What Was the Russian Empire’s Relationship with Britain?
The Anglo-Russian relationship was one of the most consequential in modern international history. The Russian and British empires together controlled more than a third of the world’s land surface in the late nineteenth century, and the relationship between them shaped the politics of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific. The relationship was marked by direct military conflict in the Crimean War, by the so-called “Great Game” in Central Asia, by successive crises over the Ottoman Empire and Persia, and by the rapprochement of 1907 that brought the two powers into the Triple Entente of 1907 (see Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 2003).
The Napoleonic Wars and the post-1815 period
The two empires had been on opposite sides of the Napoleonic Wars in the 1800s and 1810s, with Britain as Russia’s ally against France and a financier of the Russian war effort. The British subsidies to Russia between 1813 and 1815 totalled about £5.4 million, and the British military and naval support for the Russian campaigns of 1813-1814 was substantial. The British foreign secretary Castlereagh played a leading role in the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, and the Anglo-Russian relationship in the post-1815 period was, in many respects, a continuation of the wartime partnership.
The post-1815 period also introduced the first sources of Anglo-Russian tension. The British government, concerned about the security of the route to India, watched the Russian advance in the Caucasus and in Central Asia with growing anxiety. The Russian government, concerned about the security of the Black Sea straits and about the protection of the Orthodox Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, looked with suspicion on British influence in Istanbul. The two powers found themselves on opposite sides in the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), the Egyptian-Ottoman crisis of 1839-1841, and the Hungarian crisis of 1849 (Hopton, Britain, Russia, and the British Raj, 2004).
The Crimean War
The Crimean War of 1853-1856 was the only direct military conflict between the two empires in the nineteenth century. The war had its origins in the conflict between the Russian and French claims to the protection of the Christian holy places in Palestine, but it was the British decision to enter the war in March 1854, on the Ottoman side, that turned a regional dispute into a general European war. The British government was concerned about the Russian occupation of the Ottoman principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, the destruction of the Ottoman fleet at Sinop in November 1853, and the threat to the Mediterranean route to India.
The war was fought in the Crimea, in the Baltic, and in the Pacific. The Crimean campaign, the central theatre of the war, was marked by the siege of Sevastopol, the Battle of the Alma, and the Charge of the Light Brigade. The war was, in essence, a Russian defeat: the Russian army was unable to break out of the Crimean peninsula, the Russian Baltic fleet was bottled up in Kronstadt, and the Russian Pacific base at Petropavlovsk was attacked but held. The Treaty of Paris of 1856 imposed major restrictions on Russia, including the neutralisation of the Black Sea (Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War, 1994).
The Great Game
The Great Game was the strategic rivalry between the Russian and British empires in Central Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term, in its modern use, derives from Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim, although the rivalry itself was older. The Russian advance into Central Asia — the conquest of the Kazakh steppe (1730s-1840s), the conquest of the Khanate of Kokand (1853-1876), the conquest of the Khanate of Bukhara (1868-1869), the conquest of the Khanate of Khiva (1873), and the conquest of the Turkmen oases (1869-1884) — brought the Russian frontier to the borders of Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. The British, in turn, fought two Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839-1842 and 1878-1880) to secure the north-western frontier of British India.
The Great Game was, accordingly, a long period of strategic manoeuvring in which neither side was willing to fight a direct war. The two powers fought no major war during the period, although the British intervention in the Afghan War of 1878-1880 and the Russian diplomatic support for the Indian independence movement of the period were important sources of Anglo-Russian tension. The Great Game, in this sense, was the defining context of the late-nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian relationship (Hopkirk, The Great Game, 1990).
The rapprochement of 1907
The Anglo-Russian rapprochement was the most consequential diplomatic reversal of the early twentieth century. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 31 August 1907, signed in St Petersburg, divided Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet into spheres of influence. Persia was divided into a Russian zone in the north, a British zone in the south, and a neutral zone in between. Afghanistan was recognised as a British sphere, although Russia retained a degree of commercial access. Tibet was to remain under Chinese suzerainty, and both powers undertook to respect its territorial integrity.
The convention was negotiated by the Russian foreign minister Alexander Izvolsky and the British foreign secretary Edward Grey. The convention was a step in the development of the Triple Entente, the alliance of Britain, France, and Russia that would shape the European state system until 1914. The convention was also a sign of the changing international situation: the British government was increasingly concerned about the German naval and colonial challenge, and the Russian government was increasingly concerned about the Austro-Hungarian challenge in the Balkans. The two powers, accordingly, had a common interest in containing German power in Europe (Steiner and Neilson, 2003).
The First World War and the collapse of the partnership
The Anglo-Russian partnership was tested by the First World War. Russia entered the war in August 1914, in fulfilment of its alliance with France and as a result of the mobilisation of the European powers. The Russian campaign of 1914, including the Battle of Tannenberg and the Russian advance into East Prussia, was a major British asset: by tying down large German forces, the Russian army made the British position in France more secure. The British government, in turn, supplied Russia with munitions and supplies through the ports of Archangel, Murmansk, and Vladivostok.
The Anglo-Russian relationship was, however, limited by the distance between the two empires, by the Russian economic and military weakness, and by the Russian political instability of 1916-1917. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918, signed between the Soviet government and the Central Powers, ended the Russian participation in the war, and the partnership was over. The British intervention in the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) was, in turn, a different kind of relationship, and the post-1924 Anglo-Soviet diplomatic normalisation was conducted within a completely different political framework (Steiner and Neilson, 2003).