Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/439

 fleet, and in March, 1898, Russia secured a lease of that strong fortress and harbor, as well as the neighboring port of Talienwan, in the peninsula of Liaotung, with the privilege of connecting them by railroad, through Manchuria, with the Siberian trunk line. Only three years before, Russia, in conjunction with its ally France, and with Germany, had compelled Japan to give up the Liaotung peninsula, on the ground that a nation holding it might at any time threaten Peking. The action of Russia led Great Britain to demand and secure the lease of the fortress of Wei-hai-wei and a strip of adjoining territory on the opposite promontory. France, which had some years before taken the large suzerain territory of Annam and Tonquin, also secured in 1898 an enlargement of its possessions in that region at the expense of China.

These proceedings were followed by agreements or treaties between Russia and Great Britain, and between Germany and Great Britain, as to what are termed "spheres of influence" in China, without consulting the government of that country or taking its wishes or interests into account. At the demand of the same powers, several new ports were opened to foreign trade, with the usual concomitants of foreign territorial concessions and exterritorial jurisdiction; until now the extensive Chinese Empire is reduced to the anomalous condition of scarcely possessing a single harbor in all its long line of seacoast where it can concentrate its navy and establish a base of warlike operations, without the consent of the treaty powers. Not the least of the irritants which induced the Boxer movement was