Influential individuals disrupted attempts at conciliation. In 1902, Japan signed a treaty with Britain that secured British intervention should any country join Russia in a war against Japan, effectively removing the threat of other European powers’ involvement if hostilities erupted. The potential of the railway as an instrument of economic control, colonisation and military policy caused alarm among Japanese leaders.
Tensions increased as Russia founded the Russo-Korean Bank, demanded a twenty-five-year lease from China of the Liaotung Peninsula for itself and moved troops into Manchuria in response to the Boxer Uprising.įurthermore, in 1897 Russia had embarked on railway building on Chinese territory to open it up to commercial exploitation. An alliance of Russia, France and Germany, however, pressured Japan to give back the peninsula in return for increased reparations. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan eliminated Chinese power in Korea and won control over the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria. Russian expansionism and rapid Japanese military growth and modernisation generated clashes over military, political and commercial interests in East Asia.
The war between Russia and Japan was provoked by strategic issues, the international context and personal factors.
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