Master Yuan, start!

Prime Minister Lord Salisbury shook his head and sighed, not knowing whether he regretted the establishment of the Far East Ussuri Autonomous Region or regretted helping Yuan Shikai win the Indochina Campaign against France.

The Franco-Russian Alliance is no longer a secret. This military alliance agreement, signed in 1893-1894, was due to a series of cooperation between France and Russia in the Far East, as well as France's large investment in Russia.

British intelligence agencies believe that the two countries have reached a secret cooperation.

Not to mention, just one week before Yuan Shikai announced his visit to Britain, Tsar Nicholas II sent Crown Prince Alexei to visit the French naval port of Toulon, where he was warmly welcomed by the French military.

　This move can almost be regarded as a blatant acknowledgement of the existence of a secret agreement between France and Russia.

There is no doubt that Britain's support for Yuan Shikai's two wars in the Far East accelerated the establishment of this alliance.

Therefore, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury attached great importance to Yuan Shikai's visit.

After the outbreak of the South African War, the British government came under tremendous pressure from public opinion, and European public opinion launched attacks on Britain almost every day.

The emergence of the Franco-Russian alliance was like a huge rock thrown into the water, which put enormous pressure on the British government, especially on the military level.

Old Chamberlain stroked the Queen Victoria badge on his chest and said calmly: "Although the Franco-Russian Alliance originated from Britain, judging from its geographical distribution, this alliance may not target us first.

Germany is more dangerous than us!"

“Having said that, Joseph,” upon hearing this, a trace of helplessness flashed in the eyes of the Marquis of Salisbury: “As the Minister of the Colonies, you should know better than me.

Although this alliance could not encircle Britain in Europe, we were too vulnerable in the Near and Middle East.

The British Empire only controlled some important transportation routes in these places and was far from being powerful.

In comparison, whether it is France traveling from West Africa to the Middle East or Russia entering the Middle East from Central Asia and the Caucasus, both are more convenient than us. Once France and Russia actually join forces, our situation will instantly fall into a disadvantage."

After saying this, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury sat down again, crossed his arms over his chest, and his expression became increasingly serious. "Joseph, in your mind, is this the only way for us to ally with Germany?"

This question weighed on his heart like a huge rock.

Chamberlain noticed his hesitation and quickly comforted him: "Prime Minister, the Anglo-German alliance is not the only option.

And... the Chinese! We can let the Chinese contain Russia in the Far East, so that we only have to deal with France."

After saying this, the Marquis of Salisbury did not relax his vigilance. He stared at the map on the table, his eyes revealing deep worry: "We can cooperate with Germany, but we cannot risk losing India."

He muttered to himself, his voice almost inaudible, tapping the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan hanging on the wall with his pen: "If the Cossack cavalry from the Volgar River breaks through the Khyber Pass, can Afghanistan really stop those fierce Russians?

At this moment, the entire room fell into silence, with only the lights flickering in the wind, as if telling of the uncertainty of the empire's future.

...

"Prime Minister, urgent message, urgent message from Istanbul!"

In the silence, a panicked call woke the two from their thoughts.

"What's going on?" The young and energetic Chamberlain reacted faster than the Prime Minister, the Marquis of Salisbury, who was already in his seventies, and grabbed the telegram in his hand.

“Osman, Osman!

The French President announced tonight that joint Russian and French naval exercises will be held on the southern Mediterranean coast of the Ottoman Empire!

The Ottomans, without even consulting London, agreed?!"

In an instant, the image of France and Russia joining hands in the Middle East to expel British forces appeared before Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.

"This is a provocation, a naked provocation to the British Empire!"

Chapter 514 The Agreement is No Longer

"Chief Instructor, something big has happened in Europe again!"

The next morning, Yuan Xiangcheng was still on the balcony admiring the foggy scenery of London when Tang Shaoyi hurriedly knocked on the door and walked in slowly in formal attire.

Pushing open the door, Yuan Xiangcheng had just put on his clothes and put a revolver on his waist.

The late 19th century and early 20th century was an era when assassins were rampant. Even though the security level around Yuan Shikai was already outrageously strict, he still chose to carry a gun on himself as the last line of defense.

