Want did so many nation not want russia to get a open port
- Thread starter walmart
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Simply put, a Russia with a significant maritime presence was a threat to Britain's best interests, since the British had a Mediterranean presence before the Russians had a Black Sea coastline (I think?).
As for the Ottomans, the opposition there is obvious. They and the Russians have the most well-exercised rivalry of the 19th century, so the Turks did not want them to have a Mediterranean seaport... much less Istanbul!
As for the Ottomans, the opposition there is obvious. They and the Russians have the most well-exercised rivalry of the 19th century, so the Turks did not want them to have a Mediterranean seaport... much less Istanbul!
The Hanseatic League feared that Russian ships would dominate Baltic trade.
The British East India Company feared that Russian ships would dominate Indian Ocean trade.
Ottoman Turks feared that Russian ships would dominate Black Sea trade.
Japanese feared that Russian ships would dominate Pacific Ocean trade.
The British East India Company feared that Russian ships would dominate Indian Ocean trade.
Ottoman Turks feared that Russian ships would dominate Black Sea trade.
Japanese feared that Russian ships would dominate Pacific Ocean trade.
There was a sense that Russia's vast natural wealth and resources would allow it to become almost unstoppable if it was not boxed in. Tocqueville in Democracy in America, for example, famously posits that the US and Russia were destined to be the drivers of world history in the next century.
British, German and French fears of Russian open ports were compounded by the fact that for Europe, Russia getting an open-water port would mean dismantling the Ottoman Empire. Given Russia's traditional Orthodox and Byzantine links to the Balkans (not to mention less conventional links, such as to Malta through the Knights of St. John), the powers thought that such a collapse would only benefit Russia - not a correct estimation, as it turns out, but a reasonable one nonetheless.
British, German and French fears of Russian open ports were compounded by the fact that for Europe, Russia getting an open-water port would mean dismantling the Ottoman Empire. Given Russia's traditional Orthodox and Byzantine links to the Balkans (not to mention less conventional links, such as to Malta through the Knights of St. John), the powers thought that such a collapse would only benefit Russia - not a correct estimation, as it turns out, but a reasonable one nonetheless.
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You know, I always thought fears of Russia getting this or that port were overblown. It wouldn't magically give them a navy worth a damn, and it wouldn't alleviate the need to have a large army both to defend their massive borders and for internal policing. It could be a gamechanger, but hardly the apocalyptic threat people seemed to treat it as.
The Russians managed to procure a navy that was both capable of fighting wars and being a tool of European diplomacy, without a warm water port. I am sure it wouldn't hurt the effort to actually have a naval base that doesn't freeze over, really.
Would it be apocalyptic? Likely not. Russia isn't going to develop a merchant marine to go with the navy, nor will it embargo Britain from procuring the Baltic naval stores.
Saphroneth
Banned
They also objected to Russia getting the second warm-water port, a transcontinental railway to connect them, and Alsasce-Lorraine.
usertron2020
Donor
Apparently the rest of Europe wasn't listening to the American half of his warnings...
Saphroneth
Banned
It's always a problem telling which visionary was right. I mean, what about the guy who famously predicted that there would be no more worthwhile inventions, in 1899?Apparently the rest of Europe wasn't listening to the American half of his warnings...
Or the guy who predicted that Japan would overtake the US economically by 2000?
usertron2020
Donor
Such block-headed predictions kept medical science in the Christian world frozen in time going all the way back to 100 AD until the mid-to-late 1800s. Small wonder that Muslim and Jewish doctors were so highly prized in the Western world in the Medieval period all the way to the start of the Industrial Revolution.
As to visionaries, who would have thought in the 50s that the most clear viewing sci-fi visionary would be Robert Heinlein? Practically ALL works in his period obsessed on apocalytic visions of the future.
Certainly seemed that way in the 70s and 80s. Then demographics kicked in, and...
Thank God for American immigration practices. At least such as they are. I wonder what Japan would be like today if not for their mania for cultural and genetic insularity?Moscow to Sevastopol is double the distance that Moscow to St. Petersburg is. Plus, having your capital in a port that's blocked off by your main geopolitical rival seems like a bit of a waste.
Certainly seemed that way in the 70s and 80s. Then demographics kicked in, and...
Eh, their real problem was that their banking system was rigged. Depositors had no choice but to put their savings in the government bank, that lent out to smaller banks, and they lent to businesses that were connected with them. Money was doled out because of connections more than because they thought something was a good investment. Eventually enough of those loans went bad, and boom! Financial crisis.
Saphroneth
Banned
Exactly. You can't tell a lot of these things until they've already happened - at the time, there's lots of predictions, and you can't successfully pick which. It's only with hindsight that the narrative is clear - and that narrative actually obscures a lot of the messiness around at the time.
It was also an over reliance on their manufacturing sector, particularly steel production, which constituted a huge amount of their GDP (memory wants to tell me 70%) over services which only gave about 10% even though the employed the the opposite amount of people.
