Introduction
As Mariko Tamanoi pointed out, ‘Manchuria today is unmistakably part of the sovereign territory of the People's Republic of China, yet the region was and still is a contested area between and among several national and ethnic groups’.Footnote 1 In the early twentieth century, three empires, the Qing, the Russian and the Japanese, struggled for military supremacy over Manchuria. At that time, only they were capable of deploying huge armies there in the event of an emergency. However, the Qing, the Russian and the Japanese empires collapsed one after the other, in 1911, 1917 and 1945 respectively, and each collapse fundamentally altered the military balance and hegemony in Manchuria. This paper is intended as an investigation of the military triangular relationship between them in Manchuria to examine the power politics in the age of the empires in East Asia. Additionally, this paper will make clear the great extent to which the military balance in Manchuria constrained the bilateral relations of these three empires, despite the region being peripheral to each of these empires’ domestic political structures.
Unfortunately, all previous works, in common, focus mainly on political and diplomatic relations, and discussion of the military aspect of the rivalries in Manchuria is left incomplete, especially in the era after the Russo-Japanese War. Certainly, a great deal of effort has been devoted to the historical study of Russian and Japanese imperialism in Manchuria. Russian imperialism in Manchuria has been a popular topic of research since the early Soviet era.Footnote 2 Japanese imperialism in Manchuria was also much discussed after World War II.Footnote 3 However, it should be noted that very few attempts have been made to take a comparative approach, mainly because the research thus far has relied on the domestic documents of each country. As a natural consequence, these studies tend to explain the series of events regarding imperialism in Manchuria from the standpoint of each country's domestic political situation, and have failed to give sufficient attention to a comparative point of view. Therefore, the changes in the military balance have not been fully explained. It is observed that conventional studies, based on imperialism theory, are in this case subject to serious limitations.
After the end of the Cold War, access to Russian archives became easier and some historians did landmark works in the international relations between Russia and East Asia in the early twentieth century. Sarah Paine showed full detail of Russo-Chinese diplomatic relations after the 1850s regarding their border regions based on Russian and Chinese archival materials.Footnote 4 And Vasilii Elinarkhovich Molodiakov studied the Russo-Japanese relation in Manchuria, based on Russian and American archival materials.Footnote 5 Unlike traditional imperialism studies, they make use of a comparative approach to studying competition between empires in East Asia and it appears to be succeeding in. However, Japanese intentions towards its neighbour are not clear in Paine's book. And similarly the Qing and Chinese reactions and countermeasures in Manchuria after the war are not made clear in Molodiakov's work. The latter point is especially important, since we cannot understand modern Manchurian history if we do not pay attention to local reaction and resistance. On the basis of past achievements I argue that the military balance in Manchuria cannot be understood without examining military activities from a comparative point of view, including the forgotten Sino-Japanese relations in Manchuria omitted in Paine and Molodiakov's works.
The outline of this paper is as follows. After Japan and Russia signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, their forces initiated a withdrawal from Manchuria. However, even after the war, they retained some garrison troops in Manchuria on the pretext of protecting their railways and they exerted significant military influence over Manchuria, despite China's official sovereignty in this region. The first and second sections will discuss the situation of this military balance in Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War from each country's perspective. The rest of the paper will illustrate the shift in the military balance in Manchuria during the revolutions. I focus on the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and the Russian Revolution in 1917, during which the triangular military relationship in Manchuria first became fluid, and then finally came to an end. Broadly speaking, military hegemony in Manchuria moved from a Russo-Japanese ‘alliance’ to a Sino-Japanese ‘alliance’ during the Russian Revolution in 1917. I first discuss how this military balance of power was established in the region. Dates in this paper have been given in the Gregorian calendar generally used in the West.
Russian and Japanese troops stationed in Manchuria
The origins of foreign forces stationed in Manchuria date back to 1897, when the Russian government planned to use their forces as labour in the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway (hereinafter CER), to build a direct route through Chinese territory, from Chita to Vladivostok. The Priamur Governor General, Sergei Mikhailovich Dukhovskoi, had made a particular appeal for such soldiers. In January 1896, he reported to Tsar Nikolai II that, if soldiers were not used as labour, the cost of the railway would be high. In response, the Russian Finance Minister, Sergei Iul'evich Witte, who was the planner of the CER, opposed this plan and argued that, if the newspapers reported that Russian soldiers were being used in Chinese territory, the construction of the railway would become increasingly complex.Footnote 6 This led to the plan being abandoned.
However, Witte did not object to sending soldiers as guards for the Russian engineers and labourers in Manchuria. The administrative board of the CER therefore decided to assemble its troops in May 1897, a decision which received the full support of the Ministry of War. As a result of its discussions with the CER, the ministry decided to lend weapons and soldiers, and gave them preferential treatment.Footnote 7 Thus five squadrons of Cossacks were deployed. They arrived in Vladivostok from Odessa in December 1897, and set up their headquarters in Harbin. In addition, infantry units from the Priamur military district joined the guard, and in June 1900 the total military complement was 62 officers, 1,950 soldiers and 2,450 cavalrymen.Footnote 8 The troops were called the Chinese Eastern Railway Guard (Okhrannaia Strazha Kitaiskoi Vostochnoi Zheleznoi Dorogi, hereinafter CER guard). It is worth mentioning that Li Hungchang had firmly resisted any military use of the CER when he concluded the construction agreement for the railway.Footnote 9 Without doubt, sending these troops was an arbitrary action by Russia.
