Summary:

Olavi K. Fält, Global war: The Baltic Sea region as a cultural meeting place during the Russo–Japanese War (1904–1905)

Today the phenomenon traditionally called war has taken on increasingly diverse faces. It may involve quite complex cultural encounters with many kinds of interests. It is not necessarily bound to any specific geographic region, either, but may take place at an entirely global level. In this article I examine what kind of global role the Baltic Sea region had as a cultural meeting place connected to the Russo–Japanese War. I first answer the question of how and why Japan as the aggressor in the war became interested in the Baltic Sea region. Then I examine the Finns’ response to this interest and the concomitant encounter between the Finns and the Japanese and its global dimensions.

The theoretical starting point for this study is Robert P. Clark’s interpretation of world history as the history of globalisation. According to the theory of thermodynamics, globalisation – i.e. increasing interdependence – has advanced because cultures, in order to develop, have needed more and more new external resources to counterbalance the continuous threat of entropy. These resources have been obtained particularly through various networks. As networked phenomena, cultural encounters provide good opportunities to obtain these resources. Applied to this study, the theoretical starting point means that Japan was searching for additional resources from the Baltic Sea region to support its warfare. The Finns, on the other hand, with Japan’s help, were looking for new resources with which to resist the policy of Russification, which threatened Finland’s autonomy. In addition to mutual cooperation, both sought to benefit, through these cultural encounters, from global networks that supported their own objectives.

In Japan’s war against Russia the Baltic Sea region formed a western front that was used to weaken Russia’s military capacity at the main front in the east. In the final phase the goal was to cause a revolution in Russia, exploiting networks of Russian opposition groups and the empire’s numerous minority nationalities. The activities in the Baltic Sea region were geographically and culturally connected to not only East Asia, but also continental Europe, Great Britain and through the Finns’ bid for independence, even the United States. This was a very global field of cultural encounters indicating interdependence that was centred in the Baltic Sea region, where each participant seeking additional resources was strictly focused on ensuring their own interests. A good example was Finns’ negotiations in 1904 and 1905 regarding Finland’s possible independence as a result of the war.

In connection with these cultural encounters, many local and global developments and objectives emerged and were also initiated. Some of them, such as Finland’s and Poland’s independence, were realised later as a result of the First World War, while others, like Russia’s partial break-up into independent states, took place after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. The Finns’ role in these events was quite visible. They open-mindedly sought support for the realisation of their own objectives from both the Far East and the West, using as tools Russia’s opposition groups that represented various nationalities. One can ask whether much has actually changed from the Finns’ point of view even today. In many issues we still place ourselves in the same situation as the eastern European nations and we receive support for our position from western Europe and the United States, not to forget our old friend Japan. When Finland’s and Japan’s diplomatic interaction began, the cooperation during the Russo-Japanese War was still fresh in memory in Japan, and it should also be remembered that in Finland’s and Sweden’s dispute over the Åland Islands in the League of Nations, Japan at least indirectly supported Finland’s objectives.