Japanese Although it is located in a marulo island country, it has always had the ambition to "dominate the world". After the Meiji Restoration , Japan's national strength has greatly improved and its ambitions have expanded rapidly. The mere island countries can no longer satisfy them. They have set their sights on Korean Peninsula, mainland China and the broader Asia.
After 
895 war victory , Japan began to take the idea of Tsarist Russia . In order to compete for the Korean Peninsula and Northeast my country, Japan and Tsarist Russia fought Russo-Japanese War . After Japan won, they wanted to speak out and ask Tsarist Russia for 3 billion compensation.
But this time, Japan's "claim" did not go so smoothly, because Tsar only answered a simple sentence, which was translated into Chinese, and only 10 words.
" The Three Kingdoms Interfered to Liao ", Japan intends to take action against Tsarist Russia
Those who like to watch Japanese film and television dramas may know that for a long time, Japan has always had shogunate system , Edo Shogunate —that is, Tokugawa Shogunate —is the last shogunate ruled by the martial family in Japanese history. After 265 years and 15 generations of generals of the vassal, the Japanese shogunate system centered on the Edo Shogunate was finally abolished. Japan entered the Meiji Restoration era.
After that, under the propaganda of the slogan "rich the country and strengthen the army, breeding and developing industries, and civilized culture", Japan accelerated its pace of progress towards capitalism , and at the same time, militarism in its country also began to rise.
Ambitions are rapidly expanding Japan is no longer satisfied with just "living" on a small island country. Their ambitions are in North Korea, in China, and dominating the world.
On the other hand, as a capitalist country that has just emerged, Japan is very eager to "divider the sphere of influence" and strengthen its strength through foreign aggression.
Since the war of invasion of Taiwan in 1874, Japan has tasted the sweetness of "external expansion", which has made Japan continue to run wildly on the road of foreign aggression.
1875, Japan knocked on the door to North Korea with force, and completely annexed Ryukyu in 1879, realizing the first step in its mainland policy.
As we all know, Japan's "mainland policy" is to conquer North Korea first, then use North Korea as a springboard to conquer China, go directly to India, and then dominate Asia and the world. Conquering China is the core and prerequisite of its "mainland policy".
so, after Japan knocked on North Korea's door, its next step was of course to invade China. In 1894, at noon, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 broke out and the Qing government fought in a hurry. Although the Qing government had a modern naval fleet at that time - Beiyang Navy , and the Beiyang Navy also fought bravely to kill the enemy, it was eventually defeated by Japan and was wiped out in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. After the defeat of the war, the Qing government was under pressure to sign a humiliating " Treaty of Shimonoseki" with Japan. It not only had to give Liaodong Peninsula , Taiwan Island , Penghu Island and other islands to Japan, but also had to compensate Japan for 200 million taels of silver, and open commercial ports and allow Japan to invest and set up factories.
After signing such a treaty, Japan can be said to have "returned with great victory", but they were not "happy" for too long. Because at that time, not only the Japanese were coveting Northeast China, but Tsarist Russia was also eyeing this place and was determined to win.
When Tsarist Russia learned that the Qing government was going to ced the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, it immediately couldn't sit still and pulled France and Germany to obstruct Japan from obtaining the Liaodong Peninsula, which we have learned in history textbooks.
Under the military pressure of the Three Kingdoms, Japan had no choice but to announce the abandonment of the Liaodong Peninsula. However, at the same time, Japan also asked the Qing government to compensate itself for 30 million taels of silver as a "redemption of Liao fees", and Qing government had no choice but to agree.
In other words, imperialism is competing for our country's territory, but in the end, it is impossible to steal that side and still ask our country to pay for money. Such humiliation is simply rare in history, which shows the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government.
After this incident, Tsarist Russia's power in the Northeast expanded rapidly. In 1900, Tsarist Russia also took the opportunity to occupy the northeast of my country. It not only began to go to the northeast to build the " Siberian Railway " leading to Vladivostok, but also forced China to "lease" Lushun and Dalian, extending the Middle East Railway here, and directly connecting to Yalu River .
Later, Tsarist Russia also "legalized" the illegal occupation of Northeast my country under the banner of "protecting railways".
