United Kingdom - Early Russia Policy
It had long been evident that British and Russian interests conflicted in various quarters of Asia. The two powers were inevitable rivals. Despite decades of confrontation and geopolitical rivalry, the Russian and British Empires waged only two open wars against each other - the Crimean War in 1853-56 and the Russian Civil War in 1919-21.
The Czar Paul I (1792-1801), apprehensive at first of the revolution in France, threw the weight of his support on the side of Great Britain and Austria against France. But changing suddenly, he was on the eve of declaring war against Great Britain, when assassination acted its tragic part. In the late 18th century France waged endless wars against coalitions of other European superpowers, among which the Russian and British Empires acted as allies. However, Russian Emperor Paul I was greatly disappointed with the ongoing military campaigns and the fact that the British actually used Russia to achieve their own goals, with Russian soldiers meaninglessly spilling their blood on European battlefields.
In 1800, Paul I radically changed the course of Russia’s foreign policy by forging an alliance with France and preparing for a war against the British. The idea was to strike "the empire on which the sun never sets” in the main source of its prosperity - India. According to the plan made by Napoleon (then First Consul of France), the joint 70,000-strong French-Russian army was to reach Iran from southern Russia across the Caspian Sea, and then march towards India. Moreover, a large army of Don Cossacks would also participate. The two allies hoped for large-scale support from the Pashtuns, Balochi and other local tribes oppressed by the British. As a result of the campaign, northern India would fall under Russian rule, while the French would get the southern part.
On 28 February 1801, a 22,500-strong Cossack army began its march towards Russia’s southern borders. However, 11 days later Emperor Paul I was assassinated by a group of nobles and officers, with the secret support of Britain. The Cossacks were immediately ordered back, and the daring plan was never realized.
In 1814 Alexander I (1801-25), with the allies, invaded France, and lost many men in the assault upon Paris. After the final overthrow and banishment of the scourge and purge of Europe, it fell to Alexander to occupy Champagne and Lorraine. Alexander added to his dominions Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, part of the Caucasus, including Daghestan, Shirvan, Mingrelia, and Imeretia.
The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, almost committed Britain to another war late in 1814, this time with Russia, by opposing the Tsar’s attempts to annex Poland and give Russia a foothold in central Europe. Castlereagh believed that to appease the Tsar risked creating another Napoleon. Castlereagh pushed ahead regardless and felt vindicated when the Tsar backed down.
The later Foreign Policy of Great Britain, so far as it had been called into activity, had been concerned with the preservation and extension of her empire in the continents of Asia, Africa, and America. In dealing with the great European nations and with the United States, it had been one of absolute non-interference, and possessed no spark of vital interest.
In the 1830s the Russian Empire fought several exhausting wars against the tribes of the North Caucasus, who were displeased by Russia’s annexation of the region. The rebels received widespread support from Britain and Polish emigrants. In 1836, a Russian patrol ship detained the British sloop Vixen full of ammo for the rebels near the port of Sujuk-Qale (Novorossiysk) in the Black Sea. The British had already unloaded eight guns, 28,800 pounds of powder, and many other weapons.
The capture of Vixen was specially planned by British diplomats in Constantinople and Polish emigrants to provoke tensions between the two empires. The ship was arrested and its crew, led by Captain (and British agent) James Stanislaus Bell, was expelled to Constantinople. The provocateurs achieved their goals. In a fit of outrage, London started to prepare for war. However, the British couldn’t find an ally on the continent to fight Russia and the conflict was soon forgotten.
In 1853 Nicholas I began a war with Turkey which became the Crimean War, and in which though the allies Britain, France, and Sardinia did not obtain any solid advantage, Russia suffered immense loss. Alexander II, son of Nicholas, on coming to the throne (1855-81), concluded the Peace of Paris in 1856.
Russia indeed, reckoning on the continuance of the British policy of non-interference, took advantage to repudiate the Treaty of Paris, by which the Crimean War had been concluded; but her invasion of Turkey in 1877, which ensued upon that repudiation, was rendered harmless and even beneficial by the interposition at the critical moment of Great Britain.
Turkey was recalcitrant, and Russia, to enforce Turkey’s compliance with the proposals of the Powers, declared war against her in April 1877. An armistice was signed in January, 1878, followed in March by the Treaty of San Stefano. During the Russo-Turkish war (1877-1878), the Russian army was so successful that after several dazzling victories in late 1877 it opened a direct route to the heart of the Ottoman Empire - Constantinople. However, the fall of the Ottoman capital wasn’t part of the British plans. On February 1 the British fleet, led by Admiral Geoffrey Hornby, entered the Dardanelles, and a war credit of £6,000,000 was asked of Parliament. Britain was preparing for war. The Russian army could have easily taken Constantinople, but Emperor Alexander II resisted the temptation. “Constantinople is a new war,” he said. Exhausted, Russia wasn’t ready for a major new conflict, and a peace treaty with the Ottomans was made.