The Boxer Rebellion became the turning point for the CER guard. We need not elaborate on the guard's military activities in the ensuing battle: these are much more thoroughly explained by some historians.Footnote 10 However, it should be stressed that, in the course of the war, the guard began to expand. Amid a mounting crisis over anti-Russian activities in Manchuria, Witte anxiously approved the request of the guard's commander to enlarge the number of troops. However, these reinforcements almost failed to arrive in time and, in the early phase of the war, the guard faced serious difficulties against the Boxers and the regular forces of Heilongjiang Province. As a result, augmentation and restructuring were carried out after the war. Just before the start of the Russo-Japanese War, this force consisted of 14,872 soldiers, 9,180 cavalrymen and 26 artilleries.Footnote 11 In January 1901, they became part of the Russian border guard, which had been organized by the Finance Ministry in October 1893 in an attempt to strengthen the interdiction of smuggling and illegal entry. The official name of the troops was changed to the Trans-Amur District of the Independent Border Guard Corps (Zaamurskii Okrug Otdel'nogo Korpusa Pogranichnoi Strazhi). In addition, General Nikolai Mikhailovich Chichagov, the former Primorskii Military Governor and an experienced military commander, was appointed the force's local commander in 1903.Footnote 12 As a result of these significant reforms, the CER guard might have been expected to change from a ‘guard’ to a mighty Russian ‘army’.
During the Russo-Japanese War, however, these expectations went unfulfilled. At the outbreak of the war, Viceroy of the Far East, Evgenii Ivanovich Alekseev, immediately ordered the guard to assume the defence of the CER.Footnote 13 From the beginning of the war, the Japanese Army targeted the railway. In April 1904, the bridge tower near Haicheng station, about 200 kilometres from Fengtian (now known as Shenyang), the capital of Shengjing Province, was destroyed. This incident caused unrest among the Russian military leaders of the Manchurian Army, who thereupon dispatched reinforcements. In February 1905, more than 50,000 soldiers were mobilized to guard the railway.Footnote 14 Despite reinforcements before the war, the guard still lacked sufficient strength to wage an all-out war.
Therefore, Witte strongly opposed the Japanese proposal to quantitatively reduce the railway guard, during the negotiation of the Treaty of Portsmouth. On 29 August 1905, the Japanese peace delegate Komura Jutarô proposed restricting the numbers of the railway guard to five soldiers per kilometre. In response, Witte refused the proposal, insisting that this number was not enough since security in Manchuria was decidedly unreliable.Footnote 15 On 3 September, Komura offered another plan, this time restricting the numbers of the guard to ten men, saying, ‘Two or three men per kilometre are enough for the guard’. Witte responded to this provocative remark, and indicated that 20 seemed most appropriate. Finally, on that same day, they reached an agreement to restrict the number to 15.Footnote 16
The treaty obliged Russia to re-route the southern branch of the CER between Kuanchengzi (near the present site of Changchun) and Lushun to Japan. As a result, a 1,709.8-kilometre (1,613.1-verst) line was left for the CER.Footnote 17 A computation based on the route's length reveals that the number of the guard was restricted to 25,647. The Russian government therefore decided, in October 1907, to reduce the scale of the guard to 52 infantry companies, 42 cavalry troops, four field batteries and 25 training teams. In 1910, the organized force consisted of 586 officers and 21,110 soldiers.Footnote 18 However, in October 1907 the Russian government decided to transfer the Trans-Amur Railway Battalion (Zaamurskaia Zheleznodorozhnaia Brigada) to the CER guard.Footnote 19 The battalion consisted of combat engineers, and between 1911 and 1913, it numbered 7,890.Footnote 20 The full complement of soldiers of the guard before World War I thus amounted to more than 30,000 and was in obvious violation of the Portsmouth Treaty. Finance Minister Vladimir Nikolaevich Kokovtsov tried several times to reduce the scale of the guard, to show that Russia had no aggressive designs in North Manchuria towards China, but finally his proposal had to be waived until completion of the Amur railway at the Council of Ministers in April 1909.Footnote 21 It is clear that Russia wanted to maintain its military influence in Manchuria even after the Russo-Japanese War.
Let us now look at Japan. How did Japan plan to maintain its military presence in Manchuria even after the war? In September 1905, on the eve of the conclusion of the Portsmouth Treaty, the military attaché of the Japanese legation in China, Aoki Nobuzumi, sent a plan regarding the troops stationed in Manchuria to the staff of the Japanese Manchurian Army. In this plan, Aoki offered to keep only one division in Manchuria as long as Japan could retain mastery of the sea.Footnote 22 However, Japanese military chiefs feared Russian aggression. As a consequence of this fear, the Army Minister, Terauchi Masatake, wished to retain six or seven divisions in Manchuria.Footnote 23 This fear may also explain Komura's insistence, in the diplomatic negotiations with China in November 1905, on the right to 15 soldiers per kilometre for the railway guard. In these negotiations, the Chinese representative, Yuan Shikai, strongly advocated the complete withdrawal of all foreign forces from Manchuria, and proposed that Chinese troops should act as the guard of the South Manchuria Railway (hereinafter SMR). In response, Komura emphasized the threat of Russian hostility, and did not relent.Footnote 24 Eventually, by the ‘Treaty between the Japanese Empire and the Empire of China concerning Manchuria’ of December 1905, Japan secured the railway guard's right to 15 soldiers per kilometre. Under Article 2, attached to the treaty, Japan, along with Russia, would be obliged to remove guards from Manchuria, if the restoration of regional civil order was achieved; but the article was a well-executed trick, since Komura had received a response before the negotiation to the effect that Russia had no intention of ever removing its guard.Footnote 25 After this negotiation, the SMR Company was established, from which the Japanese government commissioned a line of 1,090.5 kilometres.Footnote 26 However, the Chinese government did not allow troops to be stationed between Fengtian and Dandong, because the Japanese Army had constructed the branch (about 296.3 kilometres) during the war, and troops were restricted to about 12,000.