"The intervention of the Three Kingdoms to return Liao" made Tsarist Russia proud, but made Japan feel that it had suffered a huge humiliation. Moreover, according to Japan's "mainland policy", they would never tolerate Tsarist Russia's monopoly of the Northeast, which laid hidden dangers for the subsequent Russo-Japanese War.
The Russo-Japanese War with heavy casualties
At that time, although the capitalist powers were all thinking of dividing our country, there were also differences between them - the main difference was that none of them wanted to see either side "take over" the interests in China.
Therefore, by 1902, the imperialist powers formed two "camps" on the issue of Far East : the British-Japanese alliance , backed by the United States, wanted to divide the Northeast from Russia, while Tsarist Russia, supported by Germany, must firmly safeguard its own interests.
Under such circumstances, in order to compete for China's Northeast, the war can be said to be about to break out.
1903, Japan asked Russia to recognize that it has "superior interests" in North Korea, and that Japan is only willing to recognize that Tsarist Russia has "special interests" in the Manchurian railway. Of course, Tsarist Russia will not agree to such conditions, and the negotiations between the two countries will eventually break down.
On February 8, 1904, the Japanese Navy raided the Tsarist Russian fleet stationed in Lushun, and the Russo-Japanese War broke out completely.
It is worth mentioning that the most "outrageous" thing about this war is that Japan and Tsarist Russia started a war for the interests of Northeast China and fought on our territory, but the Qing government actually declared "outside neutrality", probably "weakness and incompetence" is insufficient to describe the Qing government.
In fact, if we look at the strength of the two countries, Tsarist Russia should have been stronger than Japan at that time.
In terms of military strength, the total reserve force of the Tsarist Russian Army was 1.05 million, and the reserve force was as high as 3.75 million; while the total army of Japan in the early days of the war was only 375,000, and the reserve force could be mobilized was only more than 2 million.
But the problem is that 90% of Tsarist Russia's troops are deployed in the western region, and there are less than 100,000 regular troops in northeastern region , and the firepower equipment is only 148 guns and 8 machine guns . Relatively speaking, the quality of soldiers is relatively poor.
The Russian Navy formation has only 62 ships in brigade and Vladivostok , and its armor thickness and artillery range are not as good as those of the Japanese army.
, while Japan has 250,000 people and thousands of guns that can fight in the Northeast. Its 152 ships, , are also new ships built by , British , and have good performance. In this way, in fact, Japan has greater advantages in the Northeast.
The process and results of the war are actually showing this. The Tsarist Russian army suffered repeated failures in the war due to incompetent command and difficulties in supply. By May, Japan had already occupied Dalian. In January of the following year, Lushun also fell into the hands of Japan. Two months later, Japan took Fengtian again.
What's worse for Tsarist Russia was that in May 1905, Japan almost wiped out Tsarist Russia's second and third squadron navies at the "slight" cost of losing only three torpedo boats and 700 casualties.
data statistics show that at that time, the total loss of ships lost by Tsarist Russia reached 270,000 tons, which even exceeded the total loss of both sides in the later Jutland Naval Battle. This battle of Tsarist Russia suffered heavy losses was to Ma Hai battle .
The war was defeated in the war, and the revolution had also broken out in Tsarist Russia. In fact, Russia is no longer possible to win the Russo-Japanese War. For this reason, Tsarist Russia had no choice but to accept the mediation of the United States and hold peace talks with Japan.
In fact, although Japan won the victory from the later results, Japan also paid a heavy price for this victory.
Because Japan has indeed had a low trough in The combat effectiveness and combat determination of the Russians , resulting in heavy losses on the battlefield. In order to replenish their troops, the Japanese army has carried out military mobilizations at home many times and extended their service age to 37 years old.
Post-war statistics show that the total casualties of the Japanese army in the war reached 250,000, and the death toll reached 88,000, even more than 30,000 more than the 53,000 deaths in Russia.
It can be said that Japan paid a very heavy price to win the war. Since this is the case, according to the Japanese's virtues, of course, they must have to recover the loss during the post-war "peace talks".
Japan claimed 3 billion yuan, and the Tsar only replied 10 words
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in addition to the losses in military strength, Japan's economic losses were even more huge.
data shows that for this war, Japan consumed more than 1.5 billion yen in military expenditure in total, and at that time, the annual revenue of the Japanese treasury was only about 200 million yen.
