The Treaty of Portsmouth

On 5 September 1905 (23 August by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia), at around 3.30 p.m., in a storehouse building of the navy yard at Portsmouth on the east coast of the United States, the plenipotentiaries of Russia and Japan began signing a peace treaty. For Russia the signatories were Sergei Witte, the former finance minister and chairman of the Committee of Ministers, and Baron Roman Rosen, the ambassador in Washington; for Japan, the foreign minister Jutarō Komura and the minister in Washington, Kogorō Takahira. At 3.47 p.m. the last signature was in place. Witte threw down his pen, stood up and shook Komura’s hand across the table, and gun salutes thundered over the yard. So ended the Russo-Japanese War, regarded as the first war in modern history in which an Asian state defeated a European power. The treaty recognised Japan’s ascendancy in Korea and handed it Russia’s positions in southern Manchuria: the lease of Port Arthur and Dalny and the railway from Changchun to the Yellow Sea. On that railway and the strip of land along it there grew up, in the following years, powerful instruments of Japanese expansion: the South Manchuria Railway Company and an army which in 1931, on its own initiative and without Tokyo’s consent, began the conquest of Manchuria.

A war that could not go on

The war broke out in February 1904 over who would dominate Korea and Manchuria. Since the late 1890s Russia had been building its empire there: in 1898 it leased from China the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula with the fortress of Port Arthur – the very territory Japan had been made to return to China three years earlier under pressure from Russia, Germany and France. Across Manchuria ran the Russian Chinese Eastern Railway, a short cut to Vladivostok, with a branch from Harbin south to Port Arthur. After the Boxer Rebellion Russian troops stayed in Manchuria, and men from the Tsar’s entourage were already taking an interest in the forests along the Yalu, on the Korean border. Japan, which in 1895 had tried to remove the pro-Russian faction from Seoul through the assassination of Queen Min, concluded that Korea could not be held without pushing the Russians out of Manchuria.

After a year and a half of fighting Japan had won everything there was to win. Its armies took Port Arthur in January 1905, and in March, under Field Marshal Iwao Ōyama, they forced the Russian forces to retreat at the Battle of Mukden, regarded as the largest land battle the world had yet seen. On 27–28 May Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō’s fleet destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima the Russian squadron that had sailed halfway round the world to turn the tide of the war at sea. In July the Japanese landed on Sakhalin and within a few weeks occupied the whole island.

But the victories cost more than Japan could pay. The army had lost tens of thousands killed, including thousands of junior officers who could not quickly be replaced. The war had been financed largely with loans raised in London and New York, and the command in Manchuria warned the government that it had neither the men nor the ammunition for a further advance north. Russia, meanwhile, beaten in Manchuria but untouched on its own territory, was still bringing up new corps along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its weakness lay elsewhere: since Bloody Sunday in January 1905 the country had been engulfed by revolution, strikes and mutinies, and in June the crew of the battleship Potemkin rose in revolt. Both sides needed peace, though neither wanted to admit it.

Roosevelt’s mediation

The role of mediator was taken on by the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Since the spring he had been sounding out both capitals through diplomats and through an acquaintance from his Harvard days, the Japanese politician Kentarō Kaneko, who was in America as Tokyo’s unofficial envoy. A few days after Tsushima, on 31 May, Komura instructed Minister Takahira to ask the President to mediate, in such a way that the initiative would appear to be American. On 8 June Roosevelt sent both governments a formal invitation to talks. Japan accepted at once, Russia a few days later. Emperor Nicholas II agreed to negotiate but gave his representatives a clear instruction, conveyed in the formula “not an inch of land, not a rouble of indemnity”.

Roosevelt sympathised with Japan but did not want it to drive Russia out of East Asia altogether. He preferred a balance of power in which no single power could close China to American trade. Behind the scenes, Washington and Tokyo were at the same time settling other matters. At the end of July the Secretary of War, William Taft, held a conversation in Tokyo with Prime Minister Tarō Katsura, recorded in a memorandum in which Japan disclaimed any designs on the American Philippines and the American side took note of Japanese suzerainty over Korea. On 12 August, with the negotiations already under way, Britain renewed its alliance with Japan, recognising Japan’s special rights in Korea. Before the Russians and the Japanese even sat down at the table, Korea’s fate had in practice been sealed.

