The Making of Modern Japan / An Account of the Progress of Japan from Pre-feudal Days to Constitutional Government & the Position of a Great Power, With Chapters on Religion, the Complex Family System, Education, &c.

by John Harington Gubbins

During the Shimonoséki negotiations the influence of the military party, fresh from its success in the war, had been exerted to secure an even larger cession of territory on the mainland than that eventually agreed upon. The discussions which took place on this point between the military leaders and the Japanese plenipotentiary, the late Prince Itō, whose enemies could never accuse him of any leaning towards Chauvinism, resembled those which took place between Bismarck and von Moltke at the close of the Franco-German war of 1870. In this instance Prince Itō’s more moderate views prevailed, with the result recorded in the Treaty.

Had the Japanese Government been gifted with a prescience enabling it to anticipate the series of aggressive acts on the part of European Powers for which its attempt to annex territory on the Chinese mainland gave the signal, the attempt might, possibly, never have been made. Had it even foreseen the determined opposition of certain European Powers to the cession of even this extent of Chinese territory on the mainland, it is probable that its demands would have undergone still further modification. The ambition of the German Emperor to play a more active part in foreign questions, and to secure for Germany an influence abroad commensurate, as it seemed to him, with its dignity as an Empire, not to mention the steps he was taking about this time to give effect to his intentions by commencing the construction of what was soon to become a powerful navy, had not escaped the attention of Japanese Ministers. Nor had his warning in regard to what he described as the Yellow Peril passed unnoticed. Of the general trend of European diplomacy they were not ignorant, but of its special bearing on Far Eastern matters they were, apparently, not fully aware, in spite of the indication of Russia’s interest in Manchuria furnished by her Circular Note to the Great Powers in February, 1895, and the warning of impending trouble said to have been given by Germany to Japan in the following month before the armistice was concluded. The possible extension to the Far East of the mischievous activity of the Kaiser, the designs of Russia, and the results which might be expected to follow the conclusion of the recent Entente between that Power and France, were points that seem to have been insufficiently realized.

The Treaty of Shimonoséki was signed, as we have seen, on the 17th April. Eight days later the Russian and French Ministers in Tōkiō presented to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (the late Count Mutsu) identical Notes advising the Japanese Government “to renounce the definite possession of the Liaotung peninsula,” on the ground that “its possession by Japan would be a menace to Peking, and render illusory the independence of Korea.” On the same day a similar Note was presented by the German Minister. For the sudden intervention of these three Powers the Japanese Government was unprepared. The quickness with which it followed the signature of the Treaty, no less than the form of procedure adopted, left no doubt as to the serious intentions of the Powers concerned; while the association of Germany in the matter lent an ominous weight to the protest. Convinced that this was no idle threat, and realizing the futility of opposing a demand made by the three chief military Powers of Europe, the Japanese Government at once gave way, and consented to relinquish this portion of Chinese territory in return for an additional indemnity of 30,000,000 Kuping taels, equivalent to about £6,000,000. A Convention to this effect was signed at Peking on November 8th, 1895. It provided for the payment of the additional indemnity by the 25th of that month, and for the evacuation of the Liaotung peninsula to be completed within three months from that date.

The mention of “the Liaotung peninsula” in the protest of the three Powers is the first we hear of the term. It was not used by the Chinese, nor did it occur in the Shimonoséki Treaty. There the ceded territory is called “the southern portion of the province of Fêng-t’ien” (otherwise known as Shengking, and Moukden, though the latter is really the name of the provincial Capital), the Treaty frontier (never delimited) running roughly from Yingkow on the river Liao to the Yalu river, and to the north of the towns of Fenghwangcheng and Haicheng. But the Chinese used the term Liaotung, which means “East of the river Liao,” in a vague way to signify the territory which lies to the left of that river; and foreign geographers, in ignorance of the meaning of the term, had applied it to the bay into which the river flows, which appears in atlases as the “Liaotung Gulf.” When the intervention took place, it was probably found convenient to make use in the Notes of protest of a term already given in foreign atlases to the bay that forms the western boundary of the territory in question. Hence the adoption of the term “the Liaotung peninsula,” which was an error in geographical nomenclature. Once adopted, or, as may be said, invented, the convenience of the term led to its employment again when the Russo-Chinese Agreement for the lease of Port Arthur was made in 1898, though the territory then leased was limited to what is now known as the peninsula of Kwantung. It reappears in the additional Russo-Chinese Agreement of the same year. From that time the term seems to have passed into general use, for we find it in the Portsmouth Treaty of 1905.

The intervention of the three Powers had far-reaching consequences, none of which, in all probability, were foreseen at the time by any of the Governments concerned, though each may have felt that it had established a claim to the goodwill of China. Four months after Japan had agreed to the retrocession of the territory ceded to her by the Shimonoséki Treaty Russia, who had been the prime mover in the matter, proceeded to lay China under further obligations by rendering her financial assistance which facilitated the liberation of her territory. This took the form of a Chinese loan of £15,000,000, floated in Paris under Russia’s guarantee.

