Japan joins the Sino-French War, followed by Russia

[Jackson Lennock]

France had desired an alliance with Japan against China as early as mid-1883. During the Sino-French War of 1884-1885, France tried to coax Japan into an alliance against China. France's campaign into Taiwan didn't go as well as France had hoped, and in December 1884 already used the tumult to provoked a coup in China's client Korea. This coup led to the Empress to believe that Japan was a greater threat to China than France and to desire an honorable peace with France rather than lose Korea too. Likewise, the Annam campaign wasn't going great for France either. Eventually the need for Japanese assistance lessened as the Tonkin Campaign went better.

Anyhoo, Russia OTL contemplated getting in on the war against China as well due to the instability caused by the Gapsin Coup. The fear of Russian and Japanese entry and threat to North China prompted the Empress Dowager to seek peace OTL.

What if Japan had joined the War around the same time as the Gapsin Coup, or shortly afterwards, followed by Russia? France OTL was mostly interested in the Pescadores (Penghu), so I could see Japan gaining Taiwan and France gaining the Pescadores. Could it turn into a mini-scramble for China between France, Russia, and Japan?

If the Gapsin Coup is successful, would Korea be able to be a Japanese-allied junior partner rather than conquered by Japan? Or perhaps Korea would be a kind of East Asian Belgium between Japan and Russia.

 

[raharris1973]

Most of your post reads as if Russia is piling on in at China's expense, becoming a de facto co-belligerent of France (and Japan). But this sentence reads the opposite, like Russia is helping China against France:

Anyhoo, Russia OTL contemplated getting in on the war against France as well due to the instability caused by the Gapsin Coup.

I assume that anti-French meaning wasn't what you intended, correct?

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Most of your post reads as if Russia is piling on in at China's expense, becoming a de facto co-belligerent of France (and Japan). But this sentence reads the opposite, like Russia is helping China against France:


I assume that anti-French meaning wasn't what you intended, correct?

Yes, I will correct that.

 

[rfmcdonald]

There would indeed be an obvious risk of China suffering greater losses.

I do wonder what might happen with Korea, if you have a more active France not too far away.

 

[History Learner]

If the Gapsin Coup is successful, would Korea be able to be a Japanese-allied junior partner rather than conquered by Japan? Or perhaps Korea would be a kind of East Asian Belgium between Japan and Russia.

I could see Korea going the route of 1910 a few decades early here, becoming a Japanese protectorate in exchange for Tokyo conceding to Russian dominance in Manchuria. The Russians could sweeten the deal by supporting the Japanese ambitions on Formosa also. Russian gains in the 1880s particularly interest me, given what we know about the Badmaev Scheme from a decade later IOTL:

Badmaev, a Russified Buriat Mongol, a recent convert to Russian Orthodoxy, whose godfather was none other than the tsar, sought to influence Russia's China policy and line his own pockets...The essence of Badmaev's missive was a fantastic proposal for acts that were intended to lead to the overthrow of the Manchu rulers of China and the subsequent voluntary submission of China and Tibet to Russian rule. The scheme, which would require covert Russian aid, called for a lengthy branch line from the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the city of Lanchow [Lanzhou] in Gansu Province. That line would confer enormous commercial benefits on Russia, and Lanchow would provide a jumping-off site for a revolt against the Manchu Dynasty led by Badmeav and his cohorts. The uprising would spread eastward, the dynasty would collapse, and a popular cry would arise for the tsar to assume dominion over China and Tibet. It was the kind of scheme which might have been hatched in a later era by the CIA. Strange though it seems, Witte endorsed Badmaev's proposal...

For example, in 1893, the Buryat Mongol physician Piotr Badmaev submitted a plan to Czar Alexander III for bringing parts of the Qing Empire under Russian sway, including Outer and Inner Mongolia and Tibet. He proposed extending the Trans-Siberian Railway from the Buryat homeland at Lake Baikal through Outer and Inner Mongolia to Gansu, China, next to the Tibetan border. When completed, he would organize, with Buryat help, an uprising in Tibet that would allow Russia to annex the country. Badmaev also proposed establishing a Russian trading company in Asia. Count Sergei Yulgevich Witte, Russian Finance Minister from 1882 to 1903, supported Badmaev’s two plans, but Czar Alexander accepted neither of them.

A Buriat by birth, Badmaev was a practitioner of Tibetan medicine with excellent political connections in the courts of Alexander III and Nicholas II. Badmaev's father was a prosperous cattle farmer of Buriat stock. After early schooling in Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal, Badmaev entered the Faculty of Oriental Languages at St. Petersburg University. Here he developed the interests that would provide his entrée into the upper reaches of imperial society: Russian foreign policy in East Asia and traditional Tibetan medicine. The future Alexander III served as Badmaev's godfather when he converted to Russian Orthodoxy, and Badmaev used Alexander's name for his patronymic. From 1875 to 1893, Badmaev worked in the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1893, in a memorandum sent to the finance minister, Sergei Witte, he outlined what became known as the Badmaev Plan, a project that called for railroad construction and commercial trading companies to extend Russian influence in Mongolia and as far as Tibet. Badmaev argued that the extension of the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Kiakhta and Peking to the Russian port of Vladivostok would provide Russia with the opportunity to promote rebellion among dissatisfied Chinese subjects, such as the Mongolians and Tibetans, who would appeal to the Russians for help. Badmaev's fellow Buriat Mongols of the Transbaikal region, who as Buddhists had long-standing religious and commercial interests in Mongolia and Tibet, would play a pivotal role as agents of Russian imperialism.