京義鉄道の建設をめぐる国際関係-日露戦争開戦原因としての鉄道問題-

抄録

Railway construction by rival powers led to conflicting economic and political claims at the close of the 19th century. At the bottom of Russian and Japanese clashes over the issue of the Seoul-Wiju railway lay international competition for control of the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Britain and Japan constructed the Peking-Mukden, the Seoul-Pusan and the Seoul-Wiju railways respectively to counter a Russian threat in the Far East through the control of the Siberian and the Chinese Eastern railways. This is the basic background of the Russo-Japanese War.
Additionally, from the view point of railway construction, the Russo-Japanese War may be said to be a battle over different gauges, because both Russian railways were broad gauged whereas the British and Japanese railways were standard gauged.
Even the technological aspect of railway building had political implications. It was no coincidence that the Anglo-Japanese railways were both standard gauged in opposition to the broad gauged Russian railways.