The Russians, who saw their presence in Manchuria as an essential bulwark against a Japanese attack on Siberia, refused to budge. The Japanese became concerned that the Russians would keep expanding throughout East Asia, even into Korea. This, ultimately, precipitated the Russo-Japanese War. “Only with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway by 1891 could Russian geopolitics in Northeast Asia be realized.” Especially in Eastern Siberia, roads were impassable and, therefore, could not be used for troop transfers,” Stolberg writes.
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“Before the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Siberian infrastructure for a military and economic expansion to the Pacific shores was poor. This move would not have been possible without the Trans-Siberian Railway. This suspicion turned into full-blown certainty in 1900, when Russia sent 170,000 troops into Manchuria and occupied the entire province (in response to the Boxer Rebellion in China). Japan interpreted this as a sign that Russia had designs on Manchuria, territory Japan wanted for itself. It would also make it easer for Russia to trade in Manchuria. The proposed expansion, called the Chinese Eastern Railway, would shorten the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway by 800 miles. Witte made things worse in 1896, when he negotiated a deal with China to expand the railroad into the northern Manchuria region.
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“But when Russia embarked on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway … Japan was alarmed.” “As long as Russia’s center of gravity remained well to the western, European part of its territory, it posed no threat to Japan’s territorial ambitions,” scholars Felix Patrikeeff and Harry Shukman write. The more the country turned its eyes east, the more worried Japanese policymakers became about Russian intentions. Prior to the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Russia seemed like it was mostly focused on European affairs. This, from the Japanese point of view, was quite alarming. So in 1891, Russia broke ground on a railroad that would connect one side of its immense bulk to the other. Witte’s ideas dovetailed with those of Czar Alexander III, who saw the growth of a Russian population in Siberia as a way to secure the country’s eastern border. A railway, he thought, would allow Russia to settle Siberia, harvest its natural resources, and expand trade with East Asia.
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Witte believed that political power came from economic power, and saw Siberia as an underexploited region of the Russian Empire. The Trans-Siberian Railway was the pet project of Sergei Witte, an influential minister in the Russian government. “The Russo-Japanese War cannot be understood without the Siberian background.” How a railroad kicked off a war “This military conflict was the first significant outburst in the Russo-Japanese rivalry that started during the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway,” wires Eva-Maria Stolberg, an associate professor in Russian history at the University of Duisburg-Essen, in her scholarly work. This lesser-known war, with such far-reaching consequences, started with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The war marked the first time a non-Western power defeated a Western state in the modern era, and helped give rise to the US-Japanese rivalry that culminated in the Pearl Harbor attack. It was also the cause of a major war, which turned into one of Russia’s most humiliating defeats: the Russo-Japanese War starting in 1904. The 5,772 miles of track connect Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. Begun in 1891 and completed 100 years ago today (per Google Doodle), it’s the longest railroad line in the world. The Trans-Siberian Railway is one of the most impressive engineering feats in modern history.