Splendid isolation in the context of "Triple Alliance (1882)"

At the Congress of Berlin (13 June – 13 July 1878), the major European powers revised the territorial and political terms imposed by the Russian Empire on the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878), which had ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The Congress was the result of escalating tensions; particularly British opposition to Russian hegemony over the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, through the creation of a Russian-aligned 'Greater Bulgaria'. To secure the European balance of power in favour of its splendid isolation achieved after the Crimean War, Britain stationed the Mediterranean Fleet near Constantinople to enforce British demands. To avoid war, Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the newly formed German Empire, was asked to mediate a solution that would restore the Ottoman Empire's position as a counterbalance to Russian influence in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, in line with the principles of the 1856 Treaty of Paris.

Attended by delegates from Europe's then six great powers: Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany; the Ottomans as well as representatives of four Balkan states (Greece, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro), the Congress culminated in the Treaty of Berlin (13 July 1878). This agreement essentially dismantled the autonomous Greater Bulgarian State envisaged at San Stefano, and reorganised the borders of south-eastern Europe. The main results were the Austro-Hungarian forcible occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the British de facto annexation of Cyprus under false pretenses, and the formal recognition of the self-declared independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro; allies of Russia in the previous war. While the settlement averted war, it exacerbated nationalist grievances in the Balkans and deepened the rivalry between Britain and Russia (The Great Game), contributing to long-term regional instability that foreshadowed the Balkan Wars and World War I.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (/ˈɡæskɔɪn ˈsɪsəl/ GASK-oyn SISS-əl; 3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen years. He was also Foreign Secretary before and during most of his tenure. He avoided international alignments or alliances, maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".

Lord Robert Cecil, later known as Lord Salisbury, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1854 and served as Secretary of State for India in Lord Derby's Conservative government 1866–1867. In 1874, under Disraeli, Salisbury returned as Secretary of State for India, and, in 1878, was appointed foreign secretary, and played a leading part in the Congress of Berlin. After Disraeli's death in 1881, Salisbury emerged as the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, with Sir Stafford Northcote leading the party in the Commons. He succeeded William Ewart Gladstone as prime minister in June 1885, and held the office until January 1886.

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.