What made Port Arthur (Manchuria) a better port for Russia than Vladivostok?

Question

In 1897, Russia leased Port Arthur, Manchuria as a Pacific port to supplement its existing holding of Vladivostok.

Port Arthur is at about 39 degrees N. latitude; Vladivostok is at 43 degrees N. latitude. For reference, Seattle, Washington is at 47 degrees N. latitude. Yet Vladivostok is much colder than Port Arthur, and also much colder than Seattle.

Why is that? I read something about a Siberian "front" from Lake Baikal that affects Vladivostok. Yet Port Arthur is almost ten degrees longitude west of Vladivostok, which is to say that it is closer to Lake Baikal. So doesn't it have similar problems? Did it just "barely" miss the front and why?

Or did Russia have other reasons for preferring Port Arthur besides climate?

Answer 1

The Oyashio Current and the Siberian High make Vladivostok a cold, frozen port.

The answer can be easily summarized with this map. Look at how far north Ireland, England and Norway are. Yet they are far warmer than Greenland and Newfoundland! The reason is that warm water and weather flows from the Gulf of Mexico to Norway, keeping those places, that are near the sea, relatively warm. (Palm trees can grow in Ireland. Surprised me when first visited). Greenland and Newfoundland, on the other hand, receive cold water from the Arctic; the Greenland and Labrador current brings cold water and cold weather to these places.

Note that Siberia is too far from the Atlantic to be warmed by the gulf stream.

Something similar happens in the North Pacific. The Oyashio current flows from 'the north' to Vladivostock, keeping it cold. The Kuroshio Current, on the other hand, keeps Japan, Korea, and the Yellow Sea warm. (Port Arthur was located near Dalian in the Yellow Sea, so it was kept warm too). (Edit: I just read that it the Siberian High is more important that the Oyahsio current for Vladivostock winter. That Japan blocks the Kuroshio is important too.)

I think historically, Russia had a long term habit of taking land from China during its colonial expansion. Vladivostok was aquired from the Qing Dynasty in the Amur Acquistion in 1860, likewise in the region around Irkutsk in 1727. Russia had significant claims in Northeast China, for example in Harbin. It wasn't until after meetings between Stalin and Mao that Russia fully relinquished its colonial rights to Port Arthur; and late in Gorbachev's time, just before the USSR collapse, to resolve border disputes between Russia and China.

As this is a history not geology SE, I want to emphasize the source material that I quoted above. It is transcripts of the conversations between Mao and Stalin, where they speak frankly about the withdrawal of Russia troops from China and how to stop the US from invading. A second conversation is here. These documents are part of the Wilson Center Digital Archives that cover many interesting topics from the cold war.

Another note: I am uncertain if Vladivostok is ice-blocked in these modern days of Global warming, but I think in the late 1800's that the harbor was a giant salty ice cube.

Answer 2

Weather at that latitude in general blows to the east - it arrives over Western Europe and travels eastward toward Asia. The air will shed its moisture and heat as it moves further away from the Atlantic, so the further east it can travel while remaining well north of the equator and above land, the colder and drier it will be. That's why Western Europe enjoys decent weather, while European Russia gets very cold and Asian Russia gets downright frigid, even when in the same general latitudes as Seattle. However, sources vary about how ice-locked Vladivostok gets. Wikipedia says it is ice free, but globalsecurity.org says it is locked for 4 months and requires ice breakers.

For Port Arthur, I think that it would have appealed to the Russians because two ports is better than one for major economic activities, and if you look at the map you get better access to the southwest Pacific from ex-Port Arthur than you do from Vladivostok. Also, Russian leaders have historically desired warm water ports because Russia has basically never had one for free like most other leading nations, and so the opportunity to operate out of Port Arthur would have appealed to the tsars on principle alone.

If you are Imperial Russia and not on friendly terms with Imperial Japan, it would not be hard to envision Japan bottling up Vladivostok since it is in their backyard. Port Arthur would be harder for Japan to deal with, but as it turned out, they did.

I think one key to the answer is what the direction of Russian expansion was during that time. I can't figure out how good land access to Russian Siberia was from Port Arthur. If there was a railroad line, then it meant Port Arthur was a terminal for outward expansion. If there wasn't, then it was a sea terminal to establish a type of colonial presence.