Before China and Japan signed the treaty, Japan had set up a military government over South Manchuria. In July 1906, the Japanese government established a new governing office, the Kantô Government General (Kantô Totokufu), to govern the Kantô Leased Territory and the railway zone of the SMR. The most significant feature of the reorganization, as far as civil affairs were concerned, was the transfer of the Japanese administration in Manchuria from Army control to Foreign Ministry control.Footnote 27 Simultaneous with the end of military rule, the Japanese regular force in Manchuria was reduced from two divisions to one, the Division Stationed in Manchuria (Manshû Chûsatu Shidan), and its headquarters were set up in Liaoyang, in the middle of the Shengjing province. However, Japan contrived to maintain its former military capability, and organized a new unit, a battalion made up of reserve soldiers. This battalion, along with the Division Stationed in Manchuria, came under the jurisdiction of the Governor General of Kantô, with its headquarters in Lushun. This was the birth of the Independent Garrison Battalion (Dokuritsu Shubi Daitai). There was a reason for the army administration to change its name from ‘Railway’ (Tetsudô) to ‘Independent’ (Dokuritsu) when this battalion was organized. In its report, the administration wrote that, if Japan created a ‘Railway’ Garrison Battalion, this would raise doubts about the Division Stationed in Manchuria.Footnote 28 All of this amounts to saying that, like Russia, Japan was disingenuous in its negotiations in order to retain large forces in this region. In March 1907, the battalion took up its station in Manchuria. After this, the total complement of Japanese troops in Manchuria was fixed at one division and six battalions. Following the reorganization of 1919, these were known as the Kantô Army (Kantôgun). The size of the army remained at approximately 10,400 until 1931.Footnote 29 This number is an average and varied considerably from year to year.Footnote 30 However, It would be fallacious to say that the Kantô Army ‘maintained around 7,000 men in Manchuria in the days just after the new Chinese republic was established, a number that doubled during the 1920s’.Footnote 31
Chinese military countermeasures and the reactions of Russia and Japan
How did the Qing dynasty view these military threats from foreign forces stationed on their soil, Manchuria? For one of the influential leaders of the dynasty, Yuan Shikai, his failure to remove the foreign forces from Manchuria through diplomatic negotiations may have been a ‘setback’. I speculate that this ‘setback’ was his prime motivation for initiating Manchurian administrative and military reform after the Russo-Japanese War. One thing, however, is certain: the Qing dynasty enhanced its military power in Manchuria after the war by dispatching Yuan's Beiyang Army, which was the source of his power.
First, we have to look at the early history of administrative reform in Manchuria. Prior to the Boxer Rebellion, the armed forces on the Manchurian frontier consisted of the old-style banner troops, which had received some rudiments of modern training and were equipped with firearms. During the Russian occupation after the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese Army in Manchuria practically ceased to exit.Footnote 32 The morale of what was the Chinese Army had been shaken, and it was inadequately trained.Footnote 33 As a result there was a great surge of banditry. In addition, Manchuria became a battleground during the Russo-Japanese War and the resulting devastation brought about civil disorder and a reduction in tax revenue. In April 1905, the dynasty appointed a Chinese bannerman, Zhao Erxun, the Governor General of Shengjing (Shengjing Jiangjun), to undertake a series of reforms in Manchuria. At Zhao's request, in October 1906 the dynasty dispatched a delegation to Manchuria. The head of the delegation, Xu Shichang, was a close friend of Yuan. Yuan and Xu reported to the court on the need for a powerful governor in the dynastic homeland. In April 1907, the dynasty established the post of the Viceroy of Three Provinces (Dongsansheng Zongdu) and appointed Xu to the post.Footnote 34 Consequently, as Russian minister Dmitrii Dmitrievich Pokotilov reported from Beijing, the executive powers to rule Manchuria fell into the hands of Yuan.Footnote 35
At first, Xu had a scenario in mind: to reassemble five new divisions from the existing troops in Manchuria as an opening gambit, and to increase them to eight over five years.Footnote 36 However, this scenario was difficult to realize because of reasons related to finance and training management. By 1909, Shengjing had completed the training of only six infantry battalions and one artillery battalion, Jilin had completed training only one infantry battalion, and Heilongjiang had not even begun its training programme.Footnote 37 Therefore, the main units in Manchuria became the Beiyang Army (Beiyangjun), which Xu borrowed from Yuan. The Beiyang Army had been assembled mostly by Yuan while he was Governor General of Zhili, and by 1906 it had grown to six divisions of about 10,000 men each.Footnote 38 From the army, Yuan dispatched the third division to Manchuria. The division set up its headquarters in Changchun. In addition, two mixed brigades (each of 5,109 soldiers) of the Beiyang Army were stationed in Fengtian.Footnote 39 By their addition, the Chinese Army in Manchuria was enhanced to about 50,000 troops.Footnote 40 According to the CER guard statistics, the number was increased to about 75,000, including banner troops, in 1911.Footnote 41
Japan and Russia responded differently to the Chinese military reform in Manchuria. The Japanese Army underestimated Chinese military power. The Japanese principle of national defence, which was newly enacted in April 1907, provides valid evidence of their view. It said, ‘The Chinese Army is close to existing in name only . . . . If they fight in a single open war with us, we are confident that we will win in the end’.Footnote 42 For them, the number one potential adversary was still Russia. It can be said without a doubt that the Japanese General Staff Office's eyes were fixed exclusively on Russia. Japan became nervous only when the Beiyang Army began to be posted in so-called Jiandao, a Korea-China border region.Footnote 43
In contrast, the Russian Army evaluated the Chinese force seriously. One Russian staff member, who reviewed the first military exercise of the Beiyang Army, in October 1905 in Heibei Province, wrote a report on its soldiers. He said, ‘They will become a serious enemy if they are led by an excellent officer’,Footnote 44 and he warned of the ‘waking neighbours and renascent empire’Footnote 45 in the preface of the report. In another example, Anton Ivanovich Denikin, who later became a leader of White forces in the Russian Civil War, wrote as follows in 1908:
We are facing the beginning of the revival of China and her army . . . Can we be indifferent and wait for the growing inequality of our military power to become obvious until we withdraw from not only occupied areas, but also the traditional Russian territory in wartime?Footnote 46
In addition, the Manchurian military reform undertaken by the Qing had caused the Russians serious concern. For instance, Chichagov, the local commander of the CER guard, was quickly required to increase the guard; in January 1907, he asked for permission to order 7,000 reservists in Manchuria into active duty in an emergency.Footnote 47 When the construction of the Amur Railway was discussed in the third State Duma in March 1908, the expanding Chinese military capability in Manchuria was emphasized, and a Chinese military campaign against Russia was spoken of as if it were already underway. Russian anxiety about Chinese military power was closely related to the improvement in Russo-Japanese relations.Footnote 48 In July 1907, Russia and Japan had concluded the first Russo-Japan agreement. After this, the Russian Foreign Minister, Aleksandr Petrovich Izvolsky, told a journalist in an informal interview that ‘Japan will not take the offensive against us for over a decade’.Footnote 49 As a result, only China remained as their imaginary enemy in East Asia.