In order to fight this war, Japan not only emptied itself, but also owed about 800 million yuan in foreign debts from the United States and Britain.
Therefore, for them, as the so-called "victory side", they certainly have to try every means to make up for their losses - they have to repay the borrowed money anyway.
so, Japan remembered the "sweetness" of more than 200 million taels of silver that it "claimed" from the Qing government after the victory of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and decided to "copy it according to the gossip" and also asked for some compensation from Tsarist Russia.
Although it is a "point", the Japanese side filed a 3 billion compensation claim to the Tsar as soon as they spoke.
Japanese may think their requirements are very reasonable, but in the eyes of Tsar Nicholas II , this is simply a lion's mouth.
You should know that Tsarist Russia was not a cowardly and incompetent Qing government. Even if it fails on the battlefield, it will not be possible to accept such unreasonable demands from Japan.
So the Tsar rejected Japan's unreasonable request. If translated into Chinese, the Tsar actually replied only 10 words: "If you don't have money, if you don't have it, keep fighting."
In fact, both Tsarist Russia and Japan knew very well that Tsarist Russia did not really not be able to defeat Japan, but Tsarist Russia's troops were concentrated in the western region at that time. If it were according to its transportation capacity at that time, it would take quite some time to mobilize them to Northeast China.
Moreover, Tsarist Russia surpassed Japan in terms of total military strength and number of reserve troops. If the two countries continue to fight, the worst situation will be "both losing both sides". It is even possible that Japan may completely fail because it cannot afford the loss of war expenses, personnel and materials, allowing Tsarist Russia to completely control Northeast China again.
After all, from what we saw later, the huge mobilization ability, combat ability and perseverance shown by the Soviet Union in Patriotic War , the longer the war drags on, the more beneficial it is to Russia, because in this way, they have a greater chance of "turning the tables".
In the end, Japan "didn't dare" to continue to go to war with Tsarist Russia, and could only accept the mediation of the United States and signed "Peace Treaty of Portsmouth" with Tsarist Russia.
In this peace treaty, Tsarist Russia not only recognized Japan's interests in North Korea, but also transferred the brigade large leasehold and its affiliated rights and public property it seized from my country to Japan. At the same time, Tsarist Russia also transferred the branch line of the Middle East Railway from Changchun to Lushun to Japan. In addition to transferring relevant interests in the Northeast for the Qing government, Tsarist Russia also gave half of the Sakhalin Island to Japan.
From the perspective of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, although Japan paid a huge price, it achieved a complete victory and achieved its goal of launching a war.
But in Japan, Japanese citizens took to the streets to protest. They felt that this was not enough to make up for their own losses in the war, and even felt that they were "losing a big loss".
These angry Japanese people believed that the negotiators were incompetent, which led to such a situation, but they seemed to have never thought that Tsarist Russia was not the Qing government. If Japan continues to "tought" with Tsarist Russia, it will not be beneficial; they did not think that if the Qing government could be tougher at the beginning, the Treaty of Shimonoseki might not have been signed.
Although this war was fought between Japan and Tsarist Russia, the war was fought on Chinese land, causing the people of Northeast my country to suffer an unprecedented catastrophe.
Japanese and Russian troops burned, killed, looted, and committed all kinds of evil in our country, resulting in 20,000 Chinese people being killed in the war. However, in the peace talks after the war, there was no my country. Japan was determined to ask Tsarist Russia for the so-called "compensation" and Tsarist Russia thought about how to pay the debt, but no party mentioned what kind of compensation should be made to our country.
Moreover, when these two countries are still absent from our country, they will "transfer" interests that clearly belong to our country and the Northeast region, resulting in us being passively accepting the reality of the two countries' redistricting their forces after the war.
After this, the imperialist powers set off a frenzy of dividing our country, causing our people to suffer profound suffering.
And all this is because our country was vast at that time but its national strength was backward. After being coveted by the imperialist powers, it could only be slaughtered by others and became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. This also fully demonstrates the principle of "if you fall behind, you will be beaten", and always reminds us that we must develop ourselves well in order to truly stand in the world's nations.
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Author: Yankai
Editor: Duojie
