Description
Book SynopsisAs a result of the Aigun (1858) and Beijing Treaties (1860) Russia had become a participant in international relations of Northeast Asia, but historiography has underestimated the presence of Russia and the USSR in this region. This collection elucidates how Russia''s expansion affected early Meiji Japan''s policy towards Korea and the late Qing Empire''s Manchurian reform. Russia participated in the mega-imperial system of transportation and customs control in Northern China and created a transnational community around the Chinese Eastern Railway and Harbin City. The collection vividly describes daily life of the emigre Russians'' community in Harbin after 1917. The collection investigates mutual images between the Russians and Japanese through the prism of the descriptions of the Japanese Imperial House in Russian newspapers and memoirs written by Russian POWs in and after the Russo-Japanese War and war journalism during this war. The first Soviet ambassador in Japan, V. Kopp, propos
Trade Review. . . . this edited volume is a valuable contribution to the academic endeavor of writing an integrated history of Northeast Asia and highlighting the interplay between the three main actors in the Far East. It presents “a genuine macro-regional history,” not a “medley of national histories” (ix). * Slavic Review *
In general, the quality of the scholarship makes this an essential volume for specialists and a helpful one for anybody interested in Russia, China, and Japan’s interactions during all three countries’ late imperial periods and the revolutionary transformations of the first half of the twentieth century. * The Russian Review *
In recent years many books on the history of the Far East have been published and attention to the region’s past has clearly increased. However, I agree with the editor of the book under review, Kimitaka Matsuzato, that its title is almost revolutionary because it reflects the current change in the understanding of Russia’s historical role in the region: from a supporting player to one of the main actors in the Far Eastern scene. . . . this book gives a large-scale and impressive picture of Russia’s participation in various spheres of life in the Far East during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. * Asian Review of World Histories *
This great collection, including contributions from an impressive cohort of Japanese scholars, uncovers a range of new sources and perspectives to build a history of Northeast Asia out of little-known cross-cultural and transnational encounters. The effect of adding Russia to the regional brew is bracing, serving to re-interpellate and reinterpret the dominantly Asia-centric literature. -- David Wolff, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University
Table of ContentsIntroduction, Kimitaka Matsuzato Explanatory Notes Map Chapter 1: Russia’s Expansion to the Far East and Its Impact on Early Meiji Japan’s Korea Policy, Shinichi Fumoto Chapter 2: The Russian Factor Facilitating the Administrative Reform in Qing Manchuria in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Susumu Tsukase Chapter 3: Imperial Ambitions: Russians, Britons and the Politics of Nationality in the Chinese Customs Service, 1890–1937, Catherine Ladds Chapter 4: Development of Trade on the Amur and the Sungari and the Customs Problem in the Last Years of the Russian Empire, Yukimura Sakon Chapter 5: Making a Vancouver in the Far East: “The Trinity Transportation System” of the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1896–1917, Masafumi Asada Chapter 6: Japanese–Russian Kulturkampf in the Far East, 1904–5: Organization, Methods, Ideas, Dmitrii B. Pavlov Chapter 7: Captured or Captivated? The War against Japan (1904–5) in the Memories of Russian POWs, Andreas Renner Chapter 8: From the Meiji Emperor's Funeral to the Taisho Emperor's Coronation: Reporting the Japanese Imperial System in the Russian Press, Yoshiro Ikeda Chapter 9: Two Russias in Harbin: The Émigré Community and the Soviet Colony, Michiko Ikuta Chapter 10: V. L. Kopp and Soviet Policy towards Japan after the Basic Convention of 1925: Moscow and Tokyo’s Failed “Honeymoon”?, Yaroslav Shulatov
