[
    {
        "id": 216419,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 178,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "128\n\nimmediately led to political intervention by Russia, France and Germany which forced Japan to give way and retrocede Liaodong to China. This high-handed action by Western powers left a permanent scar on the Japanese psyche.\n\nIn the last years of the 19th century, as a result of Russian forward policy in the Far East, Russian pressure had forced the Chinese to grant them railway and territorial concessions in the southern part of Manchuria. This, as well as Russian interference in Korea, led to ever increasing Japanese fears of further Russian expansion within the Pacific region. The Russian Government used the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 as a pretext for sending thousands of troops into Manchuria, ostensibly to protect the China Eastern Railway. Her encroachment in Manchuria, which she had promised to evacuate after having occupied it on the pretext of protecting it against the Boxers but which she firmly held, disturbed the Powers.\n\nThe causes of war were not insignificant. During the years immediately following the suppression of the Boxers Russia saw an increasingly formidable Japan rise up before her. Put bluntly, Russia and Japan went to war to determine who would control Manchuria and Korea, with one of the main Japanese grounds being fear generated by the threat posed by the land-bridge of Korea pointing threateningly straight at Japan, with the belligerent Russians poised on Korea's northern border. Another, and possibly a more credible threat, was the probability that a strong, victorious Russia would lead to the dismemberment of the Chinese Empire. This would have made a case for Japan's 'defensive war' - to occupy Port Arthur in order to place herself in a position to prevent any such dismemberment by laying the first stone in her long-term plan for predominance in Peking.\n\nThe war 1904-1905\n\nAfter several years of Russian-Japanese political sparring the latter grew impatient with diplomacy and war became inevitable. The Japanese took the initiative. Their plan envisaged a swift knock-out blow against the Russian Far Eastern Fleet with a night torpedo-boat attack, followed the next day by her fleet attacking the Russian fleet off Port Arthur and defeating it. Their next move was to get two armies into the field, the first to be landed on the west coast of Korea at",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216425,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "134\n\nPre-war there were a large number of local Chinese in Russian employment in Manchuria. A typical throw-away line in a correspondent's lengthy report was the description of the unexpected naval assault on the Russian Far Eastern Fleet in Port Arthur in February 1904 which precipitated the war. \"The town was in confusion after this sudden and unexpected attack on the town initiating the conflict. Food prices soared as Chinese traders sold up and fled. Throughout the bombardment the Chinese streamed out to the hills wailing with fear. Clerks at one of the banks disappeared with large sums of money. Meanwhile, Chinese who were forbidden to travel by train during the mass exodus had converged on the harbour hoping to find places aboard foreign ships. Sampan men made a small fortune ferrying refugees out to the ships. Social organisation fell apart as Chinese servants and shop keepers fled leaving their employers and customers, the Russians, to fend for themselves.\"\n\nIn August 1904 the Japanese entered the Treaty Port of Newchwang (Niuzhuang, now known as Yingkou), the Russians having pulled out without fighting. The Japanese were surprised the Chinese there did not welcome them as deliverers, regretted the departure of Russian friends, and charged the Japanese two dollars where they only charged the Russians one. During the interval between the departure of the Russians and the arrival of the Japanese, Chinese refugees poured into the settlement in a ceaseless stream, carrying their goods and chattels. This was an all too familiar pattern ahead of the advancing armies.\n\nA correspondent's description of life in Mukden ahead of the approach of the Japanese as winter set in 1904 included his impressions of the daily scene with 'Manchus and Chinese, the men almost indistinguishable from one another, the Manchu women differing in their free stride from the mincing tread of their Chinese sisters. Cossacks and Chinese had soon established quite friendly relations. At every step you can see soldiers bargaining with inflexible Chinese for a bottle of vodka, or a handful of nuts or a pair of socks. Sometimes you see a soldier eating an apple in a fruit-seller's stall. This soldier was supposed to discharge the duties of a policeman, and the apple represents bribery and corruption.'\n\nAlthough there were many reports of Chinese and Manchu peasants taking sides and fighting for one or other of the belligerents for what",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]