Anglo-Japanese Alliance

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was a military pact between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Japan, signed on January 30, 1902 at Lansdowne House in London by British Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne and Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu, and in force until 1923. It was notable as an agreement concluded on comparatively equal terms between a Western power and a non-Western nation, reflecting Japan's rapid modernization under the Meiji era, and it allowed Britain to end its policy of diplomatic isolation while concentrating on defending India and competing in the naval arms race, and it aimed to check Russian expansion in East Asia. The alliance was renewed in 1905 and 1911 and helped bring Japan into the First World War on the Allied side, but growing British distrust of Japanese ambitions in Asia led to its termination in 1923.