Entente Cordiale in the context of "Splendid isolation"

In international relations, a rapprochement, which comes from the French word rapprocher ("to bring together"), is a re-establishment of cordial relations between two countries. This may be done due to a mutual antagonist, as the German Empire was seen by both France and the British Empire at the time of their signing of the Entente Cordiale. It has also been done, particularly in the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States, in an effort to reduce tensions and the likelihood of war.

In the political scene of an individual country, rapprochement means the bringing together of diverse political factions as, for example, during metapolitefsi in Greece.

The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement") describes the informal mutual arrangement and understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between France and Britain, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was not an alliance of mutual defence.

The Franco-Japanese Treaty of 1907 was a key part of building a coalition as France took the lead in creating alliances with Japan, Russia, and (informally) with Britain. Japan wanted to raise a loan in Paris, so France made the loan contingent on a Russo-Japanese agreement and a Japanese guarantee for France's strategically vulnerable possessions in Indochina. Britain encouraged the Russo-Japanese rapprochement. Thus was built the Triple Entente coalition that fought World War I.

An entente (/ɑːnˈtɑːnt/) is a type of treaty or military alliance in which the signatories promise to consult each other or to cooperate in the event of a crisis or military action. Examples include the Entente Cordiale between France and the United Kingdom and the Triple Entente between France, Russia and the United Kingdom.

It has been found that during wars, signatories of ententes are less likely to assist each other than signatories of defense pacts but more likely than signatories of non-aggression pacts. It has also been found that great powers are less likely to start wars against their partners in ententes than against their partners in nonaggression and defensive pacts or states with no alliance with them.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance (日英同盟, Nichi-Ei Dōmei) was an alliance between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Japan which was effective from 1902 to 1923. The treaty creating the alliance was signed at Lansdowne House in London on 30 January 1902 by British foreign secretary Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne and Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu. After the preceding era of unequal treaties enforced on Asian countries including Japan, the alliance was a military pact concluded on more equal terms between a Western power and non-Western nation. It reflected the success of Meiji era reforms that modernized and industrialized Japan's economy, society and military, which enabled Japan to extract itself from the inferior position it had previously shared with other Asian countries like China, which had been subordinated to Western empires either through formal colonial acquisition or unequal treaties.

One shared motivation for the agreement was that a diplomatic alliance might deter other world powers that might otherwise encroach on British and Japanese imperial interests in Asia. For the British, the alliance marked the end of a period of "splendid isolation" while allowing for greater focus on protecting its rule over India and competing in the Anglo-German naval arms race, as part of a larger strategy to reduce imperial overcommitment and recall the Royal Navy to defend Britain. By contrast, it came at a time of Japan's ascendancy; Japan had not only successfully abrogated the unequal treaties it was previously subject to by the Western powers, but was now a fledging empire in its own right: Japan had imposed its own unequal treaty on Korea in 1876 and now controlled Formosa (Taiwan) as a colony, as Taiwan been ceded by Qing China to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, after the First Sino-Japanese War. Consequently, Japan was now developing its own imperial sphere of influence, and felt that a conflict with Russia was imminent over rival ambitions in Manchuria and Korea, especially after the Triple Intervention in 1895, in which Russia, France, and Germany coerced Japan into relinquishing its claim on the Liaodong Peninsula. Article 3 of the alliance promised support if either signatory became involved in war with more than one power, and thus deterred France from assisting its ally Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Instead, France concluded the Entente Cordiale with Britain and limited its support of Russia to providing loans. Japan also gained international prestige from the alliance and used it as a foundation for their diplomacy for two decades, although the alliance angered the United States and some British dominions, whose opinion of Japan worsened and gradually became hostile.

Émile François Loubet (French: [emil lubɛ]; 30 December 1838 – 20 December 1929) was the 45th Prime Minister of France from February to December 1892 and later President of France from 1899 to 1906.

Trained in law, he became mayor of Montélimar, where he was noted as a forceful orator. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 and the Senate in 1885. He was appointed as a Republican minister under Carnot and Ribot. He was briefly Prime Minister of France in 1892. As President, he saw the successful Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the forging of the Entente Cordiale with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, resolving their sharp differences over the Boer War and the Dreyfus Affair.