page_title: Edwardian era
section_title: Naval race with Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Edwardian era / Foreign relations / Naval race with Germany
caption_attribution_description: English: HMS Dreadnought (British Battleship, 1906) underway, circa 1906-07; Removed caption read: Photo # NH 61017 &#160;&#160;&#160; HMS Dreadnought (British battleship, 1906)
context_page_description: The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910, and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victorian era. Her son and successor, Edward VII, was already the leader of a fashionable elite that set a style influenced by the art and fashions of continental Europe. Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun really never set on the British flag."
  The Liberals returned to power in 1906 and made significant reforms. Below the upper class, the era was marked by significant shifts in politics among sections of society that had largely been excluded from power, such as labourers, servants, and the industrial working class. Women started to play more of a role in politics.
  The Edwardian era was the last period of British history to be named after the reigning monarch. After him, the reigns of George V and George VI did not get named Georgian era, this name reserved for the time of the 18th-century kings of that name.
context_section_description: After 1805 the dominance of Britain's Royal Navy was unchallenged;  in the 1890s Germany decided to match it. Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849 – 1930) dominated German naval policy from 1897 until 1916. Before the German Empire formed in 1871, Prussia never had a real navy, nor did the other German states.  Tirpitz turned the modest little fleet into a world-class force that could threaten the British Royal Navy. The British responded with new technology typified by the Dreadnought revolution. It made every battleship obsolete and, supplemented by the global network of coaling stations and telegraph cables, enabled Britain to stay well in the lead in naval affairs.
  Apart from a determination to retain a strong naval advantage, the British lacked a military strategy or plans for a major war.
caption: The British Dreadnought (1906) made all battleships obsolete because it had ten long-range 12-inch big guns, mechanical computer-like range finders, high speed turbine engines that could make 21 knots, and armour plates 11 inches thick.
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