In January, 1896, one of the consequences above mentioned was seen in the settlement of various questions which the French Government had been pressing on the attention of the Government of China for some time. These questions related to the rectification of the Tonkin frontier, and to railway and mining concessions in the provinces of Yunnan, Kwangsi and Kwantung. This was only an instalment of the recompense for her services which France was to obtain. The arrangement with France regarding the Tonkin frontier constituted a breach of the Burma Convention of 1886, and of a later Convention of 1894, regulating the boundaries separating British and Chinese territories, which provided, inter alia, that no portion of two small States assigned to China should be alienated to any other Power without previous agreement with Great Britain. The dispute which arose over this question was eventually settled—as between Great Britain and France—by the joint Declaration of January 15th, 1896, fixing the boundary between the possessions, or spheres of influence, of the two Powers as far as the Chinese frontier, and arranging for all privileges conceded by China in the provinces of Yunnan and Szechwan to the two Powers, respectively, under their Agreements with China of 1894 and 1895 to be made common to both Powers and their nationals; and—as between Great Britain and China—by an Agreement signed on February 4th, 1897, modifying the previous boundary in favour of Great Britain, and opening the West river, which flows into the sea at Canton, to foreign trade.

Russia was the next to profit. She had already decided in 1892 to construct what is now the Trans-Siberian Railway with the object of linking up the eastern and western extremities of the Empire, and thus aiding the development of Siberia, as well as strengthening her position on the Pacific coast. The line, as then projected, was to run from Chiliabinsk in the Ural Mountains to the south-western shore of Lake Baikal, and from the south-eastern shore of the lake to Vladivostok, following for some distance the course of the Amur river; communication across the lake to be maintained by vessels specially constructed for the purpose. Work was commenced at both ends of the railway, and when the Shimonoséki Treaty was signed the line had been finished as far east as Chita, a town south-east of Lake Baikal, and within two hundred miles of the Chinese frontier.

The war between China and Japan had served a useful purpose for Russia in revealing both the weakness of China and the strength and ambitions of Japan. To check these ambitions in the direction of Manchuria, and forestall Japan by establishing herself in the coveted territory, was the task to which she now directed her energies. In the preliminary step by which the retrocession of the Liaotung peninsula was effected she was, as we have seen, aided by both France and Germany. Between the latter and herself some sort of roughly formulated understanding seems to have been arrived at, described by Reventlow in his Deutschland’s Auswärtige Politik as a secret agreement between the Kaiser and the Tsar, the results of which were to be seen later. With France she worked throughout in the closest accord in the development of the new line of policy she had marked out for herself in the Far East, to which Belgian financiers also lent their co-operation. In return for Russia’s support in European affairs, as arranged by the Entente concluded between the two countries, France, for her part, was only too willing to encourage Russian aims in the Far East; and she was the more ready to do so, since this course assured her of reciprocal help in the prosecution of her own interests in China. Russia had been the connecting link between the three Powers whose intervention had restored the Liaotung peninsula to China. It was the relations she continued to maintain with her two associates after that incident—in the one case an informal understanding, in the other definite concerted action—which shaped the course of subsequent events in the Far East.

In Ma Mission en Chine, M. Gérard, who was French Minister in Peking during the period 1893–7, gives an account of the secret negotiations with China by means of which Russia succeeded in forestalling Japan in Manchuria. His book supplies the key to a correct understanding of the course of events, and throws much light on the political situation at the time of which he speaks. We learn how close was the accord then maintained between France and Russia; how skilfully Russia made use of the complaisant attitude of her two associates; and with what unscrupulous determination to compass her ends she traded on the weakness of China, on the claims she had established on the latter’s goodwill, and on the vanity and corruption of Chinese officials.

In May, 1896, according to M. Gérard, a secret Treaty was signed at St. Petersburg by Prince Lobanoff, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Li Hung Chang, Viceroy of Chihli, who had been sent to Russia as China’s representative at the Coronation of the late Tsar Nicholas II. The full text of this Treaty has never been published, but it promised to China Russian protection against Japan; China, in return for this guarantee of assistance, granting to Russia the privilege of using, in time of war, the harbours of Ta-lien Wan, in the Kwantung peninsula, and Kiaochow, in the province of Shantung, as bases for her fleet. Three months later (August 27th) a secret Railway Agreement was signed at St. Petersburg by Li Hung Chang and the representatives of the Russo-Chinese Bank. This institution, half the capital of which was French, had been created at the end of the previous year. M. Gérard explains that, in consequence of so large a portion of the bank’s capital being furnished by a French syndicate, the French Government insisted on receiving definite information regarding the negotiations in question. His statements regarding the French financial interest in the Russo-Chinese Bank are confirmed by other writers: by Chéradame, in his interesting book, Le Monde et La Guerre Russo-Japonaise, and by Débidour in Histoire Diplomatique de l’Europe. We learn also from M. Gérard that the Chinese Government had contributed, under the title of a deposit, 5,000,000 taels to the capital of the bank, explaining at the time, in answer to enquiries, that this sum represented China’s share of the cost of construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway; that for the building of this line a company called the Chinese Eastern Railway Company was formed, which, although Russo-Chinese in name, was a purely Russian concern; and that it was agreed that on the completion of the line in question the sum “deposited” by China should be returned to her. He adds that the President of the bank was Prince Ouchtomsky, who afterwards visited Peking at the head of a Russian Mission.