[3] Pauline Tompkins, American-Russian Relations in the Far East (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 21.
The Russo-Japanese War
A candid comparison would reveal a striking similarity between the aggressions of Czarist Russia in the early 1900’s and those of Soviet Russia half a century later. The expression “cold war” was not current in 1903, but the account of Russia’s threats, seizures and violated agreements has a dismally familiar aspect to the modern reader. Rudyard Kipling paid a bitter tribute at the turn of the century to these techniques of the Russian Bear in his lines:
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little swinish eyes;
When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
That is the time of peril—the time of the Truce of the Bear!
Following the Sino-Japanese War, the truce between Russia and Japan in “independent” Korea was broken by both nations whenever a favorable opportunity arose. Both of them intrigued constantly at Seoul. For a time, indeed, the Korean government was directed from the Russian legation with the backing of Russian troops.
Twice, in 1896 and 1898, Russia and Japan signed agreements reaffirming Korea’s independence and promising anew to withdraw their forces. These pacts were promptly violated by both contestants for power, but Japan prepared more realistically for the forthcoming struggle. On a February night in 1904, without the formality of a declaration of war, a Japanese squadron attacked the Russian warships anchored at Port Arthur. This surprise blow was followed shortly by the landing of Japanese troops at Chemulpo. They advanced to the frontier and defeated the Russians in the battle of the Yalu—a victory that has been compared with the battle of Valmy in the French Revolution as a landmark of history.
Certainly the West was made aware that an Oriental nation had risen to the stature of a world power for the first time in modern history. The value of Korea as a strategic springboard was demonstrated when Japanese land and sea forces isolated the fortresses on the Liaotung Peninsula. Port Arthur fell after a bloody siege of 6 months. Next, the Japanese invaders of Manchuria defeated an army of 350,000 Russians and inflicted 150,000 casualties in the four-week battle of Mukden. This was the decisive clash on land; and in the one-sided naval battle of Tsushima, Admiral Togo annihilated the Baltic fleet which the Czar had ordered on the long voyage to the Pacific.
The end came abruptly in the summer of 1905. In the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on 5 September, Russia ceded the southern part of Sakhalin Island to the victors while recognizing their “paramount” interests in Korea. All rights in the Liaotung Peninsula went to Japan as well as important concessions in Manchuria. Not much was left to Russia in the Far East except a precarious foothold in northern Manchuria.
Korea as a Japanese Colony
For 5 years Japan kept up a pretense of a protectorate in Korea. Then, in 1910, came outright annexation.