DBWI: A Russo-Japanese War

OTL was saw the Russo-Japanese Agreement of 1904, in which Japan recognized Russian dominance in Manchuria and Russia recognize Japanese dominance in Korea. This set the stage for Japan and Russia to annex Korea and Manchuria respectively in 1910.

Czar Nicholas had contemplated pushing the Japanese to recognize a neutral zone in Northern Korea. The Japanese were none too pleased and threatened war over such a thing. While the Russians were confident they could defeat Japan, they figured it wasn't worth the effort and accepted a straight recognition of Japanese domination in Korea.

What if they'd gone to war? Both sides would end up racking up big debts that would limit their expansion overall, I think. On the other hand, lessons might be learned by the belligerents that could have been quite put into effect during the Great War.
 
according to a buddy of mine, Japan likely would’ve won that war. Russia had some extensively terrible military leaders and naval warfare was not their forte. The Japanese could lockdown the area
 
Tsar Nicholas The Gentle wouldnt have gone down as such. He spent his reign industrializaing russia while instituting an isolationist policy of free trade, like america... just with a tsar. He kept russia out of the entente Balkans, which, while causing a loss of face at the time, most historians agree would've drawn Europe into a major war if hed backed Serbia in the Austro-Serb war of 1914.

If hed gone to war, he would have lost, and had to have backed serbia. Do I think they could've won? No. Not until the twenties, minimum. And that's if France also joins them. There would be revolution.

And where there is revolution, there is fire. A Russo-Japanese war would have laid the kindle, the Serbian crisis the spark, and the flames of revolution would have ended monarchy and likely the colonial empires.
 
Tsar Nicholas The Gentle wouldnt have gone down as such. He spent his reign industrializaing russia while instituting an isolationist policy of free trade, like america... just with a tsar. He kept russia out of the entente Balkans, which, while causing a loss of face at the time, most historians agree would've drawn Europe into a major war if hed backed Serbia in the Austro-Serb war of 1914.

If hed gone to war, he would have lost, and had to have backed serbia. Do I think they could've won? No. Not until the twenties, minimum. And that's if France also joins them. There would be revolution.

And where there is revolution, there is fire. A Russo-Japanese war would have laid the kindle, the Serbian crisis the spark, and the flames of revolution would have ended monarchy and likely the colonial empires.

Well, somewhat isolationist. US and Russia still got along well.

And what helped him as pretty much curtailing the nobles because apparently a lot of outside forces pushed him to war. On the other hand, St. Rasputin the Wise (or “The Last Christian Mystic”) pretty much got the common people to support the Tsar.

China meanwhile had to deal with trouble with the loss of Manchuria and the coal there. It took them a good while to modernize after the Qing was sent into exile into the island of Taiwan.

China has gotten better, especially with their special relationship with Mexico, but man are they still salty at Russia at times.
 
Well, somewhat isolationist. US and Russia still got along well.

And what helped him as pretty much curtailing the nobles because apparently a lot of outside forces pushed him to war. On the other hand, St. Rasputin the Wise (or “The Last Christian Mystic”) pretty much got the common people to support the Tsar.

China meanwhile had to deal with trouble with the loss of Manchuria and the coal there. It took them a good while to modernize after the Qing was sent into exile into the island of Taiwan.

China has gotten better, especially with their special relationship with Mexico, but man are they still salty at Russia at times.

Yeah, honestly it's a shame, china could've been a great power even now, but they refused to wake up, and now they're a joke of a republic still paying tribute to the west. No tibet, no manchuria or korea, their southern coast is shared with French Indochina and the British Dominion of Greater Hong Kong. They're still a strong economy, but it's mostly agrarian and what not. Add in the fact that America has recently admitted the Qing Republic as a territory and has said it will be a state within a few years if they get the constitution done, and it just hasn't been china's time in the sun

Mexico is more likely to become a great power than them to be honest, especially since they finally got Centroamerica to submit to Mexico City, and they always need the food, so they would want to keep china agrarian, moreso than the colonials.

Honestly I'm curious what a hypothetical "Russian revolution," would look like. Marx's writings weren't unheard of, but at the same time, Rasputin advocated for many reforms that depending on the time, would have rendered a marxists revolution unnecessary. A hyper nationalist one would alienate the whole of the empire.... maybe a democratic one? But Russian literacy wasnt very high until the 20s so it would have been very oligarchical, rendering it moot.
 
I mean a total victory for either party would have been impossible, and that was pretty well known at that time by both parties. Japan had no chance of beating Russia on land by just pure numbers not to mention any sort of tactical understanding. Meanwhile, Russia's navy in total was somewhere between "floating bathtubs" and "seaworthy on paper only" and would have been torn to shreds in any battle with the Imperial Japanese Navy, which matches any in the world besides the British Royal Navy. Any war would be Russia kicking Japan out of Korea, and then just them staring at each other until Russia got sick of trying to hold the notoriously rebellious Korea and signed a peace deal. Frankly, both nations knew this and had better things to spend their blood and treasure on, which no matter what the propaganda at the time (and today depending on where you live) says that was the reason behind the treaty, not any calls for peace.

