The agreement was a change for both countries. France had been isolated from other European powers, notably following the efforts of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to distance France from its potential allies, because it was thought that France could avenge its defeat in the Franco-German war of 1870/71. For nearly a century, Britain had pursued a policy of “splendid isolation” on the European continent and had only engaged in continental affairs when it was deemed necessary to protect British interests and maintain the continental balance of power. The situation changed for both countries in the last decade of the 19th century. [5] The French term Entente Cordiale (most often translated as “cordial agreement” or “cordial understanding”) comes from a letter addressed to his brother by the British Foreign Minister, Lord Aberdeen, in 1843, in which he spoke of a “good cordial understanding” between the two nations. This was translated into French as Entente Cordiale and used by Louis Philippe I this year in the French Chamber. [4] Today, when used, it almost always refers to the second Cordial Agreement, that is, the written and partially secret agreement signed on 8 April 1904 in London between the two powers. The conflict between Germany and the new allies was known as the first Moroccan crisis – a second occurred in the summer of 1911, when France and Germany sent troops to Morocco – and led to a hardening and consolidation of the Cordial Agreement, because Britain and France, in order to deal with German aggression, went from mere friendship to an informal military alliance and then moved on to talks and an agreement with Russia, an ally of France. In 1912, two powerful and hostile blocs formed in Europe, with France, Britain and Russia on the one hand, and an increasingly isolated Germany – with relatively lukewarm support from Austria-Hungary and Italy – on the other.

Two years later, this unstable situation would withdraw from the First World War. The Cordial Agreement (French: “French pronunciation:” (English: cordial agreement) was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic, which represented a marked improvement in Anglo-French relations. [1] Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion evoked by the agreement, the signing of the Cordial Agreement marked the end of an intermittent conflict of almost a thousand years between the two states and their predecessors, and replaced the modus vivendi, which had existed since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, with a more formal agreement. [2] The Cordial Agreement was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, French Foreign Minister of 1898, who believed that a Franco-British agreement would give france security against any German alliance system in Western Europe. The recognition of the success of the negotiations belongs mainly to Paul Cambon, Ambassador of France, and British Foreign Minister Lord Lansdowne.