Franco-British Alliance

Entente Cordiale

A 1904 French postcard showing Britannia and Marianne dancing together, symbolizing the newborn cooperation between the two countries.
Signed	8 April 1904
Signatories	French Third Republic United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Languages	French, English

The Entente Cordiale (French pronunciation: ​[ɑ̃tɑ̃t kɔʁdjal]) was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic 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 the not to be colonialized 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.