After diplomacy was baflled with the disposing of the sediments deposited by the war, which seemed not unlikely to be submitted to the solvent of an Anglo-Russian war, a Congress of the Great Powers, meeting at Berlin in June, 1878, sanctioned the rearrangement of the Ottoman Empire, and the cession to Russia of the part of Bessarabia given to Moldavia in 1856.
By the end of the 19th Century their unfriendly rivalry was mollified or ended in Turkey, and at least temporarily assuaged in China. India remained, as for a generation past, involving, as a subsidiary, Afghanistan, also Persia. As to Afghanistan, the Russian journals urgedthat while Great Britain was busied in South Africa, the time was propitious for Russia to develop her policy of advance in central Asia. The supposed organs of governmental opinion in London, while awaiting fuller news of the size, and extent of the Russian forward movement, expressed doubt of its success, even if attempted — the movement being rendered difficult by the nature of the region to be traversed, and by the strong opposition sure to be met from the Ameer of Afghanistan.
Russia feared Afghanistan, as a war with the Afghans would mean a general rising of all Islam, which would spread through Russian Asia. Russia has not troops enough to combat such a rising. Her hold on the Mussulman countries she has conquered is insecure. They hate her, and with ten times her power Russia could not fight Afghanistan and India successfully. The Afghans prefer death to slavery. The press in Great Britain and in the United States, and to a considerable extent in continental Europe, abounds in speculations and predictions as to Russia's menacing designs on British India through an approach by way of Persia.
In India the rivalry of Asiatic Russia, or the Russia and fear of it, directly or indirectly connected itself with nearly all the little wars which have been waged there since the middle of the century. As in Great Britain itself, the first duty was to consolidate the power of the British rulers. The Afghan, Belooch and Sikh wars, the various annexations, the measures taken after the Sepoy Mutiny, the Burmese, and the frontier wars, each contributed to the building up of a united and self-supporting empire, which might be dangerous to any Power that should venture to attack it. Nor was the same feeling about Asiatic Russia altogether absent from the policy pursued by Great Britain in China and Japan.
The Great Game between the Russian and British Empires for geopolitical dominance in Central Asia played out with no major clashes between the two superpowers. However, the Panjdeh incident put them on the brink of open warfare. In 1885, Russian troops entered the territory of the Panjdeh settlement of the Emirate of Afghanistan, then under the protectorate of Britain. The latter, deeply concerned about the Russian advance into its zone of interests, inspired the Afghan emir to kick the Russians out. The battle ended with a stunning Russian victory. The British were ready to launch a war themselves, but were convinced by Russian diplomats that the Russian Empire would halt its further expansion deeper into the region.
A Dogger was a Dutch two-masted sailing vessel generally employed in the herring fishery. The Dogger Bank is a large (17,600 square kilometers), shallow area of the North Sea renowned for its fishing. It lies about sixty miles from the English coast, but the name comes from that of a Dutch fishing vessel. The Dogger Bank is a shallow sea area in the southern central North Sea. It is about 300 km in extension and ranges in depth between 18 m to more than 40 m. The bank is a huge moraine. The top of the Dogger Bank is 9 fathoms, but it varies to 13 or 14. Ten leagues south of the middle of the Dogger-bank is the white water; the bottom is of white sand, and there is sixteen or seventeen fathoms water.
Dogger Bank is frequented in summer by plaice and haddocks. The cod are as a rule inside the Dogger Bank. The Dogger-Bank Cod are the most esteemed, as they generally cut in large fine flakes; the north country cod, which are caught off the Orkney Isles, are generally very stringy, or what is commonly called woolley, and sell at a very inferior price. The cod, cured on the Dogger Bank is remarkably fine, and seldon cured above two or three weeks before brought to market; the barrel cod is commonly cured on the coast of Scotland and Yorkshire.
The battle of the Dogger Bank in 1781 was the last hostile effort of any Dutch fleet, formerly of so much renown in naval annals. Henceforth the nation appears in history but as the spectator of the glory of others, and in a very slight degree as an asserter of her own. The battle cruiser engagement between Britain and Germany off the Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915 was the first between modern big-gun ships. Particular interest is also attached to it because each squadron was accompanied by scouting and screening light cruisers and destroyers.
Russia’s fateful war against Japan could have been even worse, since Britain was ready to engage on the Japanese side. That was because when the Russian naval squadron left the Baltic Sea and headed to the Far East, it almost triggered a war with the British along the way. In the early hours of 9 October 1904, a squadron of Russian warships, on their way from the Baltic to the Far East to take part in the Russo- Japanese war, unwittingly steamed into the Hull fishing fleet near the Dogger Bank. Not far from the English coast, Russian warships opened fire on local fishing trawlers, mistaking them for the Japanese fleet in the foggy night. As a result, several fishermen died and one trawler was sunk. The outraged British called the Russians a “fleet of lunatics” and started to prepare for war. Thankfully, Russian compensation for the fishermen resolved the incident peacefully.
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