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“A monumental achievement. Recounting the story of China’s decline in East Asia, Jager provides a definitive reference for the diplomatic machinations of the great-power conflict in the late nineteenth century. This is narrative historical writing at its best.”―Michael Robinson, author of Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey

“For too long, the role of Korea has been in the shadows of East Asian history. With brilliant analysis and meticulous research, Jager shows that Korea’s fate was actually crucial to shaping the Asia of the nineteenth century and the turbulent regional politics that followed all the way up to World War II. Essential for readers of East Asian history and geopolitics alike.”―Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism

“Beautifully written and deeply researched, The Other Great Game is a work of great importance and powerful insight. This gripping history offers a fresh interpretation of the age of empire at the turn of the twentieth century and a clear-eyed view of its long shadow.”―Andrew Gordon, author of A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present

Chapter Page
List of Maps ix
Note on Romanization, Names, and Dates xi
Preface xiii
Prologue: The Rise of Russia in Asia 1
I New Frontiers 11
1. Korea's Pyrrhic Victory 15
2. Japan's Korea Problem 28
3. The Opening of Korea 40
II Controlling Barbarians with Barbarians 53
4. China's Korea Problem 57
5. The Other Great Game Begins 81
6. Russia's Railway to the East 95
III Wars and Imperialism 119
7. Prelude to War 123
8. Triumph, Defeat, and a Massacre 135
9. Two-Front War 165
10. Triple Intervention 186
11. Continental Power 212
12. Maritime Power 227
13. Boxers 236
14. The Death of Li Hongzhang 263
IV New Friends, Old Enemies 273
15. New Agreements 277
16. Russia's Korea Problem 290
V The Russo-Japanese War-World War Zero 309
17. War for Korea 312
18. War in Manchuria 340
19. Mukden 379
VI New East Asian Order 395
20. The Portsmouth Treaty and Korea 399
21. "Eternal Peace and Security in Asia" 423
22. Annexation 445
Epilogue: Legacies 471
Abbreviations 485
Notes 487
Acknowledgments 575
Index 577

A dramatic new telling of the dawn of modern East Asia, placing Korea at the center of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars.

In the nineteenth century, Russia participated in two “great games”: one, well known, pitted the tsar’s empire against Britain in Central Asia. The other, hitherto unrecognized but no less significant, saw Russia, China, and Japan vying for domination of the Korean Peninsula. In this eye-opening account, brought to life in lucid narrative prose, Sheila Miyoshi Jager argues that the contest over Korea, driven both by Korean domestic disputes and by great-power rivalry, set the course for the future of East Asia and the larger global order.

When Russia’s eastward expansion brought it to the Korean border, an impoverished but strategically located nation was wrested from centuries of isolation. Korea became a prize of two major imperial conflicts: the Sino-Japanese War at the close of the nineteenth century and the Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the twentieth. Japan’s victories in the battle for Korea not only earned the Meiji regime its yearned-for colony but also dislodged Imperial China from centuries of regional supremacy. And the fate of the declining tsarist empire was sealed by its surprising military defeat, even as the United States and Britain sized up the new Japanese challenger.

A vivid story of two geopolitical earthquakes sharing Korea as their epicenter, The Other Great Game rewrites the script of twentieth-century rivalry in the Pacific and enriches our understanding of contemporary global affairs, from the origins of Korea’s bifurcated identity―a legacy of internal politics amid the imperial squabble―to China’s irredentist territorial ambitions and Russia’s nostalgic dreams of recovering great-power status.