract the attention of the Panther and the Berlin. The sole representative of the Germans under threat in southern Morocco was finally spotted and picked up the next day.

France reacted to the German provocation, despite efforts by Sir Edward Grey to restrain them: eventually he recognized that “what the French contemplate doing is not wise, but we cannot under our agreement interfere”. German public opinion, on the other hand, was ecstatic:

After its setbacks earlier on in Morocco and in the race for colonies in general, with the fears of encirclement in Europe by the Entente powers, Germany was showing that it mattered. “The German dreamer awakes after sleeping for twenty years like the sleeping beauty,” said one newspaper.

[…]

In Germany, public opinion, which had been largely indifferent to colonies ten years earlier, now was seized with their importance. The German government, which was already under considerable pressure from those German businesses with interests in Morocco, felt that it had much to gain by taking a firm stand. […] The temptation for Germany’s new Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Holweg, and his colleagues to have a good international crisis to bring all Germans together in support of their government was considerable.

Eventually, after negotiations, France and Germany signed the Treaty of Fez, which granted France Germany’s recognition of her rights in Morocco in exchange for ceded French territory in French Equatorial Africa (which was annexed to the existing German colony in Togoland), including direct access to the Congo River. In addition, Spain was granted rights to a portion of northern Morocco which became Spanish Morocco.

Not part of the treaty terms, but of rather greater significance in the near future, France and Britain agreed to share responsibility for the naval defence of France: the Royal Navy took on the responsibility for defending the north coast of France, while the French navy redeployed almost all ships to the western Mediterranean with the explicit agreement to defend British interests in the region.

I’m finding each successive part of this blog series to be taking longer to put together, and not from a lack of material! I’m hoping to have the next installment posted sometime this weekend or early next week.

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