The navy yard on the Piscataqua

It was decided to move the talks from Washington, stifling in summer, north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The sessions were held in the navy yard on islands at the mouth of the Piscataqua River – formally in the territory of the neighbouring town of Kittery, Maine – and the delegations stayed at the Wentworth Hotel in nearby New Castle. The choice of a military base made security and discretion easier, and more than a hundred journalists from all over the world descended on the little town.

The Japanese reached the United States first. Komura – short, slight and sparing with words – led his delegation as he conducted the whole of his foreign policy: in silence and away from the press. Witte – tall, stout and sociable, chosen as chief delegate only after the Tsar’s first candidate had excused himself – played to American public opinion from the start. He shook hands with engine drivers, signed autographs, attended church services and gave interviews, presenting Russia as a country that did not feel defeated and had come to talk only out of respect for the President. Alongside him and Rosen in the Russian delegation was the lawyer Friedrich (Fyodor) Martens, a specialist in international law and arbitration.

On 5 August Roosevelt received both delegations aboard the presidential yacht Mayflower in Oyster Bay, near his estate on Long Island. He attended to every detail of protocol: refreshments were served standing, so that no one had to worry about the order of seating at table, and instead of two toasts he proposed a single joint one to the prosperity of the rulers and peoples of both countries, to avoid any dispute over precedence. He never appeared in Portsmouth himself. Throughout the negotiations he worked from Oyster Bay, by letter, telegram and through ambassadors.

Twelve demands

The delegations first met on 9 August. They agreed the rules: two sessions a day, the Russians to speak French and the Japanese English, with the French text to prevail in case of dispute. On 10 August Komura handed Witte twelve peace terms. Japan demanded, among other things, recognition of its exclusive ascendancy in Korea, the evacuation of Russian troops from Manchuria, the transfer of the lease of Port Arthur and Dalny (Dalian), the surrender of the railway running south from Harbin, the restriction of the Chinese Eastern Railway to commercial purposes, the cession of the whole of Sakhalin, fishing rights off the coast of the Russian Far East, reimbursement of the costs of the war, the handing over of Russian warships interned in neutral ports, and limits on the Russian fleet in the Pacific.

The Russian reply came on 12 August. Witte accepted, or was ready to discuss, eight points and rejected four: the cession of Sakhalin, the indemnity, the surrender of the warships and the limitation of the fleet. Over the following days the two sides quickly agreed on the matters that the war had in fact already decided: Korea, the mutual evacuation of Manchuria, the Open Door principle for the trade of all nations in that province, and the transfer to Japan of the lease and the railway in the south. It was settled that Russia would keep the railway in northern Manchuria and that the boundary between the Russian and Japanese lines would lie in the vicinity of Changchun.

The crisis

On 17 August the talks stalled. Witte declared that he would discuss neither money nor Sakhalin any further. The next day Komura offered to drop the demands concerning the warships and the fleet if the Russians would return to talks on the island and the indemnity. According to American and Japanese accounts, a partition of Sakhalin was also proposed, with Russia buying back the northern half for an enormous sum – in practice a disguised indemnity. Witte, faithful to his instructions and convinced that time was on Russia’s side, refused. The American newspapers, which had initially favoured the Japanese, increasingly wrote that Tokyo was waging war for money.

At this point Roosevelt intervened in person. He received Rosen and Kaneko, and wrote to Nicholas II through the ambassador in St Petersburg, George Meyer. He argued to the Japanese that the world would not support prolonging the war for the sake of an indemnity, and to the Tsar that it was better to yield now than to lose the whole of eastern Siberia later. On 23 August Nicholas II told Meyer that he might give up the southern part of Sakhalin, which the Japanese were occupying anyway, but would not hear of money. On 26 August the negotiations were on the verge of breaking down, and Komura warned Tokyo that he might be forced to leave.

