Russian Empire
The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia or simply Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917.
Foreign policy of the Russian Empire
To build up a presence on the Pacific Ocean, Russia seized some 400,000 square miles of almost uninhabited territory from Qing dynasty China in 1858–1860. It sent in settlers and prisoners, so that its holdings from Vladivostok north along the Sea of Japan reached 310,000 in 1897. Russia established an economic role east into the Sinkiang and Manchuria regions of China peacefully, using the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881), loans to the Chinese government, networks of merchants, and by building the Chinese Eastern Railway, a branch of the Trans-Siberian railroad, through Manchuria to the ocean. Meanwhile, in the late 19th century, the Empire of Japan was expanding into Manchuria and especially Korea. It proposed a deal whereby the Russians would have the predominant role in Manchuria, and Japan in Korea. The tsar, contemptuous of the Japanese, bluntly refused. In the Russo-Japanese War, Japan attacked, pushing back the Russian army on the ground, and sinking the main Russian battle fleet. Japan took control of Korea and of the southern half of the Chinese Eastern Railway.