In 1904, Japan and Tsarist Russia fought over Chinese territory for their interests, and in the end both sides paid a huge price.
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the former enemies actually sat together and secretly signed four treaties, but the purpose was to better carve up China.
Looking back at this period of history, one cannot help but sigh: Dignity is only above the edge of the sword, and truth is only within the range of cannons! So, what kind of story is there? Let's talk about it today.
The intervention of the three countries in Liao caused dissatisfaction in Japan, and World War 0 broke out
After the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895, which replaced the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Reconciliation.
In the treaty, the Qing government agreed to cede the Liaodong Peninsula, the entire island of Taiwan and its affiliated islands, and the Penghu Islands to Japan, and also agreed to pay Japan 200 million taels of silver as military compensation.
At the exchange rate at the time, 200 million silver was equivalent to about 360 million yen, and 90% of this huge amount was spent on Japan's military construction, of which nearly 40% was spent on naval expansion.
The defeat of the Qing government in the war was not only a land reparation, but also a complete departure of Japan on the road of colonial expansion. However, before Japan had time to rejoice, three European countries, including Tsarist Russia, Germany, and France, protested.
They believed that Japan's occupation of the Liaodong Peninsula was an infringement of the interests of the great powers in China, among which Tsarist Russia was the most active.
Although Russia is defined as a European country, most of its territory is in Asia, and the vast northern part of the continent has naturally become fat in the eyes of Tsarist Russia.
Since the middle and late Kangxi period, successive Russian emperors have been eyeing the northern territories of the mainland, and it is naturally impossible for the Japanese to occupy this part of the interests.
Not long after the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, three European countries came forward to demand that Japan return the Liaodong Peninsula to the Qing government, and threatened that if the emperor refused, they would cut off the Japanese army's water communications.
At that time, Japan's national strength was relatively weak and could only swallow its anger, but thanks to the huge reparations, Japan's military strength was greatly improved in the next 10 years, and with it came the ambition to dominate Asia and even the world.
The intervention of the three countries in the return of Liao has already triggered contradictions between Japan and Russia, and war between the two sides is inevitable, and it is only a matter of time before the two sides are left......
In February 1904, the Japanese army attacked the Russian army in the northeast, marking the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, which is also known as the "Zero World War".
This war was provoked by Japan on its own initiative, and Tsar Nicholas II did not expect that a small East Asian country would dare to declare war on Russia.
At that time, Russia's naval strength ranked third in the world, Japan only ranked seventh, and other military forces were far above Japan.
Facts have proved that Russia underestimated Japan's military strength development and expansion ambitions over the past 10 years, and only six weeks after the two sides went to war, one of Russia's senior generals, Kuropatkin, said: I would rather sell Port Arthur and the South Manchurian Railway than fight Japan.
Under these circumstances, the Japanese pursued the victory, while the Russians retreated. Two months after the start of the war, the two sides fought fiercely for Port Arthur, and the Russian army held out in Port Arthur for 25 days, and the soldiers were almost dead and had to surrender to Japan.
The Russo-Japanese War was fought until the second half of 1905, ostensibly between Japan and Russia, but in fact the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France were involved, and the Emperor had already fallen into the thigh of Britain before deciding to start the Russo-Japanese War.
The United States has always coveted the Far East market, and learning of the alliance between Japan and Britain has also provided a lot of economic support to the two countries.
Germany has its own sphere of influence in the Far East and is on the side of Russia, and France has always been a loyal ally of Russia, but these countries also have their own evil intentions.
In August 1905, representatives of Japan and Russia arrived in Portsmouth, USA, to negotiate an armistice, and on September 5, a treaty was signed, officially ending the Russo-Japanese War.
However, after the peaceful signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan and Russia made four secret agreements over the next 10 years regarding the division of the continent.
Japan and Russia signed four secret treaties to jointly divide China and divide their spheres of influence
Winston Churchill, a well-known British statesman, once said: A country has no permanent allies, let alone permanent enemies, only eternal interests.
This sentence is apt to describe Japan and Russia after the Russo-Japanese War, the two countries met each other on the battlefield, and invested a lot of troops to completely defeat each other.
However, after the signing of the "Portsmouth Treaty", they actually signed four secret treaties at the negotiating table again, and the content of the agreement was to jointly divide China.
The United States intervened in the Russo-Japanese War to protect its own interests in the Far East and to further infiltrate China, so it mediated between the two sides of the war.
The reason why Japan and Russia agreed to an armistice was that on the one hand they were willing to give the United States a face, and on the other hand, the country was about to run out of money.
At the beginning of the war, the Tsar's lack of prediction led to Russia's strategic mistakes and passive beatings, which led to the growing dissatisfaction of the people with the Tsar's rule.
Of course, Japan did not feel good, and invested 1.7 billion yuan in military spending in the 19-month war, half of which was borrowed from Britain and the United States.
