So, the drive behind the 1897 Naval Law was a short colonial conflict (which the British lost leaving the Boer republics independent) 16 years earlier?
I suspect it is the Jameson Raid (1895?) that was a factor.
Your missing the point. For some reason, you want single point of persuasion. So lets flip to a more modern war, and you can see why these style questions don't really make sense. Was the second American Invasion of Iraq caused by 9/11, Saddam's first invasion, the fact there is so much oil in the Persian Gulf, Israel lobby, Saddam not following UN resolutions, the attempted assassination of Bush I, Bush II wanting to finish his dad's work, the human tendency to revert to previous somewhat related plans, group think, defense contracts wanting larger budgets, etc, etc? This is exactly the style of question that you ask. It hides history, instead of helping us understand the pattern.
The Royal Navy always had a bad guy to justify naval spending. In the 1880s it was Russia was going to defeat the Royal Navy in a single day and land 200K troops in the midlands in a single day.
So until we get to the the German Naval Law 1906 AND these ships were built, the Germans coastline was not secure from the UK close in dominating much less Germany doing anything to the UK and the Royal Navy. So we have a process where the Germans respond to a lot of items and pass a Naval Law 1898. It was a very modest law driven by as much a need to defend the coast as anything else. Only in a some strange fantasy world was this navy a threat to the UK, no more than the BEF was a threat to conquer Germany in a 1-to-1 war.
Then we get the Second Boer War. Another Naval Bill 1900. Again, German navy was not a real threat, but RN used this bill to switch its PR for funding. RN also starts about decade long process of switching from France as main enemy in planning and deployment to Germany.
Then we have series of Colonial issues, series of bombastic statements by British leaders, and major military operations right off German Coasts. So we get even a bigger Naval bill in 1906.
Process repeats a couple more time, and was actually dying down as the Germans proved consistently willing to fund a BB fleet about 60% of size of UK, and UK was unwilling to keep raising funding to get level below this level.
Again, UK started this disagreement with its long-term ally for no good reason. And trying to have single factor analysis of cause cast more darkness than light.
I used to believe your position since it is what is taught in school and is popular in books. But once I read enough, I learned it was false. If you want to see the truth, here is the easy way. Go put all these events in a spreadsheet and track them by month, year. Put actual and proposed size of each navy, each month. Then look at the points you think
- Germany can defend its coast against France
- Germany can defend its coast against Russia
- Germany might be able to defend coast against UK.
- Germany would be able to defend coast against UK
- Germany can actually threaten UK coast (Never)
Look at the data. Remember that while A preceding B does not prove causality, it does prove B did not cause A. It is provable to a scientific standard that the size of the German Navy did not cause the British hostility since the Germans navy never was big enough to threaten the UK. The data will strongly suggest that the UK hostility cause to a large extent the increase in funding for the German navy. And if you read widely, you will see there is primary data to support this in the histories.
And I get the high emotions on the issue. The British threw away their empire based on turning a long term ally into an enemy. And the ally that help them the most since it had what the UK was missing, the best army. If the UK need to end splendid isolationism, the logical alliance to join was whichever one the Germans were in. And if the UK can trust France to keep the Med Sea open in a war, then the UK can trust the Germans at sea. There is this easy to visualize ATL where the UK does not attack the Boers and the UK is neutral to supporting in German colonial ambitions, and the British Empire is still around.