Meanwhile the first collision between the white and the yellow races took place on the River Amur, which the Chinese claimed as their own. At first the Russians easily prevailed; but in the year 1689 they suffered a check. New vigour was then manifested in the councils of Pekin, and the young Czar, Peter the Great, in his longing for triumphs over Swedes and Turks, thought lightly of gains at the expense of the "celestials." He therefore gave to Russian energies that trend westwards and southwards, which after him marked the reigns of Catharine II., Alexander I., and, in part, of Nicholas I. The surrender of the Amur valley to China in 1689 ended all efforts of Russia in that direction for a century and a half. Many Russians believe that the earlier impulse was sounder and more fruitful in results for Russia than her meddling in the wars of the French Revolution and Empire.
Not till 1846 did Russia resume her march down the valley of the Amur; and then the new movement was partly due to British action. At that time the hostility of Russia and Britain was becoming acute on Asiatic and Turkish questions. Further, the first Anglo-Chinese War (1840-42) led to the cession of Hong-Kong to the distant islanders, who also had five Chinese ports opened to their trade. This enabled Russia to pose as the protector of China, and to claim points of vantage whence her covering wings might be extended over that Empire. The statesmen of Pekin had little belief in the genuineness of these offers, especially in view of the thorough exploration of the Amur region and the Gulf of Okhotsk which speedily ensued.
The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and confided it to an able governor, Muravieff (1847). The new departure was marked by the issue of an imperial ukase (1851) ordering the Russian settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is, to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in the more exposed positions. Three years later Muravieff ordered 6000 Cossacks to migrate from these trans-Baikal settlements to the land newly acquired from China on the borders of Manchuria[484]. In the same year the Russians established a station at the mouth of the Amur, and in 1853 gained control over part of the Island of Saghalien.
For the present, then, everything seemed to favour Russia's forward policy. The tribes on the Amur were passive; an attack of an Anglo-French squadron on Petropaulovsk, a port in Kamchatka, failed (Aug. 1854); and the Russians hoped to be able to harry British commerce from this and other naval bases in the Pacific. Finally, the rupture with England and France, and the beginning of the Taeping rebellion in China, induced the Court of Pekin to agree to Russia's demands for the Amur boundary, and for a subsequent arrangement respecting the ownership of the districts between the mouth of that river and the bay on which now stands the port of Vladivostok (May 15, 1858). The latter concession left the door open for Muravieff to push on Russia's claims to this important wedge of territory. His action was characteristic. He settled Cossacks along the River Ussuri, a southern tributary of the Amur, and, by pressing ceaselessly on the celestials (then distracted by a war with England and France), he finally brought them to agree to the cession of the district around the new settlement, which was soon to receive the name of Vladivostok ("Lord of the East"). He also acquired for the Czar the Manchurian coast down to the bounds of Korea (November 2, 1860). Russia thus threw her arms around the great province which had provided China with her dynasty and her warrior caste, and was still one of the wealthiest and most cherished lands of that Empire. Having secured these points of vantage in Northern China, the Muscovites could await with confidence further developments in the decay of that once formidable organism.
Such, in brief, is the story of Russian expansion from the Urals to the Sea of Japan. Probably no conquest of such magnitude was ever made with so little expenditure of blood and money. In one sense this is its justification, that is, if we view the course of events, not by the limelight of abstract right, but by the ordinary daylight of expediency. Conquests which strain the resources of the victors and leave the vanquished longing for revenge, carry their own condemnation. On the other hand, the triumph of Russia over the ill-organised tribes of Siberia and northern Manchuria reminds one of the easy and unalterable methods of Nature, which compels a lower type of life to yield up its puny force for the benefit of a higher. It resembles the victory of man over quadrupeds, of order over disorder, of well-regulated strength over weakness and stupidity.
Muravieff deserves to rank among the makers of modern Russia. He waited his time, used his Cossack pawns as an effective screen to each new opening of the game, and pushed his foes hardest when they were at their weakest. Moreover, like Bismarck, he knew when to stop. He saw the limit that separated the practicable from the impracticable. He brought the Russian coast near to the latitudes where harbours are free from ice; but he forbore to encroach on Korea--a step which would have brought Japan on to the field of action. The Muscovite race, it was clear, had swallowed enough to busy its digestive powers for many a year; and it was partly on his advice that Russian North America was sold to the United States.
Still, Russia's advance southwards towards ice-free ports was only checked, not stopped. In 1861 a Russian man-of-war took possession of the Tshushima Isles between Korea and Japan, but withdrew on the protest of the British admiral. Six years later the Muscovites strengthened their grip on Saghalien, and thereafter exercised with Japan joint sovereignty over that island. The natural result followed. In 1875 Russia found means to eject her partner, the Japanese receiving as compensation undisputed claim to the barren Kuriles, which they already possessed[485].
Even before this further proof of Russia's expansiveness, Japan had seen the need of adapting herself to the new conditions consequent on the advent of the Great Powers in the Far East. This is not the place for a description of the remarkable Revolution of the years 1867-71. Suffice it to say that the events recounted above undoubtedly helped on the centralising of the powers in the hands of the Mikado, and the Europeanising of the institutions and armed forces of Japan. In face of aggressions by Russia and quarrels with the maritime Powers, a vigorous seafaring people felt the need of systems of organisation and self-defence other than those provided by the rule of feudal lords, and levies drilled with bows and arrows. The subsequent history of the Far East may be summed up in the statement that Japan faced the new situation with the brisk adaptability of a maritime people, while China plodded along on her old tracks with a patience and stubbornness eminently bovine.
The events which finally brought Russia and Japan into collision arose out of the obvious need for the construction of a railway from St. Petersburg to the Pacific having its terminus on an ice-free port. Only so could Russia develop the resources of Siberia and the Amur Province. In the sixties and seventies trans-continental railways were being planned and successfully laid in North America. But there is this difference: in the New World the iron horse has been the friend of peace; in the Far East of Asia it has hurried on the advent of war; and for this reason, that Russia, having no ice-free harbour at the end of her great Siberian line, was tempted to grasp at one which the yellow races looked on as altogether theirs.
The miscalculation was natural. The rapid extension of trade in the Pacific Ocean seemed to invite Russia to claim her full share in a development that had already enriched England, the United States, and, later, Germany and France; and events placed within the Muscovite grasp positions which fulfilled all the conditions requisite for commercial prosperity and military and naval domination.