Crisis Points: Morocco 1905 and 1911, Bosnia 1908-09

Three Crises, Three Rehearsals for War

Between 1905 and 1911 Europe lived through three diplomatic shocks that did not start a war but came uncomfortably close. Each one hardened the alliance blocs and rehearsed the brinkmanship that would explode in 1914. The First Moroccan Crisis of 1905-06, the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of 1908-09 and the Second Moroccan (Agadir) Crisis of 1911 each began as a local dispute and ended as a continental confrontation. By the third crisis, all sides were pulling stronger on their alliance partners and rehearsing military mobilisation timetables. The system was learning, dangerously, how to escalate.

Key Fact

Three pre-war crises shook the alliance system: the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06) tightened the Entente Cordiale, the Bosnian Annexation Crisis (1908-09) humiliated Russia and angered Serbia, and the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911) brought Britain firmly behind France.

The First Moroccan Crisis: Tangier, 1905

In March 1905 Wilhelm II landed at Tangier on the Moroccan coast and gave a speech declaring support for Moroccan independence and for ‘equal commercial opportunities’. The intervention was deliberately provocative. Under the Entente Cordiale of 1904 Britain had recognised French interests in Morocco; Wilhelm wanted to test whether the Entente was a real diplomatic bloc or just words on paper. France was thrown into panic. The crisis was referred to an international conference at Algeciras in early 1906. There Germany found itself with only Austria-Hungary’s support; Britain, Russia, Italy, Spain and the United States all backed France. The result was a diplomatic defeat for Germany — the opposite of what Wilhelm had intended.

Germany’s mistake was to call for a conference assuming international opinion would back ‘open door’ trade against French preferences. Instead, Britain and Russia closed ranks behind France, Italy quietly drifted further from the Triple Alliance, and even the United States declined to support the German line. The conference recognised French and Spanish predominance in Morocco. Worse, it accelerated Anglo-French military cooperation: secret staff talks between the British and French armies began in early 1906 specifically because of the Tangier crisis. Germany emerged from a crisis it had started in a worse position than when it began.

The Bosnian Annexation Crisis, 1908-09

Bosnia had been administered by Austria-Hungary since the 1878 Congress of Berlin, but technically remained part of the Ottoman Empire. In October 1908, exploiting Ottoman weakness during the Young Turk Revolution, Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. The move outraged Serbia, which had hoped to incorporate Bosnia’s large Slav population into a future Greater Serbia. Russia, the traditional protector of Slav peoples, had been led to believe by Austrian foreign minister Aehrenthal that compensation would be offered — but in the event Russia got nothing. Russia’s humiliation deepened when Germany backed Austria-Hungary unconditionally and effectively forced Russia to accept the annexation in March 1909. The Tsar’s government swore that Russia would not be humiliated again.

The Second Moroccan Crisis: Agadir, 1911

In April 1911 French troops occupied the Moroccan city of Fez to suppress an uprising. Germany seized the opportunity to demand compensation. In July 1911 the German gunboat Panther appeared off the southern Moroccan port of Agadir, ostensibly to protect German citizens. There were no German citizens in Agadir. The gesture — later called the Agadir Crisis — was a transparent piece of gunboat diplomacy. France refused to be intimidated. More importantly, Britain came down emphatically on the French side. In a famous Mansion House speech that July, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George warned that Britain would not accept being ‘treated as if of no account’. The crisis ended with a humiliating climbdown for Germany: a small piece of the French Congo as compensation for nothing.

After Algeciras, Anglo-French military staff talks began. After Bosnia, Russia accelerated army modernisation and pledged not to back down again over Slav interests. After Agadir, the British Cabinet authorised secret naval cooperation with France — agreeing that the French navy would concentrate in the Mediterranean while the Royal Navy guaranteed the Channel. Each crisis ratcheted the alliance commitments up a notch. By 1912 the blocs were tighter than they had been before; the room for the Great Powers to step back from a Balkan crisis was visibly narrower. Christopher Clark calls this period the ‘polarisation’ of European politics.

The Balkan Wars, 1912-13

Tension in the Balkans then turned into open war. In October 1912 the Balkan League — Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro — attacked the Ottoman Empire and won quickly. The First Balkan War nearly doubled Serbia’s territory. The Second Balkan War of June-August 1913 saw the victors fight over the spoils, with Bulgaria attacking its former allies and being defeated in turn. Although the wars stayed local, they alarmed Austria-Hungary by leaving Serbia much stronger; intensified Russian backing for Slav states; and warned Germany that the next Balkan flashpoint might be harder to contain. The Balkan Wars are not crises in the same sense as Tangier, Bosnia or Agadir, but they sharpen the picture of how dangerous south-eastern Europe had become by 1914.