IV. England, Italy, the Nile Valley and the European Balance, 1890–91

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Abstract
In the negotiations relating to eastern and north-eastern Africa which Lord Salisbury conducted with Germany and Italy in 1890 and 1891, the desire to safeguard the waters of the Upper and Middle Nile usually played the predominant part. But this problem could not be solved in isolation from the more general considerations of Britain's position towards the powers of the Triple Alliance and, less directly, towards France. It was important that disputes relating to the upper basin of the Nile should not be permitted to disrupt the friendly relations with Germany and Italy which were themselves the diplomatic guarantee of Britain's continued presence in Egypt and indeed, since the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887, the main foundation of Salisbury's foreign policy. But it was equally important that the friendly settlement of these disputes should not result in alignments with Rome and Berlin so close as to destroy the generally tolerable relations with France which enabled Salisbury to avoid complete commitment to the Triple Alliance and an excessive dependence upon German goodwill. The history of the Anglo-Italian controversy and the immediate consequences of its settlement, which took place over a period of nearly two years, reveals more explicitly than the much briefer negotiation with Germany the perturbing influence of international rivalry in Africa upon Salisbury's delicate adjustments in Europe. For Salisbury the problem was complicated, rather than simplified, by the fact that Britain's rivals in Africa were friends nearer home.

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