"What's the big deal?"

“France and Russia announced a joint naval exercise in the Mediterranean near the Ottoman Empire.

The news came out exactly the day after our visit to England.

I'm afraid it's Xiang Zhuang dancing with a sword, aiming at Pei Gong!"

"I didn't expect that France and Russia couldn't hold back and actually took action first?" Yuan Xiangcheng stood by the window with his back to the window, thinking, a little surprised: "In this case, our backup plan in Xinjiang seems a little late."

Since making friends with the British, everything Yuan Shikai did in the international situation was to magnify the contradictions between Britain and Russia, and Britain and France.

Even if there was no news of this military exercise, Yuan Shikai believed that the British would receive intelligence that "Russia was deploying troops to southern Central Asia" in the future.

In order to stir up conflicts between Britain and Russia and make Britain believe that Russia had plans for Central Asia, Yuan Shikai gave the Ma family army an order when he sent it westward to Xinjiang.

That is, try not to have a head-on collision with the Russian army, but to harass them from behind.

Relying on their "religious" relations, the Ma family was able to send people from southern Xinjiang to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins in Central Asia to contact the local Muslim people who were oppressed by the Russians.

The Ma family army believes in the Sunni sect of Islam and follows the Hanafi school. Although it has unique religious practices in the country, it still belongs to the Sunni framework as a whole.

The Bukhara Emirate and the Khanate of Khiva, which were semi-controlled by Russia, also belonged to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, which was consistent with the Northwestern Samajwadi sect.

There are cultural differences between the two, but no sectarian conflict.

The Bukhara and Khiva Khanates were determined to resist Russia, but they did not dare to act due to the power of the Russian army. Therefore, they turned a blind eye to the "Peach Blossom Stone" brothers coming from the east.

Tang Shaoyi patted his chest and said, "It's good that we didn't take action. Since ancient times, the Western Regions have been far away from the Central Plains, making supply difficult. Now that the railway is not open, we will suffer more losses if we act rashly."

“地中2海与中亚双面9开花，希望4能将英国跟法0俄之4间，推3得更5远一些吧64.”袁项城感慨道。

Yuan Xiangcheng always believed that the mainstream academic circles in the original time and space attributed the outbreak of World War I to the Anglo-German conflict and simply attributed the Anglo-German conflict to "the struggle for overseas colonies", which was an overly simplistic and crude view.

In the original time and space, the British-German contradiction was the key point of the outbreak of World War I based on the class historical perspective. The narrative is as follows.

"World War I was a general outbreak of contradictions among various countries after capitalism developed to the imperialist stage. It was a challenge from late-developing capitalist countries to early-developing capitalist countries, and the two most powerful capitalist countries in Europe, Britain and Germany, were the focal points of this."

But this cannot explain why this war was not between Britain and France vs. Germany and Russia?

Britain has always regarded Russia as its main enemy, and Germany and Russia do not have many colonies. Why don't the two European powers with the fewest colonies go to war with the two European powers with the most colonies?

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Whether in the original time and space or the current time and space, the contradiction between Britain and Russia and the contradiction between Germany and France are greater than the contradiction between Britain and Germany.

In this time and space, the contradictions between Britain and France are more acute than in history.

On the contrary, the Anglo-German conflict, which only began to become increasingly troublesome in 1904 in the original time and space, is not taken seriously at present.

At the end of the 19th century, the Germans were indeed becoming increasingly interested in colonies.

Although the German Empire had few overseas colonies, most of them were quite valuable. German farmers contracted plantations and grew crops such as coffee and peanuts in Africa.

In addition, the German government and merchants were widely involved in colonization and overseas trade, which gave many Germans a more intuitive impression of the world. For example, chocolates with little black people printed on wrapping paper and billboards made many Germans feel the "temptation of colonies" for the first time.

Therefore, although the colonies did not account for a large proportion of the German Empire's total economy, they did arouse a colonial sentiment among ordinary people in Germany.

So, is this what led to the conflict between Germany and Britain?

In fact, it's a perverse view that the British didn't strongly object to Germany having overseas colonies.

The most crucial reason is that although Germany pursued a trade protection policy throughout the German Empire, the high tariffs of the German Empire were limited to mainland Europe.