In Tokyo, however, they knew better than in Portsmouth the state of the treasury and of the army. On 28 August a conference of government leaders and elder statesmen, its decision approved by Emperor Mutsuhito (the Meiji Emperor), resolved that peace must be made even at the price of giving up both the indemnity and Sakhalin. When this instruction reached the delegation, news also came from Tokyo, reportedly obtained from the British, that the Tsar was prepared to give up half the island.

On the morning of 29 August Witte and Komura met privately before the session. At the session Komura announced that Japan would withdraw its demand for reimbursement of the costs of the war if Russia ceded the southern half of Sakhalin, up to the 50th parallel. Witte, who had prepared for a breakdown, accepted the offer. Back at the hotel he is said to have told his staff that the Japanese had given way on everything. That evening toasts were raised in Portsmouth to Russia, Japan, their delegations and the host town. On 1 September the two sides agreed an armistice on the fronts, and over the following days lawyers polished the text.

The signatures

On the afternoon of 5 September four copies of the treaty, two in English and two in French, were signed in the conference room of the storehouse building. Among the witnesses were the Assistant Secretary of State, Herbert Peirce, the Governor of New Hampshire and the Mayor of Portsmouth. According to press reports, the town’s church bells soon began to ring. In the evening members of the Russian delegation attended a solemn service of thanksgiving in Portsmouth. According to eyewitnesses, Witte wept.

What was agreed

The treaty had fifteen articles and two additional articles:

• Russia acknowledged that Japan possessed “paramount political, military and economic interests” in Korea and undertook not to interfere with the measures of “guidance, protection and control” that Japan might find necessary. No one asked Korea itself.
• Both sides were to evacuate their troops from Manchuria within 18 months and restore it to Chinese administration, except for the leased territory. They were, however, allowed to maintain guards to protect the railways, not exceeding 15 men per kilometre of line.
• Russia transferred to Japan, with China’s consent, the lease of Port Arthur, Dalny and the adjacent territories and waters. On this basis the Japanese Kwantung Leased Territory, often called simply Kwantung, came into being.
• Russia ceded to Japan, without compensation and likewise with China’s consent, the railway from Changchun to Port Arthur with its branches, all its rights and privileges, and the coal mines belonging to the railway. The railways in Manchuria were to be used solely for commercial and industrial purposes, except in the leased territory.
• Russia ceded to Japan “in perpetuity” the southern part of Sakhalin up to the 50th degree of north latitude, together with the adjacent islands. Neither side was to fortify the island, and the La Pérouse Strait and the Strait of Tartary were to remain open to navigation.
• The Japanese received fishing rights along the Russian coasts of the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea.
• Prisoners were to be exchanged, and Russia undertook to repay Japan the excess cost of their maintenance. This was the only sum Russia paid.

There was no war indemnity, which Japanese public opinion had expected to amount to many hundreds of millions or even billions of yen. Nor was there any surrender of warships or limitation of the Russian fleet. Both states ratified the treaty in October, and it came into force in the middle of that month.

It is often said that the treaty gave Japan “extraterritorial rights” in the South Manchuria Railway zone. The treaty itself does not put it that way. It transferred to Japan the rights and privileges that Russia had held in Manchuria under its agreements with China of 1896 and 1898. These included the right to administer the strip of land along the tracks, with police, taxation and jurisdiction over the railway settlements. China, which had no voice at Portsmouth, had to approve this. It did so in the Treaty of Peking, signed on 22 December 1905, in which Japan obtained further privileges into the bargain: the right to build railways, to exploit the forests along the Yalu and to open new towns to trade.

