60 Ë A Lull
world, including nearly 14 million in Russia.²⁷Nevertheless, the Japanese government
failed to understand this important point, and it became a symbol of Japan’s extraor-
dinarily inept diplomacy.
The possibility of the establishment of Turko-Japanese diplomatic relations (and
even an “alliance” between the two countries) greatly concerned Russia.²⁸Indeed,
Russia suspected that after Akashi was forced to leave Europe in 1907, he made
a stop in Istanbul on his way back to Japan to conclude “a military alliance with
Turkey.”²⁹Akashi’s ghost was evident in the Caucasus as well: rumors circulated
that the Japanese had covered the Caucasus with secret spies.³⁰In the end, however,
Tokyo’s ineptitude in Turkey bene ted Russia greatly.
3.3 A New Global Political Con guration
Russia’s defeat in the war against Japan had tremendous global repercussions in an-
other respect as well: it changed the global political balance of power, particularly in
Europe and Asia.
Humbled in Asia, Russia returned to its historic interests in Europe, that is, in
the west and south. Yet there Russia faced her now emboldened imperial rivals and
oppressed nationalities.
After the war, Russia’s modus operandi was to secure peace and the restoration
of its military might severely weakened by its defeat. In 1907, in a sharp departure
from the historic Great Game with Great Britain, Russia concluded an agreement
with its archenemy (the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907), dividing Asia (Persia,
Afghanistan, and Tibet) into their respective spheres of in uence, most notably split-
ting Persia into three zones (Russian, neutral, and British). Although of course this
did not eliminate the rivalry of the two countries in Asia,³¹it did help Russia gain
time to recover from the war with Japan. On the eve of the agreement’s signing, A.P.
Izvol’skii, Russia’s foreign minister, noted that “Russia must be assured of peace from
Kamchatka to Gibraltar for about ten years... or else we will be in the position of a
half-forgotten Asian power.”³²With the Franco-Russian alliance from the 1890s and
the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904, the Russian-British rapprochement now
created the Triple Entente.
27 JACAR, reference code: B06151024000.
28 See Rossiiskii gosudartsvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 450, op. 1, d. 146 (pertaining to 1906).
29 GARF, f. 102, DP PP, 1907, op. 316, d. 38ch1, ll. 97–98.
30 GARF, f. 102, DP PP, 1907, op. 316, d. 38ch1, ll. 97–98.
31 See Jennifer Siegel,Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia(London–New
York: I.B. Tauris, 2002).
32 Quoted in David MacLaren McDonald,United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia 1900–1914
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 109.