ABSTRACT
The basis of Bismarck's Balkan policy, as revealed at the Berlin congress, was to draw a line from north to south through the peninsula, leaving an Austrian sphere to the west and a Russian sphere to the east. Russian foreign policy in the nineties was concentrated on Asia. In the Balkans Russia wished to maintain the status quo, to prevent any territorial changes in the Ottoman Empire, and to keep such influence as she possessed in the Balkan states. Russia undertook to defend China against attack, and in order that it might be possible for her to fulfil this obligation a railway was to be built across Manchuria from west to east, thus shortening the link with Vladivostok by cutting off the Amur salient. The new enterprise was to be called the Chinese Eastern Railway. The conditions of the Chinese Eastern Railway concession remained as under the Russo-Chinese treaty of 1896.
