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The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and France which saw a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a thousand years of intermittent conflict between the two states and their predecessors, and replaced the modus vivendi that had existed since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 with a more formal agreement. The Entente Cordiale was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, France’s foreign minister from 1898, who believed that a Franco-British understanding would give France some security against any German system of alliances in western Europe. Credit for the success of the negotiation belongs chiefly to Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador in London, and to the British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne.
The most important feature of the agreement was that it granted freedom of action to the UK in Egypt and to France in Morocco (with the proviso that France’s eventual dispositions for Morocco include reasonable allowance for Spain’s interests there). At the same time, the UK ceded the Los Islands (off French Guinea) to France, defined the frontier of Nigeria in France’s favour, and agreed to French control of the upper Gambia valley, while France renounced its exclusive right to certain fisheries off Newfoundland. Furthermore, French and British zones of influence in Siam (Thailand) were outlined, with the eastern territories, adjacent to French Indochina, becoming a French zone, and the western, adjacent to Burmese Tenasserim, a British zone. Arrangements were also made to allay the rivalry between British and French colonists in the New Hebrides.
By the Entente Cordiale both powers reduced the virtual isolation into which they had withdrawn—France involuntarily, the UK complacently—while they had eyed each other over African affairs. The UK had no ally but Japan (1902), of little use if war should break out in European waters; France had none but Russia, soon to be discredited in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The agreement was upsetting to Germany, whose policy had long been to rely on Franco-British antagonism. A German attempt to check the French in Morocco in 1905 (the Tangier Incident, or First Moroccan Crisis), and thus upset the Entente, served only to strengthen it. Military discussions between the French and the British general staffs were soon initiated. Franco-British solidarity was confirmed at the Algeciras Conference (1906) and reconfirmed in the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911)."Entente Cordiale". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 11 Feb. 2016
<http://www.britannica.com/event/Entente-Cordiale>.
Entente cordiale is a 1939 French drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Gaby Morlay, Victor Francen and Pierre Richard-Willm. The film depicts the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book Life of Edward VII by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, as the Second World War had broken out and Britain and France were allies fighting against Nazi Germany.
Entente Cordiale is a comic opera in one act by Ethel Smyth with an English-language libretto by Smyth, who describes the work as "a post-war comedy in one act (founded on fact)". It was first performed by students at the Royal College of Music in London on 22 July 1925.
The Entente cordiale was a set of agreements between France and the United Kingdom.
Entente cordiale may also refer to:
Usage examples of "entente cordiale".
Tables had been dragged out into the yard, and around them officers were sitting eating, drinking, and chatting with the peasant women who were serving them and with whom they had set up an entente cordiale.
It was now Monday and, later in the day, Woodrow Wilson would address a joint session of Congress on the subject of war or peace or continued neutrality or whatever with the Central Powers, specifically Germany, in their war against the Entente Cordiale, or France and England and Russia and, lately, Italy.
It is the monstrosity and fairy-tale quality of Grendel that really makes the tale important, surviving still when the politics have become dim and the healing of Danish-Geatish relations in an 'entente cordiale' between two ruling houses a minor matter of obscure history.
Six years before Stromer and his companions arrived in Cairo, the 1904 Entente Cordiale between France and Britain solemnized the arrangement.