As can be seen from the map, the city controls a choke point on all waterborne trade with Beijing. It is closer to the Chinese capital than the Shandong Peninsula with its port of Qingdao (then occupied by Germany), which projects from the opposite shore of the Yellow Sea. Port Arthur also overlooks the western shore of Korea, with its chief cities of Pyongyang and Seoul. There could not be a more strategic location. Port Arthur had an excellent landlocked harbor with a back harbor and a basin suitable for drydocking and cleaning ships' hulls.* The harbor was shallow and subject to silting, requiring frequent dredging to be usable by the largest warships; a task the Russians readily undertook. The strategic harbor was surrounded by lofty peaks perfect for fortification with long-range cannon commanding the approaches by land and sea. The position thus became the key to controlling the mineral wealth of Manchuria -- enormous coal, iron, and copper deposits. The Russian administration of Count Sergei Witte was dedicated to vigorous empire-building in the region, building out the China Eastern Railway to Port Arthur and nearby Dalny (meaning "far, far away" in Russian), which was under development as an important commercial port to rival the German colony at Qingdao, while Port Arthur was slated to become Russia's impregnable military fortress guarding Russia's assets in Manchuria. More than 10 million gold rubles (US $5M) were invested in rebuilding Dalny, with the Chinese inhabitants rudely uprooted to make way for the master plan; but the Russian Viceroy, Yevgeny Alexeiev, de-emphasized Dalny and chose to reside in a magnificent palace he built at Port Arthur. At the same time, Witte poured many more millions of rubles into developing Vladivostok and Harbin, both key links in the Trans-Siberian Railway. The rail link to the Russian homeland was opened in late 1903, just before war broke out with Japan, but some segments were still incomplete during the war.
For the Russians, there was the additional advantage that Port Arthur was a warm-water port, protected from the Siberian blasts by the brown, eroded hills of Manchuria: its harbor did not freeze over in the winter. Russia's other Far East port was Vladivostok, on the eastern side of the Korean Peninsula and some four degrees further north, on the Sea of Japan; its otherwise superb harbor was unusable in the winter months because of icing. With its fine double harbor, oceanic climate, defensible position, and ready access to the mineral wealth of the region, Port Arthur was a strategic prize of incalculable value to the Tsar.
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