Well, somewhat isolationist. US and Russia still got along well.
This actually was what lead to the concept of "Commodity Internationalism" by many anti-colonial and communist thinkers. The general idea goes that America and Russia are so large, have such massive populations, and are fairly resource-rich, that with the rise of the Bougiusie as the major force of political life they don't actually see the need to interact with the wider world beyond basic trading deals, thus they have escaped the complex alliances and constant warfare the European powers have engaged in. This line of thinking, first put forth by the likes of Rosa Luxemburg states that as industrial capital expanded it faced a never-ending need for more. More labor, more markets, more resources, and nations like France, Germany, and Britain were unable to meet this need internally and thus needed to constantly try to gain these things through conquest and colonialism.

Now this concept has a lot of detractors, most notably the fact that Russia and America's relative isolation is just that, relative. They might not have sent massive armies into an endless meatgrinder in the early '20s like most of Europe, but it's not like they didn't have military adventures aimed at aiding their captains of industry. Just ask the people of Persia and Cuba. The major difference and the one that Communists of the Luxemburg school of thought used to explain this is that after they march their armies in they integrate territory, making it part of the overall state rather than rule over them the way the colonial powers do with their victims colonies.

Honestly I'm curious what a hypothetical "Russian revolution," would look like. Marx's writings weren't unheard of, but at the same time, Rasputin advocated for many reforms that depending on the time, would have rendered a marxists revolution unnecessary. A hyper nationalist one would alienate the whole of the empire.... maybe a democratic one? But Russian literacy wasnt very high until the 20s so it would have been very oligarchical, rendering it moot.
The biggest issue with Russian communism is the fact that they didn't really have a proletariate class. At least not in the way Marx was describing. A fraction of the population worked in factories and they were about 20 years behind the industrial revolution. They only caught up thanks to the Great War setting most of Western Europe back a few decades. Most communist thinkers these days agree that Russia is unlikely to ever have a revolution for much the same reason America likely won't have one, the population is basically reactionary in most ways. They'll rally around common-sense initiatives like weekends, maximum working hours, minimum wage, no child labor, but the people are, as a famous Russian communist put it, "Too enamored with their national myths. The Czar Father for the peasant, and the Glorious Constitution for the Cowboy".
 
Who do you guys think would win in 1914 if the Serbian crisis went hot?, France, britain (Germany would invade via the scheliffen plan like in 22, presumably) and russia, or germany, italy and Austria-Hungary?

Personally my money is on Germany and friends
 
Yeah, honestly it's a shame, china could've been a great power even now, but they refused to wake up, and now they're a joke of a republic still paying tribute to the west. No tibet, no manchuria or korea, their southern coast is shared with French Indochina and the British Dominion of Greater Hong Kong. They're still a strong economy, but it's mostly agrarian and what not. Add in the fact that America has recently admitted the Qing Republic as a territory and has said it will be a state within a few years if they get the constitution done, and it just hasn't been china's time in the sun

Mexico is more likely to become a great power than them to be honest, especially since they finally got Centroamerica to submit to Mexico City, and they always need the food, so they would want to keep china agrarian, moreso than the colonials.

Honestly I'm curious what a hypothetical "Russian revolution," would look like. Marx's writings weren't unheard of, but at the same time, Rasputin advocated for many reforms that depending on the time, would have rendered a marxists revolution unnecessary. A hyper nationalist one would alienate the whole of the empire.... maybe a democratic one? But Russian literacy wasnt very high until the 20s so it would have been very oligarchical, rendering it moot.

We were not happy about the admission of Qing as a territory, but the british led deligation forced the Qing to have a plebiscite for what country they wanted to join and the empire did not give them the option of independence.

We didn't expect us to win the vote, we didn't throw our hand in the ring after all, and you see that with the bi lateral Qing territory agreement which basically gave the republic as much independence as possible. As for statehood were still trying to get another plebiscite and convince Qing to rejoin the Chinese republic because this whole thing just fucked up our trade relations with them over a territory we didn't even want.

That's why you have a lot of ROC Chinese campains running on TV, and speakers invited onto Qing soil, its because we invited them. The upcoming state hood vote will have an option to go back to china and we are really hoping they pick that.
 
We were not happy about the admission of Qing as a territory, but the british led deligation forced the Qing to have a plebiscite for what country they wanted to join and the empire did not give them the option of independence.

We didn't expect us to win the vote, we didn't throw our hand in the ring after all, and you see that with the bi lateral Qing territory agreement which basically gave the republic as much independence as possible. As for statehood were still trying to get another plebiscite and convince Qing to rejoin the Chinese republic because this whole thing just fucked up our trade relations with them over a territory we didn't even want.

That's why you have a lot of ROC Chinese campains running on TV, and speakers invited onto Qing soil, its because we invited them. The upcoming state hood vote will have an option to go back to china and we are really hoping they pick that.
I mean it was voted in a 82% supermajority, which I suppose makes sense because China is a bit of a shitshow, the German empire is generally pretty bad to colonies, even more than normal, France hasn't stabilized in almost 90 years, and Britian would merge it with Hong Kong.

But the ROC option is mostly backed by private companies based in Taipei because the regulations are weakest in china. At least based on the data I've seen-namely, lot of CEOs and no politicians pushing for the ROC
 
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