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Tangled Beginnings | The Balkan Spark | Fuel for the Fire | Britain and 'Brave little Belgium'
By 3 August, Britain was the only major power not yet committed to the conflict. An island nation, it was essentially a maritime power, and most of its interests lay overseas, in India, Africa and the Caribbean. It had no desire to become embroiled in a major European land war and had nothing to gain from such involvement.
And yet these very imperial considerations propelled Britain towards war. As a great trading and manufacturing nation, it needed access to the Channel ports to gain entry to Europe. It could not allow any single nation (such as Germany) to control these ports and threaten its sea-lanes or security. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 4 August to gain speedy access to France, Britain responded by declaring war on Germany at 11pm that night. Concerns about German violations of Belgian human rights were added later. (See Dirty hands: Atrocities of World War I)
Britain also went to war on 4 August as a result of concerns over the long-term attitudes of its French and Russian 'allies'. Britain's imperial possessions were so extensive and, in some places, so close to Russian and French territory that it could not hope to maintain control over these colonies without the acquiescence of France and Russia. If they won a bloody European land war from which Britain had remained aloof, their attitude towards their former ally was unlikely to be cordial.
'If we fail [Russia] now, we cannot hope to maintain that friendly cooperation with her in Asia that is of such vital importance to us.'
British Foreign Office telegram, 25 July 1914
Thus, in a strange way, Britain became embroiled in a European land war in 1914 to protect its overseas possessions.
The First World War's origins are extremely tangled and multi-layered. It is impossible to pin the blame on the territorial ambitions of any single state such as Germany.
The dispute originated in the Balkans, and Austria-Hungary and Serbia must be regarded as more culpable in originating the dispute than any of the later belligerents. Slav self-determination, ethnic tensions, diplomatic alliances and a pre-war arms race were all more important in precipitating the conflict than simple German 'militarism'. Britain, as ever, was motivated by concerns of economics and empire.
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