By Rachel Osterman '03
Dartmouth will host an international conference celebrating the centennial of the Treaty of Portsmouth, a peace agreement forged in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that concluded the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
The conference will be held in October 2005. It will bring to Hanover scholars of how the war affected Russia, Japan, Korea, and China as well as experts on the diplomacy of the war and the peace process. Planners of the conference also hope to mount an exhibition of photographs and documents related to the war, bring Japanese prints and Russian fine art to the Hood Museum, and commission an original piece of music that will have its world premiere on campus.
Ronald Edsforth (at right), history professor and coordinator of Dartmouth's War and Peace Studies program, came up with the idea of hosting the conference. "For us being here in New Hampshire, this is too big of an event to let pass without recognizing it," he said. "It's also nice to honor the important peace events, and not just wars"
Edsforth said the Treaty of Portsmouth marked the first time in modern history that a third party — in this case, President Theodore Roosevelt — successfully intervened to end an international war. The signing of the treaty was a major accomplishment that reflected the growing fear of modern war and the rising power of the modern peace movement, which had begun to emerge in the late nineteenth century. Edsforth, who has started work on a book on the history of the world peace movement since 1900, said the treaty proved that governments could be made to respond to outside pressure in matters of national security.
In summoning Japan and Russia to Portsmouth, Theodore Roosevelt was working to achieve multiple objectives. "Roosevelt was trying to maintain the balance of power in East Asia, advance the American presence in the region, and respond to a new peace activist political constituency" that included such prominent peace advocates as Andrew Carnegie and Jane Addams.
The Portsmouth Treaty also left lasting legacies in Russia, Japan, China, and Korea. Japan was winning the war both on land and at sea. It had sunk two Russian fleets, occupied Korea, and seized control of the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria. But in 1905, as the war bogged down in Manchuria, the Japanese government was deeply in debt and worried that Russia could win a prolonged war of attrition because of superior manpower reserves. So the Japanese agreed to send envoys to Portsmouth for what ended up being month-long negotiations.
When the terms of peace — which did not include an expected Russian indemnity for war costs — became public, riots broke out in Japan. The war and the peace treaty are still sensitive topics in Japan today, partly because Russia and Japan never signed a peace treaty at the end of World War II. Edsforth said, "We are trying to get the subject out and talk about it and hopefully make it something that isn't so sensitive."
Edsforth also observed that, while usually forgotten, the Russo-Japanese War was a crucial event in the history of warfare. "If there hadn't been a World War I, this probably would have been seen as the great war of the early twentieth century. It was a war between two great powers involving modern weapons," he said. The war captured the attention of people all over the world, prompting them to raise questions about the brutality of modern weapons systems. "The magazines of the time were full of pictures of what were at the time horrifying pictures of modern war," Edsforth said.
In addition to Edsforth, members of the committee planning the centennial conference include Russian history professor Heide Whelan, who also teaches a course on the history of warfare; New England historian Jere Daniel; Japanese history professor Steven Ericson; and professors from six other departments.
In preparation for the 2005 conference, four noted historians of the Russo-Japanese War visited campus this April for a planning meeting and seminar on the Portsmouth Treaty. These events, which took place April 15-16, brought in John Steinberg of Southern University, Bruce Menning of the University of Kansas, David Schmmelpenick van der Oye of Brock University in Canada, and Dmitri Oleinikov of Moscow State University. While at Dartmouth, this group of visitors asked several Dartmouth faculty, including history professors Crossley, Edsforth, and Ericson, to contribute to a multi-volume collection of essays on the Russo-Japanese War that they will be editing for the Dutch publisher Brill. This collection will be published in early 2005.
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