Plans of the Russian administration in the Boxer Uprising in 1900-1901 and their realization

Annotation

The Boxer Uprising in 1900-1901 and the subsequent occupation of Manchuria by Russian troops led simultaneously to the strengthening of Russian influence in the Far East and the deterioration of Russian-Japanese relations. As in any absolute monarchy, members of the Russian government could determine the policy vector of their department with a high degree of freedom as long as the emperor agreed with it, which makes it especially important to reveal the role of the politicians' personalities and their views. Consequently, the purpose of the study is to reveal the process of formulation and decision-making of the Russian administration on the issue of Russia's actions in the Boxer Uprising in 1900-1901. In order to fulfill the goal, the study drew on memoirs of the main participants of the events, materials of correspondence between members of the Russian administration and diplomatic acts. The first two groups of sources contain exhaustive information about the plans and decision-making process of the Russian administration, while the acts reflect specific political steps and illustrate the specifics of the political background. The position of the administration, in essence, was to maintain a free hand and to strengthen its own rights regarding the CEL. These goals were achieved, however, at the cost of deteriorating relations with Japan, Great Britain and allied China, which made Russian domination in the region an unstable and temporary phenomenon.

Keywords

• S. Y. Witte
• V. N. Lamsdorf
• A. N. Kuropatkin
• Li Hongzhang
• Boxer uprising
• CEL
• Russian invasion in Manchuria
• russian-Japanese relations
• Korean question
• Boxer Protocol
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Contribution of the authors

Sorokopudova O. E. – development of the research concept, substantiation of the purpose of the article; text revision; Dragunov D. R. – processing and analysis of the material, writing the original text, final conclusions.

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