At first, Japan wanted to make a big deal from Russia and demand war reparations from the other side, but Nicholas II openly said, "If you don't want money, we will continue to fight." ”
From this detail, it can be seen that neither Japan nor Russia is convinced of the other, but why are they huddling together to keep warm? The reason lies in the United States.
With the development of economic strength and the increasing influence of the United States in international affairs, it is impossible to give up such a piece of fat in East Asia.
Once the United States enters, it will inevitably infringe on the interests of Japan and Russia, and the cake is so big that it will not have enough to eat, and the United States will starve to death if it intervenes in a sideways?
Based on this, the Tsar's attitude was not so tough, and he took the initiative to extend an olive branch to the Japanese emperor to show goodwill to him, and the same is true for Japan as a whole.
As a result, in the second year after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the Tsar and the Emperor began to engage in several conspiracies to divide up Northeast Asia and the Northeast region.
In 1907, Tsarist Russia took the lead in courting and agreed to divide the three eastern provinces and a large area north of Inner Mongolia into two parts, north and south, with the south side to Japan and the north side to Tsarist Russia.
They also gave each other a big gift, and the tsar said that since Japan occupied the peninsula, he would never interfere, and in return the emperor supported Russian interests in Outer Mongolia, and made a plan to divide China with a smile.
Three years later, the infiltration of the United States in the Far East has become more and more obvious, and it is naturally impossible for Tsarist Russia and Japan to sit back and sit together to divide their spheres of influence again, and this secret treaty has provided Japan with an opportunity to completely occupy the Korean Peninsula.
In 1912, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty issued an edict of abdication, and China's feudal era that lasted for more than 2,000 years officially came to an end.
The third secret talks between the two countries were to divide the Mongolian region into two parts, east to west and west to Japan, and west to Russia.
When the First World War broke out in 1916, Russia was forced to get involved, and the Western Front was revived, so in order to protect its vested interests in the Far East and China, it once again took the initiative to contact Japan for the fourth conspiracy, the purpose of which was to stabilize Japan.
This time, the two countries were even more ambitious, and directly divided the northwest region and the North China Plain into their spheres of influence.
The First World War subverted the world pattern, and the rise of Japan brewed a war of aggression against China
Looking back at the history of those years, the Russo-Japanese War not only changed the fate of Japan, Tsarist Russia and China, but also set these three countries on different paths.
The war became a milestone victory on the road to Japan's rise, a small country defeated Russia, which was dozens of times its size, and also won the support of the British Empire and the United States, and it was a beautiful victory in front of the whole world.
Russia's poor performance in the Russo-Japanese War provoked opposition from the people at home, and the October Revolution was brewing.
The First World War upended the world and directly led to the outbreak of the October Revolution in Russia, which overthrew the rule of the Tsar and established the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922.
As a new regime, the Soviet Union did not recognize the unequal treaties signed before, but it still supported the independence of Outer Mongolia, believing that with Outer Mongolia it had a strategic buffer, and in fact still coveted the land.
Upon learning of this, Japan did not take further action and maintained a wait-and-see attitude, but neither country gave up the Far East, while the mainland was completely reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
Beginning in April 1920, Japan gradually sent some high-ranking officers to Northeast China, with the aim of safeguarding its vested interests in China and further encroaching on the mainland.
After the Russo-Japanese War was decided, Japan set up an army under the pretext of protecting the rights and interests of the South Manchurian Railway, which was called the "Manchurian Railway Garrison".
At first, this army was small in number, about 20,000 men together with another division stationed there, and it was under the command of the governor of Kwantung.
Later, Japan abolished the Kwantung Governor's Office and established the Kwantung Command, which greatly improved the status of the Kwantung Army, and although the scope of activities was still in the northeast for five years, the Kwantung Army was expanded in 1926.
Compared with Japan's ambitions, the Soviet Union, which had just come out of World War I, was busy with the construction of the domestic economy, and the Japanese government saw that it had an opportunity to take advantage of, so it first planned the Huanggutun incident, which led to the death of Zhang Zuolin, the "king of the Northeast."
On the night of September 18, 1931, the top brass of the Kwantung Army planned the explosion of Wicker Lake, known as the "918 Incident", and the mainland entered the road of resistance against Japan, among which the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army was one of the most famous teams, and they wrote a legendary anti-Japanese story with a heroic and fearless spirit.
On July 7, 1937, China entered the stage of resistance against Japan, and a small country vowed to destroy China within three months. Since then, 40,000 Chinese people have united and embarked on the road of resisting Japan and saving the country......
In general, from the First Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War, Japan's ambitions were inflated step by step, and the Western powers, including Tsarist Russia, also fueled Japan's ambitions.
Looking back at that sad history now, I can't help but sigh that if you are backward, you will be beaten, even if you don't have the heart to invade others, as long as you don't have the strength, you will inevitably be divided by others.
What do you think differently about this?