Baron Roman Rosen

Baron Roman Rosen (1847–1921) was born at Reval and studied at Dorpat and the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg. He worked first in the Ministry of Justice, then entered diplomacy. His early foreign assignments included Tokyo and the Russian consulate general in New York. He subsequently led missions in Mexico, Serbia, Bavaria, and Greece, as well as serving repeatedly in Japan. ¹

In Tokyo he signed the 1898 Nishi–Rosen protocol on Korea and advocated accommodating Japanese interests there while strengthening Russia’s position in Manchuria. His return to Japan in 1903 preceded the war between the two empires. Appointed ambassador to the United States in 1905, he brought experience of Japanese diplomacy to the negotiations at Portsmouth. ¹

Rosen and Sergei Witte served as Russia’s plenipotentiaries in the treaty signed on September 5, 1905. Their Japanese counterparts were Komura Jutarō and Takahira Kogorō. The agreement ended the war, recognized Japan’s predominant interests in Korea, and provided for evacuation of most of Manchuria. Russia transferred its Port Arthur lease and associated railway rights, subject to China’s consent. ²

After leaving Washington in 1911, Rosen joined the State Council. He opposed the Bolshevik government and went into exile after the revolution, spending his final years in the United States as a translator and business adviser. He wrote on international affairs for the Saturday Evening Post and left the memoir Forty Years of Diplomacy, published in 1922 after his death. ¹