The Second Moroccan Crisis, 1911
For the past several days there has been an interesting discussion on the LSTSRV H-WAR concerning the importance of the Agadir Affair, also called the Second Moroccan Crisis, in terms of the causes of World War I. In the decade and a half prior to World War I there were a series of international disputes that involved or affected the major European powers that in 1914 went to war as members of either the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Great Britain). An important question concerning World War I has been to gauge the relative importance of these various diplomatic crisis’s and evaluate them in terms of the so-called Alliance System that developed as each participant attempted to guarantee its own security and protect its own national and dynastic interests. The Second Moroccan Crisis and Agadir Affair are interesting because they led to results that the Germans, French, and British had not intended or anticipated. Belo