The policy of 'splendid isolation' had famously been Lord Salisbury's mantra during his time as Foreign Secretary, but in 1900, this Prime Minister in his third term gave up the secondary post to concentrate on the premiership, handing it over instead to Lord Lansdowne. Both Britain and Japan were uneasy at Russian expansionism, and in 1901, the Japanese minister in London, Hayashi Tadasu, opened negotiations with Lansdowne over the possibility of an Anglo-Japanese alliance to add to their extant 1894 commercial treaty. The treaty showed mutual opposition to the Russian invasion of Manchuria, aided British trade interests in China, and was a major source of national pride for Japan: this was the first treaty signed between a European …

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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Baron Hayashi reopens Anglo-Japanese negotiations". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=11682, accessed 23 November 2024.]