Monday, December 2, 1:35pm – 1:50pm, via Zoom
Ed Walsh
The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War is often remembered as a futile gesture which was made redundant almost as soon as it began by the November Armistice with Germany, and achieved little more than the prolongation of the conflict in Russia. Of the powers that intervened in Siberia, Japan provided the most troops and had the greatest effect on the Civil War in that region. The Japanese army’s ambition in Siberia and its ill-advised support for rapacious Cossack bands alienated both the Siberians and Japan’s American allies. The inability of the Japanese government to rein in its army during the intervention anticipated future adventurism on the continent and contributed to a preexisting anti-Japanese sentiment among the American public. This paper demonstrates how the Siberian intervention harmed American-Japanese relations and presaged trouble to come in East Asia.