European Expansion Vs Russian Expansion Essay

The early nineteen hundreds were, for the most part, a time of great intellectual advances both in the realms of science and political philosophy. Despite this progress, however, not all advances were used for the betterment of humanity. The world in the early nineteen hundreds was a time in which Europe was in the center of the world culturally, scientifically, and militarily, and although the majority of advances marked a progress beneficial to humanity, the European powers, in an effort to maintain their standing on the world stage also used their enormous power to hold the rest of the world down. The world in 1900 was certainly following a Eurocentric trend, but there were some areas of the world that did manage to break free from the European mold that most nations found themselves in prior to World War I. Geopolitics

Over the course of the long nineteenth century,

Russian expansion has always been motivated by a need for a buffer region to protect the Russian interior. Russia lacks protective barriers like mountains and ocean and because of this, Russia’s sovereignty has always been under existential threat. Russian expansion at this time was also prompted by a need for a warm water port. Although Russia has one of the largest coastlines in the world, most of Russia’s coast is useless because it is located along the frozen Arctic Ocean. The few ports that Russia does have are located in enclosed seas that can easily be cut off by an enemy of Russia’s. The Baltic Sea, for example can be cut off by Denmark, and the Black Sea could be easily by cut off from the Mediterranean at the Ottoman owned strait of Bosphorus. The quest of a warm water port is what motivated aggressive Russian expansion toward Port Arthur, and the resulting escalation between Russian and Japan over this territory ultimately resulted in the Russo-Japanese