We may note, in passing, that some Russian generals continued to fear a conflict with Japan despite the Foreign Minister's assurances that successful negotiation with Japan had made that possibility remote. The most famous of such generals is Pavel Fedorovich Unterberger, the Priamur Governor General. Russia, he said, should have no confidence in its détente with Japan. He sent repeated warnings to Saint Petersburg on this score from 1907 through 1909.Footnote 50 He was seized with panic when a Japanese elder statesman, Itô Hirobumi, visited Harbin for a meeting with Kokovtsov and was assassinated right in front of the CER guards by a Korean nationalist, An Jung-geun, in October 1909. Unterberger told Kokovtsov that ‘as a result of the incident Japan would soon attack Russia’. Kokovtsov succeeded in persuading him that ‘his alarm concerning an imminent Japanese attack was unfounded, for from that time on there were no more panicky telegrams’.
Thus, Japan feared the Russians, and Russia feared the Chinese mainly as well as the Japanese. But who did China fear? A Japanese spy successfully obtained a transcript of a secret meeting in Tianjin between Yuan and Xu, in May 1907. At the meeting, Yuan said, ‘Japan advocates an open-door policy and maintenance of the territorial integrity of Manchuria to avoid international criticism. However, it is hard to read their real intentions’.Footnote 51 Like this, the military balance in Manchuria was maintained on the basis of mutual doubts and fears.
On the eve of the Xinhai Revolution, the gap between Russia and Japan in their perception of the Chinese military capability in Manchuria increased. For example, in May 1910, War Minister Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov wrote to commanders of the Priamur, Omsk and Irkutsk military districts, ordering them to present their considerations on the latest mobilization schedule for war in the Far East, and informing them that ‘we need now to consider China [with Japan] . . . which in recent years has significantly improved its military forces’.Footnote 52 The most menacing period with China came when their trade negotiations fell apart and a Russian ultimatum was presented to China on 18 February 1911.Footnote 53 On 6 April 1911, the Russian General Staff reported that the Chinese Army in Manchuria was preparing to attack Russia and the CER guard was facing a crisis of war, based on information from the staff section of the guard.Footnote 54
The supervisor of the CER and Finance Minister Kokovtsov responded quickly to the information. On the same day, he asked Prime Minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin for permission to recall soldiers of the CER guard from Russian consulates and police stations in Manchuria.Footnote 55 Meanwhile, Russia sought a diplomatic solution to restrain Chinese military power, through cooperation with Japan. In May, the Russian ambassador to Japan, Nikolai Andreevich Malevskii-Malevich, proposed that Russia, China and Japan enter an arrangement, and limit the garrison base and size of the Chinese Army in the railway zone of Manchuria. Japanese Foreign Minister Komura took a negative stance on this proposal, demonstrating his view that the Chinese Army in Manchuria would never challenge Russia and Japan.Footnote 56 However, the Japanese conviction did not dispel Russian concerns, and Russia tried to resolve the issue on its own. Stolypin was assassinated on 1 September 1911, and the newly appointed Prime Minister Kokovtsov made plans to send additional forces to Manchuria. On 25 September, the Japanese ambassador to Saint Petersburg, Motono Ichirô, personally congratulated Kokovtsov on his appointment, and Kokovtsov told the ambassador that Russia had the capacity to add more than 7,000 soldiers to Manchuria under the Treaty of Portsmouth, and that Stolypin too had approved this plan before his assassination.Footnote 57 These episodes well illustrate Russia's growing unease about the Chinese Army in Manchuria.
By contrast, Japan remained fixated on Russian armed strength. In May 1911, the Japanese General Staff Office prepared a campaign plan against China, and their analysis of the existing situation is clear in the following quotation: ‘If we judge honestly from the national decline of Qing, it is not possible that they would wage war against us . . . However, this would be possible if Russia helped or worked together with Qing’.Footnote 58 This was the worst-case scenario, which the Japanese Army had to avoid at all costs. The following report makes it clear that, even then, Japanese military chiefs could not trust their former enemy completely and were considering the possibility of Russian aggression: in July 1911, the most influential leader of the Japanese Army as head of the Chôshû-born clique (Chôshûbatsu), Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, wrote to ministers that ‘Russia is holding a grudge against us at all levels of the society . . . . It is inevitable that Russia will try to revenge us early or late’.Footnote 59
The Xinhai Revolution and the disruption of the military balance in Manchuria
The military balance in Manchuria described above was severely upset by the Xinhai Revolution. Three points are helpful in attempting to sketch out its aspects. First, armed clashes occurred between Chinese revolutionaries and anti-revolutionaries in South Manchuria, with Japan interposing between them. Second, the Russians and the Japanese planned to dispatch regular forces to Manchuria. Third, there were separatist movements in Inner Mongolia, and military support for them by Russian and Japanese officers. These points created interrelated problems.