Fire in Tokyo

In Japan the peace was received with fury. For a whole year the press had written of victories, and the government, so as not to strengthen the Russians’ hand in the negotiations, had not said publicly that the country was at the end of its strength. Many Japanese believed that Russia would pay as China had in 1895. On the day the treaty was signed, 5 September, a coalition of associations opposed to the peace called a rally in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo. The police closed the park gates, the crowd forced them, and the rally turned into riots that lasted three days. The rioters attacked the residence of the Home Minister, the pro-government newspaper Kokumin Shimbun, police posts (some 70 per cent of the city’s police boxes were destroyed), trams, Christian churches and American premises. Seventeen people were killed. More than 450 policemen, several dozen firemen and many civilians were injured, and over two thousand people were arrested. On 6 September the government declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and brought in the army. The discontent contributed to the fall of Katsura’s government. The Prime Minister resigned in December and was succeeded in January 1906 by Kinmochi Saionji.

Komura, gravely ill with typhoid, returned home on 16 October. In Yokohama residents took down their welcome flags at the sight of him, and at the station in Tokyo the Prime Minister and the Navy Minister stood beside him, ready to shield him with their own bodies in the event of an attempt on his life. Witte returned to St Petersburg as a hero of the court and was made a count, while his opponents nicknamed him “Count Half-Sakhalin” (Polusakhalinsky). In 1906 Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American to do so.

The railway, the zone and the army

The most lasting consequence of Portsmouth turned out to be neither Korea nor Sakhalin but some 700 kilometres of track from Changchun to Dalian and Port Arthur. Japan had no intention of giving it up. In the autumn of 1905 the American railway magnate Edward Harriman persuaded Prime Minister Katsura to agree a preliminary arrangement for joint management of the railway. On his return from America Komura torpedoed the agreement, and the view prevailed in Tokyo that land won with blood must not be shared with foreigners.

In November 1906 the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu) was founded, a joint-stock company half of whose shares were held by the state. Its first president was Shinpei Gotō, until then the administrator of Japanese Taiwan. Mantetsu was no ordinary railway company. It ran mines, the port of Dalian, hotels, hospitals and schools, and above all the “railway zone”, a strip of land along the tracks, taking in districts of Mukden, Changchun and other cities, in which Japanese administration applied. In time it became the largest and most profitable company in the Japanese empire.

To protect the railway and the leased territory Japan kept troops in Manchuria, relying on the right to railway guards written into the treaty. In 1919 this garrison became the independent Kwantung Army, named after the Kwantung territory. Its officers soon began to pursue a policy of their own. In 1928 they murdered the Manchurian ruler Zhang Zuolin by blowing up his train. On 18 September 1931, under the direction of Colonel Seishirō Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, they set off an explosive charge on the South Manchuria Railway line near Mukden, blamed the Chinese for the attack and began occupying the whole of Manchuria. This Mukden Incident gave rise to the state of Manchukuo and set Japan on a road that led, through the war with China in 1937, to Pearl Harbor.

The long shadow of Portsmouth

The Treaty of Portsmouth ended one war but opened several roads leading to the next. Korea, handed over to Japan by the powers, became a Japanese protectorate in November 1905 and was annexed five years later. Japan, having defeated a European power for the first time, became convinced that its place was on the Asian continent, and the army that gains paid for in blood were inviolable. At the same time the humiliation of 1905 and the Hibiya riots taught politicians that concessions to foreigners were dangerous in Japan. Distrust grew towards the United States, which only recently had been regarded in Tokyo as a friend. In 1915, as part of the Twenty-One Demands, Japan forced China to extend the lease of the Kwantung territory and the railway to 99 years.

Russia, for its part, accepted defeat only for a time. After 1907 the two states divided Manchuria into spheres of influence in secret agreements, and a shared dislike of the Americans drew them together for some years. But the memory of Port Arthur and Tsushima outlived the fall of tsarism. On 2 September 1945, the day of Japan’s surrender, Joseph Stalin recalled in a radio address the defeat of 1904 as a stain on the country’s honour which the older generation had waited forty years to wipe out. Within a few days the Red Army had occupied Manchuria, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and for some years the Soviet Union regained Port Arthur and the railway that Russia had lost at Portsmouth.