Articles of interest

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Another War Russia Provoked That Didn’t Go Well

Nicholas II on a 1913 stamp

 
A Russian stamp from around 1905



Under Czar Nicholas II Russia had a tendency to get into wars that really didn’t go well. The two notable ones are the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and World War I (1914-1918). Both contributed significantly to the fall of the Romanovs in 1917.

In the later 19th century Russia was working on getting a tighter grip on the far eastern part of the empire in Siberia. It wasn’t just to have a handy place to send troublemakers.

Since 1897 Russia had leased the Chinese port of Port Arthur, on a peninsula east of Beijing in northeastern China. It is also very close to the Korean Peninsula. Since the 1894-95 war between China and Japan, Japan was very nervous about Russian attempts to expand into Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula. As a result, Japan declared war on Russia in November, 1904.
 

 

The Meiji Emperor in 1896

Japan had been on a long-term program to become a modern industrialized nation and a military power. Access to Japan by the West had only opened in 1853 and some interest in the West began. With the accession of the Meiji Emperor in 1868 the shogun era ended and Japan launched upon their modernization. By the 1890’s they were a significant power in Asia, much more powerful than the aging, crumbling Chinese Empire.


Theodore Roosevelt, 1922 US stamp
Russia’s access to a warm water port has always been an obsession. Their northern coast is open only a few months of the year and is otherwise locked in by ice. Of course, with climate change that may change significantly.

Russia sent its Baltic fleet in November, 1904 to engage the Japanese. Sending troops via the Trans-Siberian Railroad was not possible because it wasn't finished. Oops. This was no small effort, as the British government refused the Russian fleet passage through the Suez Canal. This meant that the fleet had to sail nearly halfway around the world, all the way around Africa to Manchuria.

The war did not go well. Port Arthur was captured, more than half of the Russian fleet was destroyed, and 400,000 Russian casualties resulted.

The war nearly bankrupted the Russian government. This was another example of the incompetence of Nicholas II who assumed, naturally, that God was on the side of Russia. Personally he hated the Japanese, probably stemming from an attempt on his life by a Japanese citizen before he was Czar. His views of the Japanese were patently racist by today’s standards.
1909 Russian bond


The war didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and the US President at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, stepped in. He invited leaders of the two countries to the naval base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to negotiate an end to the war. He then left.for his home on Long Island to let them work it out. The result was Korea was recognized as an independent kingdom although it was soon annexed by Japan. This was the first time an Asian nation defeated a European power in war.

After the war Russia borrowed millions of rubles to pay for the debt that nearly bankrupted the country. In 1909 they issued a bond of 525,000,000 rubles, a staggering amount at the time. In today's dollars this would be $8.1 billion dollars. I have one of the bonds from this issue. The dividends were paid up to the end of 1918 but the coupons for the last two payments are still with the certificate. This is because the Bolshevik government cancelled all of the debt from the Czarist era.

Starting with the Crimean War in 1854-56 Russia has had a history of entering wars that went badly. Ukraine is just one example. Tragically, many people are dying because of this folly.


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