Before dealing with these problems, let us take a brief look at the revolutionary movement and counterrevolution in South Manchuria. Ironically for Yuan Shikai, many officers of his troops joined the revolution in Manchuria.Footnote 60 Of these, the commander of the second brigade of the Beiyang Army in Fengtian, Lan Tianwei, was the most popular revolutionist. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution on 10 October 1911, Zhao Erxun, who had returned to Manchuria in Spring 1911 as the Viceroy of Three Provinces, tried to suppress the regional revolution. Zhao dispatched Lan as an envoy to South China.Footnote 61 Zhao retook control of the second brigade and successfully used it for the security of Fengtian. In addition, and unfortunately for the revolutionists among the troops, the Qing Dynasty moved the third and twentieth divisions from Manchuria, to subdue the revolutionary movement in South China. Thus, the revolutionary movement in South Manchuria lost both a central figure and a core military force. Zhao began to crack down on the revolutionaries, and his subordinate commander Zhang Zuolin, who had been a leader of bandits in Shengjing Province and had received amnesty in 1902, assassinated some important figures among them.
At this time, the revolutionary government in Nanjing appointed Lan as commander of the expeditionary force to Manchuria. On 16 January 1912, he came ashore with three infantry battalions in Yantai, which overlooks the Kantô Leased Territory across the Bohai Sea. Before advancing to Manchuria, Lan made direct contact with Japan and Russia, and asked both of them to observe a position of neutrality. He telegraphed the Governor General of Kantô, General Ôshima Yoshimasa, and asked that the Japanese SMR maintain neutrality.Footnote 62 Ôshima agreed. However, Foreign Minister Uchida Kôsai then telegraphed Ôshima, ordering him to prevent Lan's army coming ashore on the Kantô Leased Territory.Footnote 63 Meanwhile, in early February, Lan wrote to General Evgenii Ivanovich Martynov, who was the local commander of the CER guard. In his letter, he promised to safeguard Russian interests in China, provided that they maintained neutrality. Kokovtsov heard about this and ordered General Dmitrii Leonidovich Khorvat, the chief manager of the CER in Harbin, to keep a watch on the situation.Footnote 64 On 1 February, Lan's troops disembarked on the south of the Liaodong Peninsula. However, Yuan orchestrated a peace treaty with the revolutionary government with the aid of British arbitration. As a result, on 12 February, the Qing emperor abdicated. The revolutionary government ordered Lan to cease fire, and he evacuated his troops from the peninsula, and then resigned.Footnote 65 Thus, Zhao kept his grip on power, and the old regime of the Beiyang Army in Manchuria was preserved intact.
Both Japan and Russia saw this revolutionary chaos in Manchuria as an opportunity for intervention. Recently, Russian researcher Evgenii Aleksandrovich Belov has argued that ‘the (Xinhai) revolution in Manchuria remained moderate because the Czarist government had no valid excuse or reason to add their troops to Manchuria’.Footnote 66 His argument attempts to justify the Russian attitude towards the revolution. In fact, Russian military chiefs waited for the Japanese to make the first move. The Russian War Ministry assigned a mobilization schedule to forces in the Irkutsk and Priamur military districts, which were to occupy northern Manchuria in the event of Japan occupying the south.Footnote 67 The vice-president of the CER board had informed Khorvat that their government would not take the initiative in dispatching troops to Manchuria.Footnote 68 Therefore, in December 1911, Khorvat and Martynov recommended enthusiastically that the consul-general of Japan in Harbin, Kawakami Toshitune, dispatch Japanese troops to Manchuria. Khorvat said, ‘the annexation of Manchuria is a question between Japan and Russia. There's no time like the present to resolve this issue’. Martynov was also intensely interested. He said that
The current storm in China presents immediate opportunities for Russia. So I hope this complication lingers. During this time, Russia should make collaborative efforts with Japan in winning territorial rights, and settle pending diplomatic issues with China.Footnote 69
As Khorvat and Martynov had expected, the Japanese Army had been preparing for mobilization to Manchuria. Three days after the revolution, at a Cabinet meeting on 13 October 1911, Army Minister Ishimoto Shinroku circulated a document saying that ‘I want to decide where we will take over’.Footnote 70 The following day, the Deputy Army Minister stated to Vice Chief of Staff Fukushima Yasumasa that, ‘if insurrections spread over North China, our country should itself reinforce defences in the name of the railway guard in Manchuria’.Footnote 71 It should be noted that Yamagata also promoted the military project. He believed that an appropriate force would make it possible to maintain order in southern Manchuria.Footnote 72 In line with his memorandum, his protégé in the Chôshû-born clique and the Director of the Military Affairs Bureau at the War Ministry, Tanaka Giichi, ordered preparations for the dispatch of a division to Manchuria, and he notified Russia of this decision on 17 January.Footnote 73 However, the plan was leaked to a newspaper two days before the official mobilization was ordered. In addition to this, the plan was criticized by opposition parties in the Japanese National Diet, and America, Germany and Britain all warned against it.Footnote 74 Finally, on 9 February, Army Minister Ishimoto informed Yamagata that the plan had been abandoned.Footnote 75 On the same day, Yamagata wrote to another protégé in the Chôshû-born clique and the former Prime Minister, Katsura Tarô, as follows: ‘We missed an opportunity that might not come again’.Footnote 76 It is characteristic of Japan that the military chiefs pushed for the intervention more actively than did the local commanders.
