A New Global Political Con guration Ë 61
The Anglo-Russian Convention was prompted at least in part by the rapid rise of
the German Empire, an empire that had been changing the political map of Europe
since 1871. Together with the Habsburgs in Austria-Hungary, Russia’s old continen-
tal rival, and Italy, an upstart colonial power, the German government had long be-
longed to the Triple Alliance of Central Powers. Russia’s weakness as exposed in the
war against Japan now emboldened the Central Powers. Austria-Hungary, for exam-
ple, supported by Germany, delivered to Russia a “diplomatic Tsushima,” a humiliat-
ing defeat akin to Japan’s routing of the Russian Fleet in the Tsushima Straits, Japan, in
- In 1908 the Habsburgs almost unilaterally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina through
cunning diplomatic manoeuvers. Although, in return, Russia secured the indepen-
dence of Bulgaria from the Ottomans, it failed to exact territorial and political conces-
sions for Serbia and Montenegro or gain freer access to the Turkish Straits. This event,
forced upon a weakened Russia, set the stage for the confrontation between Russia
and Austria-Hungary in World War I.³³
Germany itself proved even more formidable, for it, unlike Austria-Hungary,
strove to become a global power, and so inevitably clashed with Russia, Britain,
France, and even Japan and the United States. Russia felt most threatened by Ger-
many’s growing in uence in its southern borderlands: the Ottoman Empire, the
Caucasus, and Persia. As noted, Germany sought to use these to challenge its ri-
val imperial powers of Britain, France, and Russia. The Ottomans, long in decline
under the pressure of these European powers, found in Germany (with which it did
not share a border) a convenient counterweight to them. But the ties of the two coun-
tries, which were becoming ever closer, greatly unnerved the other imperial powers,
Russia included. The so-called Liman von Sanders incident in 1913–14 is symbolic of
the growing German in uence in the Ottoman Empire: when the German general was
put in charge of the Ottoman army corps defending the Straits, the other European
imperial powers strongly reacted. But although in the end Germany was forced to
make a concession,³⁴the aair did not break German ambitions in this part of the
world.
Likewise, the Russo-Japanese War changed signi cantly the international envi-
ronment in which Japan operated. One of the most important changes was that af-
ter Japan’s victory, the United States now viewed the new Asian empire as a poten-
tial threat to US interests in Asia. Originally the United States, like Britain, had re-
garded Japan as a convenient counterweight to Russia’s imperial expansion in Asia.
Japan’s victory, however, fundamentally changed the American position. True, the
33 For this Bosnian crisis, see McDonald,United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia 1900–1914,
ch. 6. For a detailed analysis of the Balkan crisis and its consequences, see Andrew Rossos,Russia
and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908–1914(Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1981).
34 See Michael A. Reynolds,Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian
Empires 1908–1918(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 40–41.