The Imperial Japanese Navy Sinks the Russian Fleet: Manchuria 1904/05
In 1897, to gain a warm water port on the Pacific Coast Russia took control of an undefended area at the tip of the Chinese Peninsular of Liaotung in southern Manchuria, which included Port Arthur. The Chinese were in no fit state to oppose Russia, and in the end leased the area to the Russians. It would become, by 1904, a bad move.
When Theodore Roosevelt, came to office in 1901, the 1899 US ‘Open Door’ policy of trade with the Far East had been slammed shut by the Russians, at which, as Roosevelt’s biographer, Nathan Miller, tells us, “…Roosevelt privately fumed against these arrogant and treacherous moves [by the Russians], but there was little the United States could do about them…”, and the American people would certainly not have supported an intervention by the US Military to kick the Russians out of Manchuria.
Japan saw things a bit differently.
In an age of treaties and counter treaties, and of national expansion, Russia’s take-over of that small part of Manchuria worried Japan hugely; and initially Japan offered to recognise Russia’s dominance in Manchuria if they, the Russians, would agree to Japan taking over Korea. Russia refused, instead demanding that a buffer zone between Russia and Japan, north of the 39th Parallel in Korea, be created. The Japanese Government…