In contrast, the senior Russian officers in the field advocated intervention in Manchuria more aggressively than did their government. In December 1911, Khorvat submitted a report to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he proposed the deployment of Russian troops to China, to stop Yuan Shikai's military intervention in Mongolia.Footnote 77 Additionally, in February 1912, he telegraphed Kokovtsov, asking him to intervene in the revolution in Fujiadian, where there was a housing area for Harbin's Chinese workers.Footnote 78 His aggressive proposals were not supported by government. Kokovtsov dismissed it, in consultation with the new Foreign Minister Sergei Dmitrievih Sazonov. The government's conclusion was expressed best by Sazonov as follows: ‘It is clear that now is not the time for military action in our railway zone’.Footnote 79 Sazonov declared CER's neutrality in the revolution three days after Khorvat had telegraphed.Footnote 80 As a result, the Russian government did not order mobilization, but sections of the Russian army entered Manchuria. From December 1911 to January 1912, many Russian soldiers repeatedly entered the Russia-China border station, Manzhouli.Footnote 81 In Manzhouli, 3,000 railway carriages were held in readiness, ‘enough to bring in 120,000 troops quite quickly’, and the commander of the Irkutsk military district remained in Harbin in November 1911.Footnote 82 After the declaration of non-interference in revolutionary affairs by the Russian government, the local Russian senior officers focused on the independence movement of Hulunbuir in north-eastern Inner Mongolia.Footnote 83 But why did the region become important? Before we can give an answer, we must know the short history of this region.
Since the Russo-Japanese War, China was strengthening the frontier defence by bringing in Chinese colonists and by reorganizing the existing administrative and military structure to prevent Russian influence over this border region. Such measures provoked widespread Mongol and Dagur resentment and were an important factor in the Hulunbuir independence movement.Footnote 84 And the Chinese colonization of the region had been given concern for less populated Russian Zabaikal. Meanwhile, China had been trying to resolve this territorial issue through diplomatic negotiations with Russia, but a final agreement had not been reached.Footnote 85 The independence movement offered Russia a clue to resolving these issues. Martynov telegraphed Kokovtsov in January 1912, stating that if ‘we do not immediately take resolute measures to protect their rights against China’, the Mongolian peerage ‘will seek asylum in Japan’.Footnote 86 In response, Kokovtsov directed him merely to protect the railway zone from skirmishes between China and Mongolia.Footnote 87 In January, when the Mongolian rebel army launched a push into Hailar, the capital of Hulunbuir Prefecture, the CER guard dispatched 400 soldiers to reinforce the railway guard. However, the CER refused to transport Chinese troops there.Footnote 88 As a result, the rebel army occupied the town, and the chieftains of Hulunbuir declared independence. In addition, in February, when the rebel army occupied the Chinese administration of Manzhouli, the CER guard put pressure on China, and some of the guards took part in the battle.Footnote 89 According to a secret report by the CER, the attack on Manzhouli, and Russian support for the rebel army, were based on Martynov's order.Footnote 90 Martynov continued to support the Hulunbuir Mongols, probably to a greater degree than Sazonov desired, and was ‘obviously seeking an excuse to provoke an armed clash with the Chinese’.Footnote 91
Meanwhile, certain Japanese officers and adventurers were affiliated with the Mongolian peerage in south-eastern Inner Mongolia. Kawashima Naniwa, who was the behind-the-scenes negotiator of the group, plotted to attract the imperial family of Qing to this independence movement. At first, the Japanese military chiefs had needed the plot as an excuse to dispatch troops to South Manchuria, and they had dispatched some officers to support the plot.Footnote 92 However, this military plan was dismantled, as mentioned above, and Vice Chief of Staff Fukushima gave Kawashima a direct order to abandon the plot. As a result, in June 1912 the Chinese Army stifled the Mongolian revolt in this region.Footnote 93 In this way, the independence movement of Inner Mongolia provided a convenient excuse for Russia and Japan to undermine the military balance in Manchuria.
The Russian Revolution and the collapse of the Military Triangle in Manchuria
As mentioned in the preceding section, the Manchurian military balance was advantageous to Japan and Russia. Japan made use of its military supremacy in Manchuria when it undertook a diplomatic offensive against China during World War I. On 18 January 1915, the Japanese government sent the notorious Twenty-One Demands to the Chinese government. The first four groups of demands in the articles were intended to establish a dominant economic position for Japan in China, especially in the newly occupied German concessions in North China, and in southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia.Footnote 94 During the negotiations, the Japanese Army planned to double the number of troops in Manchuria as a demonstration, using the time of division rotation. The Ôkuma Cabinet adopted the plan in a Cabinet meeting on 10 March 1915.Footnote 95 In addition, on 6 May, the day before Japan delivered an ultimatum to China, the Japanese Army issued a mobilization order to the troops in Manchuria.Footnote 96 As a result, President Yuan Shikai accepted their demands on 9 May.
The agreement awakened the ambitions of the Japanese military leaders in Manchuria. On 25 May, the Governor General of Kantô, Nakamura Satoru, submitted comments to the Army Minister, about moving northwards from Liaoyang to the capital of Fengtian (formerly Shengjing) Province, the headquarters of both the Division Stationed in Manchuria and the Independent Garrison Battalion. He wrote that this redeployment would not only meet operational needs in wartime, but would also put pressure on Chinese troops in peacetime.Footnote 97 In addition, both Nakamura and Fukuda Masatarô, the former chief of staff of the Governor General of Kantô and Head of the Second Department of the Japanese General Staff Office, supported Kawashima, and in the summer of 1915 they moved again to support the Manchu-Mongol independence movement.Footnote 98
About the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov took a strong interest in the Twenty-One Demands, in particular, those regarding the South Manchurian and Inner Mongolian issue.Footnote 99 However, he acquiesced in the Japanese diplomatic offensive against China. Russia was then locked in mortal combat with the Central Powers, and therefore did not have the power to intervene in the negotiations between China and Japan. The point to emphasize here is the weakening of Russian military power in Manchuria at that time. The outbreak of the war with Germany, in August 1914, had stirred up a patriotic fervour among the CER guard and some of them volunteered for front line service in the West. Khorvat, the chief manager of the CER, recalled the situation as follows:
The officers especially were eager to join the ranks of the fighters, and some of them, without waiting for permission from Saint Petersburg, left the railway secretly and were considered as deserters, until, much later, their names appeared in the lists of those who had distinguished themselves in battles in some army at the front.Footnote 100
Unlike them, Khorvat was strongly against mobilization. He appealed to the government stating that the mobilization would cause the decline of Russian strategic and economic influence in Manchuria. However, the deteriorating Russian war situation thwarted his efforts. On 10 February 1915, the headquarters of the Russian Army decided to commit most of the guard to the Eastern Front. As a result, only three infantry battalions and six cavalry troops remained in Manchuria.Footnote 101 The Russian Council of Ministers decided instead, in April 1915, to send 1,500 cavalrymen as support troops to Manchuria.Footnote 102 In addition, the CER guard called up reservists from the railway zone, and that same year it created the National Voluntary Army. By the time of the Russian Revolution, its numbers had reached 5,400.Footnote 103 Finally, in September 1915, after the second mobilization, Russian military power in Manchuria amounted to only six cavalry troops of the CER guard, together with the National Voluntary Army.Footnote 104 The Russian researcher Molodiakov has calculated that the total Russian military force in Manchuria was about 8,000 in 1917.Footnote 105 Obviously, Russian military influence in Manchuria had declined rapidly after 1915.
