"The conflict between the Empires of Russia and Japan can be seen as inevitable. As soon as Russian and Japanese made contact with each other there was hostilities, dating back centuries to a Russian explorer who burned Japanese villages in the northern islands after his request for formal relations was rebuffed. When Russian power began to spread across Siberia to the Far East, Russian and Japanese settlers came into conflict over the possession of Sakhalin island. These early tensions meant that when the Empire of Japan emerged from a long period of being largely isolated and determined, through the Meiji Restoration, to become a major power and not a European colony, Russia was at a disadvantage. From day one, the Japanese were, albeit carefully, willing to deal with powers such as France and Great Britain but were less well disposed toward Russia. For the Russians, geography made Japan a natural enemy. The Russian Empire faced a similar problem in the east as in the west which was being cut off from the oceans; the great highway of nations. The driving, ever-present goal of Russian foreign policy in the Far East was the acquisition of an ice-free port on the Pacific. This proved problematic but Japan was an additional problem as even when Russia obtained such a port, the geographic placement of the Japanese islands meant that so long as Japan was not under Russian control, it could easily shut off access to such a port and render it useless.
When Japan began to modernize and industrialize it, of course, needed resources it had never needed before and the growth in the Japanese population that accompanied the rising standard of living also caused concern over food shortages. Both led Japan to take an increased interest in the resources and farmland of Korea. The rising power of Japan also caused tension with the traditional super-power of East Asia; China, at the time the Great Qing Empire. Eventually, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, officially over the independence of Korea (actually whether Korea would be dominated by China or Japan). The path toward a war between Japan and Russia came into view as soon as the war with China was over. Most had assumed the Chinese would easily defeat the Japanese, a people the Chinese had traditionally held in contempt. Yet, these people were looking at things like land and population rather than who had the better grasp of modern weapons and tactics. In the end, Japan won the war quite handily and China was forced to make peace on Japanese terms. It should also be remembered that, by this time, almost the whole of China had been divided up into spheres of influence for the major European imperial powers, roughly these were; France in the south, Britain in the middle and Russia in the north.
It did not escape the notice of Japan that Russian power was expanding in East Asia rapidly. Mongolia was recognized by the other European powers as being within the Russian sphere of influence and later Manchuria was as well. Following the Boxer Rebellion, the Russian Empire took control of Manchuria, making it a part of the Russian Empire in all but name. Russia invested heavily in the region and was intent to see such investments protected. The Trans-Siberian railway was also soon under construction in 1891 which would enable Russia to transfer its vast strength from one side of Asia to the other. In 1896 Russia obtained permission from China to build railroads across Manchuria which would bring Russian power extremely close to the doorstep of Japan. These were concerns for Japan but not the sort of thing that could not be worked through. However, after the Sino-Japanese War, that situation changed. The Japanese victory removed Korea from Chinese control and Japan obtained considerable concessions, such as the island of Formosa, but most significantly for Russia, the Liaotung Peninsula on the Manchurian coast. No sooner was the ink dry on the documents then Russia, Germany and France joined together to declare that Japan had gained too much from China and demanded that some of the spoils of victory be returned…"
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