Britain, Russia and the Road to the First World War

Taylor & Francis

This book demonstrates the role of Count Aleksandr Benckendorff, the Russian ambassador in London between 1903 and 1916, in setting Russia on the road to war. Fearing the loss of Britain's friendship, he opposed all Russia's efforts at improving Russo-German relations and when the Sarajevo crisis struck, there was now no hope of appealing to German goodwill to help defuse the situation. Instead Russia's status within the Entente depended on a show of determination and strength, which lead inexorably to a disaster of the Great War. > For much of the later nineteenth-century Britain regarded Russia as its main international rival, particularly as regarded the security of its colonial possessions in India. Yet, by 1907 Russia's political revolution, financial collapse and military defeat by Japan, transformed the situation, resulting in an Anglo-Russian rapprochement. As this book makes clear, whilst international affairs lay at the root of this new relationship, personal factors alsd