West Across the Pacific: American Involvement in East Asia from 1 ...

However, in the era of dollar diplomacy in Manchuria, the British became convinced that the United States played its open door cards very badly indeed. When we look ahead to 1910, we find them fully aware that the Russo-Japanese convention of that summer “practically amounts to a partition of Manchuria between Japan and Russia” for which “there can be little doubt that the policy adopted by the U.S. in China hastened if it did not bring about this arrangement.”¹⁴

Further comments from British archives illustrate the point succinctly. For example, from the cabinet minutes of August 15, “It is interesting to note that Na Tung [the grand secretary] attributes the agreement entirely to Mr. Knox’s recent policy. It is to be hoped that American influence in China will have received a blow from which it will take some time to recover. Their action has enormously added to our own difficulties of late, viz their dramatic entry into the Hukuang loan and fantastic proposal for the internationalization of railways in Manchuria.”¹⁵ And further,

To this Sir Edward Grey added a special comment: “Interference with railways has been the wrong track altogether. Japan could not have been expected to give up the railway which she had acquired by the Portsmouth Treaty. Our views as in these minutes may [unclear] be recorded for Mr. Bryce’s information and use.”¹⁶