Would Britain have declared war on France if it had invaded Belgium during the 19th and 20th century?

Question

France was planning to attack Germany through Belgium
Britain had a deal with Belgium defend Belgium's neutrality
France dropped it's plans for invading Belgium but what if it had and the Germans didn't.

Answer 1

It is without a doubt that in the mid 18th century, Britain would have helped defend Belgium from any invasion force, including the French becuase of the Treaty of London. This was becuase Belgium was one of the busiest routes for Britain to transport supplies and trade into mainland Europe.

However, in the later stages of the 18th century, Britain would not have dared to attack France, mainly becuase of the 1,000,000 Prussian force that was invading the western part of Europe. Britain would not have wanted to have taken sides at that time becuase her army was too small to contend against the Prussian force and if it joined the French, then it would have lost. As a result, when the Prussians did attack Belgium,Gladstone, the Prime Minister at that time, resorted to diplomatic means to fend off the Prussian invasion force and therefore saved Britain from active military contribution to the Franco-Prussian War.

In the 20th century, Britain wouldn't have invaded France because France, Britain and Russia had signed a Treaty declaring that they will not fight one another. But France would not have invaded Belgium becuase it was acting as a small buffer zone against the German Army, which was by this stage becoming quite a threat. By attacking Belgium therefore, France would have weakened herself against an almost inevitable German invasion. As it so happened, the Belgians did a grand job in slowing the advance of the German Army in 1914, at the outbreak of WW1 and the Schlieffen Plan.

So in the mid 18th century, Britain probably would have attacked France, especially as the Napoleonic War was just 3 or decades before, but in the late 19th century, it wouldn't because it was just too weak. In the 20th century, it wouldn't have as well beucase of a signed Treaty.

Answer 2

I think that your question is really about WWI and the answer is no Britain in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries saw France as a partner in Europe and Germany as an adversary or as an upstart. For six (6) hundred years Britain and France squabbled over the French Atlantic Coast region of France, it's called Brittany for a reason until Henry VIII The British held Boulogne and Calais as positions.

Germany has been around only since the 1860's when Bismark began to unite the German States into modern Germany. and the Kaiser's decided that they needed to be as good as the biggest kid on the block , England and her navy . So in the 1900's Germany began to build and expand it's navy this started an arms race that almost bankrupted the nations involved and started WWI.

It has been shown the principals in the war were looking for a way to back away from war in August of 1914 and a relaxation of German War Aims on Belgium would have lessened Frances need to invade Belgium . But the war would have begun in some other place such as Alsace or Lorraine or any other place along the Franco-German Frontier. Then Britain would have entered the War anyway and Germany would have invaded Belgium anyway.

You see Belgium on the best invasion route from Germany into France and the other way.

Answer 3

I would imagine that the British government would have been moved to military intervention had France annexed Belgium during the 19th Century.

A long-considered foreign policy aim of Britain was to preserve a balance-of-power in which one European power didn't become too powerful. Britain's involvement in the Crimean War was due to the British fear of Russia becoming too powerful.

There was a sustained period of naval rearmament in the 1850s due to rivalry between Britain and France. French territorial expansion in Europe would likely have caused a significant war.

The Anglo-French Alliance of 1904 was a realisation that the new unified German state was becoming the greater threat. The German invasion of Belgium and capturing Belgian strategic naval bases and harbours brought Britain into World War One. Britain feared that Belgium could be used as a cross-Channel invasion portal.

Britain's guarantee of Belgium's independence lies in its desire that Belgium not be annexed by France or Prussia (later Germany) as it would make either country too powerful.

Answer 4

Hard to say. There is plenty of precedent - centuries of wars between Britain and France. But at the time I think they still would have remained focused on Germany as the real threat. As it turned out, a preemptive move into Belgium might have been smart.

Answer 5

In 1914 the Belgians made it clear that they would attack the first army that crossed their border; that included England if she landed troops even for defensive purposes. Before the Triple Entente (I think about 1905) if France had tried to go through Belgium to attack Germany, the British would have helped the Belgians and fought the French.

The Germans hoped the British would not honor their commitment but knew they would.

Answer 6

I can't speculate about what MIGHT have happened.

Certainly Britain declared war in 1939, because of an invasion of Poland, not Belgium. Since Poland is so far from France, a French invasion seems rather unlikely.