page_title: Foreign policy of the Russian Empire
section_title: Foreign affairs after the Crimean War
hierarchical_section_title: Foreign policy of the Russian Empire / 1815–1917 / Foreign affairs after the Crimean War
context_page_description: The Foreign policy of the Russian Empire covers Russian foreign relations down to 1917. All the main decisions in the Russian Empire were made by the tsar, so there was a uniformity of policy and a forcefulness during the long regimes of powerful leaders such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. However, there were numerous weak tsars—such as children with a regent in control—as well as numerous plots and assassinations. With weak tsars or rapid turnover there was unpredictability and even chaos.
  Russia played a small role in the Napoleonic Wars until 1812, when Napoleon's huge army was destroyed in the French invasion of Russia. Russia played a major role in defeating Napoleon and in setting conservative terms for the restoration of aristocratic Europe during the period of 1815 to 1848. There were several wars with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1856 Russia lost the Crimean War to a coalition of Great Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. More small wars followed in the late 19th century.
  For three centuries, from the days of Ivan the Terrible, Russia expanded in all directions at 18,000 square miles per year, becoming by far the largest power.
context_section_description: Tsar Nicholas I died during the war and was succeeded by Tsar Alexander II. He gave Prince Gorchakov full control of foreign policy.  The new policy was to keep a low profile in Europe while rebuilding the military and reforming the domestic economy.  Gorchakov pursued cautious and well-calculated policies. A high priority was regaining naval access to the Black Sea. The policy concentrated on good relations with France, Prussia, and the United States. Russian statesmen achieved the goal by 1870 despite opposition from Britain and Austria-Hungary.
  Russia turned its expansionist plans to the south and east. Russian troops first moved to gain control of the Caucasus region, where the revolts of Muslim tribesmen—Chechens, Circassians, and Dagestanis—had continued despite numerous Russian campaigns in the nineteenth century. Once the forces of Aleksandr Baryatinsky had captured the legendary Chechen rebel leader Shamil in 1859, the army resumed the expansion into Central Asia that had begun under Nicholas I. The capture of Tashkent was a significant victory over the Kokand Khanate, part of which was annexed in 1866. By 1867 Russian forces had captured enough territory to form the Guberniya (Governorate General) of Turkestan, the capital of which was Tashkent. The Bukhara Khanate then lost the crucial Samarkand area to Russian forces in 1868. To avoid alarming Britain, which had strong interests in protecting nearby India, Russia left the Bukhoran territories directly bordering Afghanistan and Persia nominally independent. The Central Asian khanates retained a degree of autonomy until 1917.
  Russia followed the United States, Britain, and France in establishing relations with Japan, and, together with Britain and France, Russia obtained concessions from China consequent to the Second Opium War (1856–1860). Under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860, China ceded to Russia extensive trading rights and regions adjacent to the Amur and Ussuri rivers and allowed Russia to begin building a port and naval base at Vladivostok.
  As part of the foreign policy goals in Europe, Russia initially gave guarded support to France's anti-Austrian diplomacy. A weak Franco-Russian entente soured, however, when France backed a Polish uprising against Russian rule in 1863. Russia then aligned itself more closely with Prussia by approving the unification of Germany in exchange for a revision of the Treaty of Paris and the remilitarization of the Black Sea. These diplomatic achievements came at a London conference in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. After 1871 Germany, united under Prussian leadership, was the strongest continental power in Europe. In 1873 Germany formed the loosely knit League of the Three Emperors with Russia and Austria-Hungary to prevent them from forming an alliance with France. Nevertheless, Austro-Hungarian and Russian ambitions clashed in the Balkans, where rivalries among Slavic nationalities and anti-Ottoman sentiments seethed.
  In the 1870s, Russian nationalist opinion became a serious domestic factor in its support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria and Serbia quasi-protectorates of Russia. From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis escalated with the rebellion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and insurrection in Bulgaria, which the Ottoman Turks suppressed with such great cruelty that Serbia, but none of the West European powers, declared war. In early 1877, Russia came to the rescue of beleaguered Serbia when it went to war with the Ottoman Empire of 1877–1878. Within one year, Russian troops were nearing Constantinople, and the Ottomans surrendered. Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the Ottomans to sign the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans.
  Another significant result of the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War in Russia's favour was the acquisition from the Ottomans of the provinces of Batum, Ardahan, and Kars in the South Ca
caption: Prince Gorchakov, foreign minister 1856-1882
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