Germany's overseas colonies did not impose high protective tariffs on foreign goods, which meant that British goods were treated more fairly in the colonies of the German Empire than France, which brought protective tariff measures to its colonies.

Moreover, Britain's main interests do not lie in industrial and commercial products.

Britain, which completed the Industrial Revolution in 1840, became the world's factory.

But in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Britain had gradually shown signs of "de-materialization".

Yuan Xiangcheng remembered that he had read a document that showed that between 1891 and 1895, Britain's profits from shipping, finance, insurance and other service industries and returns on overseas investments grew very rapidly, with an average annual invisible trade surplus of 1.86 million pounds. Between 1911 and 1913, this figure even reached 3.46 million pounds.

In recent years, the UK's deficit in tangible trade was only more than 2 million pounds, and financial gains easily offset the UK's deficit in tangible trade.

If the total number of colonies remains unchanged, the more a country pursuing a protectionist policy seizes, the more disadvantageous it will be for Britain.

The British understood this, so during Bismarck's administration, even if Britain did not pursue an encouraging policy towards Germany's overseas expansion, it at least adopted a benevolent attitude.

In response, the Germans reciprocated. Even after Bismarck left office, the new German Chancellor transferred several overseas islands in German East Africa, including "Zanzibar", to Britain.

Therefore, the colonial issue was not the root cause of the Anglo-German confrontation; on the contrary, to a large extent, it was the driving force behind the "friendly relations between Britain and Germany."

Yuan Shikai of this time and space was keenly aware of this, and after launching the war against France, he proposed to Britain to bring the Germans to Indochina.

The fact that German warships are now stationed in Cochinchina fully proves this point.

Since colonies are not a contradiction, then is the competition between British and German industrial products a contradiction?

It is actually not in line with the actual situation to blame the Anglo-German conflict on the containment of Germany, a late-developing industrial country, by Britain, an early-developing industrial country.

The British manufacturing industry has indeed been severely impacted by German industry, and some British manufacturers are also calling for "protective tariffs"

But since a considerable part of the British economy comes from overseas trade, shipping, finance and insurance, these forces are not interested in tariffs.

On the contrary, they were also very fond of the relatively fair trade policies pursued by Germany in its colonies.

Similarly, manufacturing practitioners themselves are not a monolithic entity. The rise of Germany has impacted part of the British manufacturing industry, but has benefited other parts.

For example, although British steel mills were impacted by German steel, Germany's cheap steel allowed British shipyards to increase profits and lower prices.

British screw factory owners cried out for "protective tariffs", but British shipyard owners and workers felt that the low-priced steel produced in the Ruhr region gave them a respite from competition with American and French shipyards.

Therefore, simply blaming the Anglo-German conflict on economic factors seems convincing, but in fact it is biased.

At best, this can only cause discord between Britain and Germany, but it is impossible to trigger a great war.

From the initial blood relationship between the two countries' courts to the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890, the starting point was originally very good.

The colonial issue alone was not enough to turn Britain and Germany against each other. On this basis, industrial competition was not enough to turn Britain and Germany against each other. Even with William II's naval expansion, as long as the basis of British foreign policy remained the long-term confrontation between Britain and Russia on the Eurasian continent, the two countries would not actually have to go to war.

In fact, even when the Germans proposed to build a "High Seas Fleet" that could rival the Royal Navy, Anglo-German relations did not deteriorate much.

After 1910, Germany signed a treaty with Britain, effectively abandoning this plan and choosing to focus its energy on the army.

By 1914, Germany had completely abandoned the dreadnought race, and by this time the outcome of the naval battle was already very clear.

If it had taken a little longer, until 1916 or even 1918, the fact that Germany had failed would have become even more obvious.

By then, it would be impossible for Britain to declare war on the defeated Germany over a war that had already been won.

But as I said, history is too accidental.

Some people believe that the First World War that broke out in 1914 was the result of the European pressure cooker finally breaking open.

But in fact, the time point of 1914 makes people feel that it is the least likely to break out. Yuan Xiangcheng remembers that in his previous life, people often said that the Sarajevo incident gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire a godsend opportunity to interfere in Serbia.