In contrast, the Chinese Army in Manchuria numbered 67,900 in 1915.Footnote 106 The decline of Russian military influence provided China with an opportunity, which they took advantage of and so began military action against Russia during the Russian Revolution. Before discussing this revenge attack, we must first be aware of the local political situation in Manchuria. At this time, the warlords came to the forefront. In particular, Zhang Zuolin in Fengtian Province stood out prominently. Successive governors general of Fengtian Province took Zhang into their confidence, and he was appointed commander of the Twenty-Seventh Division (8,600 men). President Yuan found him intimidating. Therefore he dispatched his confidential general of the Beiyang Army, Duan Zhigui, as Governor General of Fengtian Province in 1915, and had him keep tabs on Zhang. However, Yuan failed to establish his dynasty in March 1916 and lost his former influence. Zhang thus succeeded in driving out Duan in April. At this time, he used the slogan ‘Fengtian-born rule Fengtian (Fengren Zhifeng)’.Footnote 107 More concretely, he intended to be independent from the strangers, the Beiyang Army and Yuan. A prostrated Yuan, not willing to antagonize Zhang, appointed him commander of the Fengtian forces.
In July 1917, Zhang succeeded in installing his relative, Bao Guiqing, as the Military Commander of Heilongjiang Province (Heilongjiang Dujun). Thus, the final target in Manchuria was Meng Enyuan, the Military Commander of Jilin Province. Like Duan, Meng was a genuine military man of the Beiyang Army, who had received Yuan's patronage. After the Xinhai Revolution, he became leader of the military administration in Jilin Province, and by the end of 1917, he was directing four brigades.Footnote 108 Their actions, with regard to the following incident, decided the eventual fate of Zhang and Meng. In July 1917, the stronghold of Qing loyalist General Zhang Xun attempted to restore the abdicated emperor Puyi in Beijing. Meng supported the reactionary movement, but Zhang was opposed to it. This movement ended in failure, and the Beiyang government tried to remove Meng from his position.Footnote 109 It is therefore important to keep in mind that Meng was under pressure to make restitution for his mistake when the Russian Revolution broke out in Harbin in October 1917.
Further study of the history of the Russian Revolution in Harbin lies outside the scope of this paper. The point to note is that the triangular relations in Manchuria came to an end during the revolution. Specifically, in December 1917, about 4,000 Chinese forces, led by Tao Xianggui, who was the commander of the third mixed brigade of Jilin, entered Harbin and deported the rabid Russian left-wing troops from Manchuria. This story extends a little further back in time. Even after the end of the the Romanov dynasty in March 1917, Khorvat still controlled the CER. In Harbin, Soviet head Martem'ian Nikitich Riutin, following Lenin's instructions, pushed for Khorvat's resignation.Footnote 110 In response, a ministerial group in Beijing (American, British, Japanese and Romanov's), which had viewed with equanimity Khorvat's autocratic administration of the CER, now reacted in alarm and decided, on 6 December, to call on the Beiyang government to send Chinese forces to Harbin.Footnote 111 Before this request, Meng had been more enthusiastic about intervention than the Beiyang government. Beginning in November, he had already gradually increased the troop numbers around Harbin.Footnote 112
Incidentally, under the treaty between the Chinese administration and the CER of December 1914, the Chinese Army was restricted from going beyond the railway zone.Footnote 113 In addition, ‘neither Chinese soldiers nor police were permitted on the streets of any Russian settlement except unarmed’ in Harbin before the Russian Revolution.Footnote 114 Now, the situation was completely reversed. After the ultimatum from the Chinese commander Tao, Chinese forces went to disarm the followers of Riutin, and on 26 December they occupied Harbin. In the two days following 28 December, the Chinese Army banished a total of 1,812 Russian soldiers from Manchuria and, in January 1918, it occupied the major cities along the CER.Footnote 115 The immediate result of the Chinese intervention was to restore the railway and its zone to their pre-March status. Khorvat survived the revolution, and continued as head of the CER administration.Footnote 116 These ‘distinguished services’ enabled Meng to escape dismissal.
