Triple Entente, 1907

The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement") describes the informal mutual arrangement and understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between France and Britain, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was not an alliance of mutual defence. The Franco-Japanese Treaty of 1907 was a key part of building a coalition as France took the lead in creating alliances with Japan, Russia, and (informally) with Britain. Japan wanted to raise a loan in Paris, so France made the loan contingent on a Russo-Japanese agreement and a Japanese guarantee for France's strategically vulnerable possessions in Indochina. Britain encouraged the Russo-Japanese rapprochement. Thus was built the Triple Entente coalition that fought World War I. The Triple Entente and Triple Alliance powers jointly convened the London Peace Conference to arbitrate territorial disputes among Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire. At the start of World War I in 1914, all three Triple Entente members entered it as Allied Powers against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. On September 4, 1914, the Triple Entente issued a declaration undertaking not to conclude a separate peace and only to demand terms of peace agreed among the three parties. Historians continue to debate the importance of the alliance system as one of the causes of World War I.