Triple Intervention in the context of "Treaty of Shimonoseki"

The Kwantung Leased Territory (traditional Chinese and Japanese: 關東州; ; pinyin: Guāndōng zhōu; Wade–Giles: Kuan-tung-chou; rōmaji: Kantō-shū) was a leased territory of the Empire of Japan in the Liaodong Peninsula from 1905 to 1945.

Japan first acquired Kwantung from the Qing Empire in perpetuity in 1895 in the Treaty of Shimonoseki after victory in the First Sino-Japanese War. Kwantung was located at the militarily and economically significant southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula at the entrance of the Bohai Sea, and included the port city of Ryojun (Port Arthur/Lüshunkou). Japan lost Kwantung weeks later in the Triple Intervention and the Qing transferred the lease to the Russian Empire in 1898, who governed the territory as Russian Dalian and rapidly developed infrastructure and the city of Dairen (Dalniy/Dalian). Japan re-acquired the Kwantung lease from Russia in 1905 in the Treaty of Portsmouth after victory in the Russo-Japanese War, continued to rapidly develop the territory, and obtained extraterritorial rights known as the South Manchuria Railway Zone. Japan extended the lease with the Republic of China in the Twenty-One Demands and used Kwantung as a base to launch the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Kwantung Leased Territory ceased to exist following the Surrender of Japan in World War II in September 1945 when the Soviet Red Army began to administer the region until Kwantung and the Lüshun base was handed over to the People's Republic of China on 16 April 1955.

The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the Liaodong Peninsula and near Mukden in Southern Manchuria, with naval battles taking place in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

Russia had pursued an expansionist policy in Siberia and the Far East since the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. At the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895 had ceded the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur to Japan before the Triple Intervention, in which Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to relinquish its claim. Japan feared that Russia would impede its plans to establish a sphere of influence in mainland Asia, especially as Russia built the Trans-Siberian Railroad, began making inroads in Korea, and acquired a lease of the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur from China in 1898. Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902, and began offering to recognize Russia's dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as part of Japan's sphere of influence. However, this was rejected by Russia.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance (日英同盟, Nichi-Ei Dōmei) was an alliance between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Japan which was effective from 1902 to 1923. The treaty creating the alliance was signed at Lansdowne House in London on 30 January 1902 by British foreign secretary Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne and Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu. After the preceding era of unequal treaties enforced on Asian countries including Japan, the alliance was a military pact concluded on more equal terms between a Western power and non-Western nation. It reflected the success of Meiji era reforms that modernized and industrialized Japan's economy, society and military, which enabled Japan to extract itself from the inferior position it had previously shared with other Asian countries like China, which had been subordinated to Western empires either through formal colonial acquisition or unequal treaties.

One shared motivation for the agreement was that a diplomatic alliance might deter other world powers that might otherwise encroach on British and Japanese imperial interests in Asia. For the British, the alliance marked the end of a period of "splendid isolation" while allowing for greater focus on protecting its rule over India and competing in the Anglo-German naval arms race, as part of a larger strategy to reduce imperial overcommitment and recall the Royal Navy to defend Britain. By contrast, it came at a time of Japan's ascendancy; Japan had not only successfully abrogated the unequal treaties it was previously subject to by the Western powers, but was now a fledging empire in its own right: Japan had imposed its own unequal treaty on Korea in 1876 and now controlled Formosa (Taiwan) as a colony, as Taiwan been ceded by Qing China to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, after the First Sino-Japanese War. Consequently, Japan was now developing its own imperial sphere of influence, and felt that a conflict with Russia was imminent over rival ambitions in Manchuria and Korea, especially after the Triple Intervention in 1895, in which Russia, France, and Germany coerced Japan into relinquishing its claim on the Liaodong Peninsula. Article 3 of the alliance promised support if either signatory became involved in war with more than one power, and thus deterred France from assisting its ally Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Instead, France concluded the Entente Cordiale with Britain and limited its support of Russia to providing loans. Japan also gained international prestige from the alliance and used it as a foundation for their diplomacy for two decades, although the alliance angered the United States and some British dominions, whose opinion of Japan worsened and gradually became hostile.

The Franco-Japanese Treaty (日仏協約, Nichi-futsu Kyotei), (French: Traité Franco-Japonais) was a treaty between the French Third Republic and the Empire of Japan denoting respective spheres of influence in Asia, which was signed in Paris on 10 June 1907, by Japanese Ambassador Shin’ichiro Kurino and French Foreign Minister Stéphen Pichon.

Relations between France and Japan prior to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 had been chilly. France was a member of the Triple Intervention, which Japan had felt humiliatingly limited her gains in the First Sino-Japanese War. France was also a vocal supporter of Russia in the recent conflict, although had been constrained by the Entente cordiale with the United Kingdom and the foreign policies of Théophile Delcassé from taking an open role. However, with Japan emerging as victor in the Russo-Japanese War and with France increasingly becoming estranged from an increasingly belligerent Germany, French foreign policy shifted.