[
    {
        "id": 216418,
        "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": 177,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "127\n\n## BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: CHINA AND THE CHINESE DURING THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 1904-1905\n\n## KEITH STEVENS\n\nThe power confrontation between Russia and Japan finally developed into all-out conflict in 1904 in Manchuria, ending with a victory for the Japanese that shook the western world, who had assumed that no Asian power could possibly defeat a European one.\n\nApart from on the high seas, the Russo-Japanese War was fought in the main on Chinese territory, in the three provinces of Manchuria, homeland of the Manchus, now known as Dongbei, the North-east. China was not a participant. The first stage of the land campaign took place in Korea, where Japan landed an army, which fought its way up the peninsula to the northern border, the Yalu River, and on into Manchuria for the long slog to victory.\n\nSince the Manchu conquest of China in 1644, the Three Provinces, Fengtian (renamed Liaoning), Jilin, and Heilongjiang, originally the homeland of the Manchus, was known to westerners as Manchuria, and although referred to as part of the Chinese (Qing) Empire, it was not considered to be part of China Proper.\n\nDuring the 19th century, the population of Manchuria grew by leaps and bounds as Chinese settlers flooded in, particularly from Shandong province, encouraged to occupy its wide open spaces before the Russian advance could extend its influence into the area.\n\nIn 1931, at the time of the eventual Japanese occupation of the whole of Manchuria, the population was estimated to have been more than 90% Han Chinese, with a mere 3% Manchus. The rest was made up of 6% Mongols and a handful of Japanese, Russians, and Koreans.\n\n## The lead-up to the war\n\nThe Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 ended the Sino-Japanese War, fought under the guise of securing the independence of Korea, and included the cession to Japan of the Liaodong Peninsula. This",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216426,
        "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": 185,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "135\n\nthey could get out of it, other western correspondents provided a different picture. What may have been a comparatively common experience was described by a correspondent in the area just south of Mukden in June 1905:\n\n'Hamlets and farmhouses studded the landscape, and it seemed to us that we were wandering through a veritable Arcadia. The inhabitants, too, seemed fitted to the land, being a peaceable, amiable people of pleasant countenance and fine physique. In this portion of this now strictly neutral country, China, the agricultural population is apparently quite faultlessly neutral. The people seem altogether heedless of the two foreign armies that are sweeping across their land. Of international politics they know nothing. Their one care in the world is that the local representative of the Imperial Government in Peking does not wring extortionate taxation from them. A man ploughing in his fields does not take the trouble to look\n\nup when a regiment of Japanese or Russians marches by.'\n\nHowever, elsewhere it was reported that during the land campaign Chinese peasants fled to the hills as Japanese forces approached but soon returned to their farms and cottages once the fighting had passed them by. Foreign correspondents frequently reported that they had seen only goodwill between the Japanese officers and men and the Chinese working man.\n\nChinese in general took every opportunity to earn whatever cash they could obtain from both the Russians and the Japanese. Typical were the junk owners who were of inestimable value to the Russians carrying messages and messengers from besieged Port Arthur across to the Shandong Peninsula, and even when the Japanese imposed a tight net of patrol ships the wily Chinese managed to get the messages through by enclosing them in steel containers fastened to the bottom of the hull on the outside. Finally, when the Japanese had confiscated or sunk every Chinese junk they could lay their hands on, the Chinese posed to the world as long-suffering martyrs, who, because they were endeavouring to turn an honest dollar, suffered ruin at the hands of the Japanese.\n\nThe Russians also employed their fast patrol boats and destroyers to patrol the coastlines to ensure that foreign vessels were not aiding the Japanese cause. They frequently boarded likely vessels, during",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]