David Schimmelpenninck van der OyeBesprekingen

The product of a conference convened in Japan to commemorate the centennial of the conflict, this collection of papers is definitely inter-library-loan fodder (if only for the eye-watering price), as the topics veer from Russo-Japanese relations from the opening of Tokugawa Japan, to matters of strategic planning and intelligence, to tactical and operational matters, to the social impact of it all. It might be noted that the Russian side of the military equation are somewhat better served, if only because there is more material to be mined. As for whether the Russo-Japanese War can be called "World War 0," I somehow think that referring to it as the beta test for the Great War would probably capture the concept slightly better. This collection also reminds me that the land-war side of this conflict has yet to find its Peter Cozzens, let alone its David Glantz.½

[Published in "The Historian," May 2005]

After a multinational expedition lifted the Boxer siege of the foreign legations in Peking in August 1900, a dispute between its Russian and American contingents over whether to raze the Forbidden City propelled tsarist officers to the defence of Chinese culture and patrimony. This little-remarked moment epitomizes, it seems, the complexity of Russia's relations with the Chinese at the height of Great Power imperialism. At once modestly exploitative and condescendingly protective – merely reflecting myriad impulses stirring its elites – Russia's official ambitions lacked one indispensable ingredient: a common authorial hand on state policy.
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, a Russianist at Brock University, dissects the competing philosophies that stirred Russia's approach to the East, and attempts to link them to foreign policy before the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). In the former objective he succeeds brilliantly; connecting intellectual currents and "influences" to policy is, however, painfully difficult, and here he is less convincing.
Four famous imperial personages illuminate the varieties of "orientalism" operating among Russians during the last part of the 19th century. The most colorful, colonel N.M. Przhevalskii, became famous as a military geographer and explorer. He possessed rapacious appetites in the East: China was a decadent fruit awaiting Russia. Prince E.E. Ukhtomskii, another traveller in the Middle Kingdom, studied Chinese ethnography, emerging as a proponent to peaceful relations between the two mighty autocratic empires. General A.N. Kuropatkin, a general staff planner, experienced Central Asian campaigner, and eventually War Minister, foresaw disastrous strategic consequences should Russia pursue western-style imperialism in the East. Finance Minister S.Iu. Witte favored dispassionate penetration (pénétration pacifique) through railroad development and Chinese debt relief. Schimmelpenninck's portraits of these men are vivid and he elaborates their views of the East concisely. His account of the antecedents to war with Japan produces some new conclusions. The collision between Emperor Nicholas II's erratic Korean-Manchurian policy – inspired by whomever had most recently held his ear – and aggressive Japanese ambitions came as a surprise to the Russian government, as the tsar's ministers lost control of policy in 1903. A.M. Bezobrazov, usually designated the nefarious instigator of Nicholas' policy, fades to relative insignificance (although he remains no less pernicious in Schimmelpenninck's portrait).
Toward the Rising Sun is a study of mentalities and personalities, rather then of institutions; herein lies a weakness. Russia's policy institutions fought some of the most important struggles with autocratic prerogative to bring Russia into the 20th century; they were hardly sanguine instruments of imperial will. The so-called Asiatic desks in the Foreign Ministry and the general staff were sources of vast knowledge on the East, yet they leave no mark on Schimmelpenninck's study. A prosopography of those who worked for the Asian desks might have significantly enriched the author's assertions about the forces at work on policy. Nevertheless, this vigorously written study will inform generalists and experts alike; undergraduates would find the book and subject very accessible.