How did Japan cope with this new situation? The consul-general of Japan in Harbin, Satô Naotake, had urged his government to dispatch 500 soldiers to Harbin on 12 December.Footnote 117 And the General Staff Office of Japan had already devised a plan to dispatch troops to protect Japanese nationals in Harbin and North Manchuria in mid-November 1917.Footnote 118 However, the Terauchi Masatake Cabinet behaved prudently, and Terauchi's boss in the Chôshû-born clique, Yamagata, persuaded the Cabinet that Japan should follow China in dispatching troops to North Manchuria in January 1918.Footnote 119 The Cabinet promoted cooperation instead with the Premier of the Republic of China, Duan Qirui, who was a senior executive officer of the Beiyang Army, and an influential political figure in the Beiyang government after Yuan died in June 1916. During the two years 1917 and 1918, enormous Japanese loans were extended to the Duan regime, and it concluded a Japan-China military agreement in May 1918. To sum up, Japan discontinued cooperation with a weakened Russia and attempted instead to cooperate with China to facilitate the Siberian intervention.Footnote 120 As a result, Japan could dispatch troops to Siberia without anxiety about covering the troops’ rear and part of the Division stationed in Manchuria also crossed a border to Chita in the province of Zabaikal in September 1918.Footnote 121 Additionally, the Beiyang government took part in the intervention as well and dispatched battleships and 2,000 soldiers to Vladivostok in August 1918.Footnote 122 The hastily built and short-lived Sino-Japanese ‘alliance’ overwhelmed Russia at this time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper is summarized into four main points. First, the Russian and Japanese railway guards were not merely guards, but also advance parties for implementing the aggressive policies of their countries, just as the Japanese consular police in Jiandao were not merely police but also deeply involved with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.Footnote 123 It is obvious that they were very ‘useful’ adjuncts to their country's regular forces when those forces could not move ‘freely’ and they avoided arousing suspicions in Manchuria. This is because their ambiguous position as ‘guards’ or ‘police’, rather than an ‘army’, made it easy for them to take action, thereby infringing the sovereignty of China. Although they had different names such as ‘police’, ‘guard’ and ‘advisory group’, they were auxiliary to the regular army and sometimes displayed more provocative behaviour towards China than the military chiefs in their homeland, especially after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. In China, only Yuan Shikai strenuously pointed out the danger of stationing such a ‘de facto army’ in Manchuria. When diplomatic negotiations between China and Japan were held in 1905, as the Chinese representative, he expressed the following concern: ‘If the troops of both the countries [Japan and Russia] stay in Manchuria, it will be the cause of unrest’.Footnote 124 His concern proved to be well-founded.
Second, even after the Russo-Japanese War, Manchuria remained the powder keg of East Asia because the three countries were unable to create a comprehensive regional security system. The Japanese and Russian military leaderships knew that their Manchurian interests, including the right to station soldiers in Manchuria, were intolerable from the Chinese perspective. Therefore, they constantly awaited a chance to dispatch their troops to Manchuria, in order to secure their vested interests and rights. In other words, to preserve their Manchurian interests, Japan and Russia were willing to take the great risk of a conflict with China. In addition, China also awaited the opportunity to take the reins of power back from the Japanese and Russians in Manchuria. As a result, if only one country had broken the military momentum, as at the time of the Xinhai and Russian Revolutions, ‘peace’ in Manchuria might have been easily breached. As a result, the fragile ‘peace’ in Manchuria was maintained only because of the diversions of each country. In other words, a single country could not establish military hegemony in Manchuria from 1906 to 1918. Thus, the lack of a comprehensive regional security system in Manchuria practically forced the countries to become military partners, in order to maintain their own Manchurian interests.
At first Japan and Russia established military predominance in Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War, which reached its climax at the time of the Xinhai Revolution. During that revolution, Russia and Japan came very close to dividing Manchuria. However, during World War I, Russian military power retreated in large numbers, and in response, Japan renounced its uneasy ‘alliance’ with Russia and built a new partnership with China. When Japan abandoned Russia as an alliance partner and prepared to dispatch troops to Siberia, China dealt a destructive blow to the Russian military strength in Manchuria causing the collapse of the military triangle in Manchuria, which had been based on mutual distrust and fear. Finally, in March 1920, the Chinese Army took over the CER and disarmed the entire CER guard.Footnote 125 At this time, the isolated Khorvat asked Japan for help under the Russo-Japanese Treaties, but Japan did not relent.Footnote 126 As a result, Khorvat lost whatever power he had had at the CER. This made it clear that the isolated countries or groups were always in a vulnerable position and that each of them needed a military partner in Manchuria. This is the third point.
Fourth, in Manchuria, military strength severely limited the diplomacy and politics of countries or groups. After the Russo-Japanese War, China strengthened its military capabilities with the support of the Beiyang Army to counteract foreign encroachment in Manchuria. However, China was compelled to dispatch the forces to calm down the inner turmoil, and its military strength was destabilized during the Xinhai Revolution. Thereafter, Japan and Russia expanded their military activities quite openly, without Chinese restrictions. The Russian and Japanese railway guards spearheaded these military actions. From this perspective, it is clear why Khorvat could not suppress the revolution of the CER and allowed the Chinese Army to intervene in the revolutionary movement of 1917. The most likely explanation is that Khorvat and his Russian followers were already losing their military power, while the Chinese warlords, instead of the Beiyang Army, recovered military power in Manchuria. To quote former diplomat Oliver Clubb on this Chinese military intervention in Harbin in 1917, ‘The new Sino-Russian relationship was off to a bad start’.Footnote 127 I do not share this opinion. From the Chinese point of view, the intervention was an important step towards the restoration of its sovereignty in Manchuria and symbolised the reversal in the relationship between the Russian and the Chinese military. By contrast, the warlords in Manchuria took a judicious approach towards the Japanese because Japan's military power was much greater than their own. When the remaining Japanese military presence in Manchuria increased, Zhang Zuolin kept his hands off Japanese interests to gain their support, and he assumed control of all of Manchuria after the ejection of Meng in the summer of 1919.Footnote 128 In this way, only countries or groups supported by strong military strength could maintain their interests in Manchuria. I am not dealing with the whole military history of Manchuria; but it is interesting to note that all Manchurian interests of the Japanese Empire had been maintained until the Japanese Kantô Army was decisively defeated by Soviet troops in August 1945. Sadly, the military might have played an important role in the history of Manchuria because it was strategically important in the conflict of interests among countries in the first half of the twentieth century.
