The Russo-Japanese War and its Shaping of the Twentieth Century

Frank Jacob

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138211872
• eBook ISBN: 9781315451916
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

The Russo-Japanese War was in essence a colonial conflict between the expanding interests of Russia and Japan in East Asia. However, while appearing regional, the war itself in fact had a major global impact. The conflict and Japanese victory stimulated the Russian revolutionary movement in 1905 and hence the Russian Revolution of 1917. In addition, the Peace Treaty of Portsmouth created a tension between the United States and Japan that would establish the starting point for the road directly leading to Pearl Harbor in 1941. Eventually the war had a major impact on Germany, whose diplomats wanted to use the war to bind St Petersburg to Berlin, and whose military planners closely observed the events to prepare themselves for the next possible conflict.

This book makes a strong argument for the consideration of initially minor events in the analysis of global history. By describing and analyzing the interrelationship between the events in East Asia and the major developments in Europe and the United States, it shows the significance of the Russo-Japanese War as a key factor in determining the most momentous historical events of the twentieth century: The First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

1 Introduction

The Russo-Japanese War now gives us all an awareness that even war and peace in Europe (…) isn’t decided between the four walls of the European concert, but outside it, in the gigantic maelstrom of world and colonial politics.

Rosa Luxemburg, May Day 1904¹

The Russo-Japanese War was a crucial event in world history, a major determinant of global developments in the twentieth century.² It paved the way for the wars and revolutions which would determine the fate of billions of people. However, the war between Russia and Japan has been called many other things: “a war of expansion,”³ “the fight for East Asia,”⁴ and even “World War Zero.”⁵ It was, as John W. Steinberg stated, definitely “no simple short Imperial war,”⁶ but a military quarrel that was also impacted by global financial and political interests. While it marked, to quote Rotem Kowner, “the long-anticipated flashpoint of the enmity between two expanding powers,”⁷ the war’s impact was not limited to Japan and Russia.⁸ Although the Japanese and the Russian empires were greatly affected by the war in Manchuria, where most of the battles took place,⁹ East Asian countries, European countries, and the United States were also strongly impacted by the events of 1904–5, even though this impact would not become manifest immediately.

At the time, the fate of the Japanese and Russian soldiers spurred international interest, making the war a public event, described and discussed in countless newspapers around the globe.¹⁰ The fact that Japan was able to slaughter the mighty “Russian bear” was transformed from a local event in East Asia to an impetus for change in world history. The first victory of an Asian power against a “modern” Western army was therefore welcomed, especially in the colonial setting of Asia and the Middle East. However, it was not only the suppressed who reflected on the events of the Manchurian battlefields and their political impact. Western audiences longed for the latest information about this biblical fight between the Japanese David and the Russian Goliath.¹¹ A large number of stories by correspondents, eyewitness accounts, and general works on Russia and Japan were written and sold, while cartoons presented national stereotypes as war propaganda for both sides. One German entrepreneur even tried to use the “war boom” to increase his postcard sales.¹²

The flood of works on the Russo-Japanese War continued¹³ in the immediate years after the war, when official histories were published in several languages.¹⁴ The official publications from the various governments were complemented by the countless publications from observers of the war –nearly all the great powers had sent their military observers to the battlefields of Manchuria, since “the confrontation promised to be of special interest.”¹⁵ They were interested to see how the modernized Japanese army would perform against a “real enemy,” and the war also promised insights into the use of new tactics and weapons. The British military in particular hoped for a close examination of modernized warfare methods by sending a large number of observers to their Japanese ally in East Asia.¹⁶ One British officer noted that “an armed contest of state against state must be recognized by reason of its political, racial, or military results, as a real landmark in history, perhaps even a watershed the elevation of which forces into fresh directions the rivers and streams of international life,”¹⁷ a view shared by the military correspondent for The Times:

No great campaign fought out within the memory of this generation offers such a vast and fruitful field for study by men of the British race as the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. For the first time for nearly a hundred years we have seen an island Empire at grips with a first-rate continental Power. For the first time the new machinery with which science and modern invention have endowed the navies of the world has been put to the practical test of serious war. For the first time, almost in the history of the world, we have seen naval and military forces, directed by master hands, co-operating in close and cordial fashion to impose, by their united efforts, the national will upon the enemy.¹⁸

In Britain, the victorious Japanese had finally created an “absolute euphoria,”¹⁹ because the Japanese soldiers were beating the archenemy of British interests in Central Asia.²⁰

Despite this large public and governmental interest in the Russo-Japanese War, the following decade would lead to another war that should overshadow everything else: the Great War.²¹ This “seminal catastrophe”²² overshadowed the events of the war in East Asia, a war which was conducted on the global periphery by “culturally different” powers and therefore did not remain a part of a collective memory in Europe.²³ The war became distant, just a “small episode”²⁴ in the course of global history, and this distance made it hard to remember. In Japan, the Russo-Japanese War remains an important factor in national history and many studies²⁵ – even on very specific topics²⁶ – related to the war are published on a regular basis. In contrast, monographs in Western languages remain rare.²⁷ Some national perspectives, especially the German perspective, remain majorly understudied,²⁸ a fact that has unfortunately not changed, even after the centennial which produced “a resurgence in Russo-Japanese War studies.”²⁹ Several international conferences have highlighted the importance of Russo-Japanese War for global history,³⁰ and numerous publications have tried to underline the need for multinational approaches to the many still unsettled questions which surround the conflict.³¹ The Russo-Japanese War was the first technological war of the twentieth century and therefore provided an insight into the changes this new method of warfare would entail. There were major battles and, as Sakurai Tadayoshi declared, “the siege of Port Arthur was one of the bloodiest contests that the world has known.”³² Its surrender “was an event that marked an epoch in the history of the world! Do not forget, however, that this result was achieved only through the shedding of rivers of blood [as] the bodies of our soldiers became hills and their blood rivulets.”³³ These impressions of the Russo-Japanese War foreshadowed the major battles and trench warfare of the First World War.³⁴ A look at the Japanese losses during the war highlights the increasing number of injuries and deaths:

Japanese losses:
Killed in battle	47,387
Died of wounds	11,500
Wounded but recovered	161,925
Total killed and wounded	220,812^35

What politically resembled a classical Kabinettskrieg (Cabinet War), already provided an insight into the slaughter that would envelop Europe a decade later.³⁶ Modern weapons reigned on the battlefields, which no longer provided heroic spaces for cavalry attacks with the arme blanche.³⁷ Now, “smokeless powder, machine guns, indirectly laid field artillery”³⁸ were beginning to determine victory or defeat.

Sakurai describes this new deadly technology in cruel detail:

After this battle we captured some machine-guns; this was the weapon we most dreaded. A large iron plate serves as a shield, through which aim is taken, and the trigger can be pulled while the gun moves upward, downward, to the left, or to the right. More than six hundred bullets are pushed out automatically in one minute, as if a long, continuous rod of balls was being thrown out of the gun. It can also be made to sprinkle its shot as roads are watered with a hose. It can cover a larger or smaller area, or fire at a greater or lesser distance as the gunner wills.

(…)

They were wonderfully clever in the use of this machine. They would wait till our men came very near them (…) and just when we proposed to shout a triumphant “Banzai”, this dreadful machine would begin to sweep over us as if with the broom of destruction, the result being hills and mounds of dead.³⁹

After such a scene, the Japanese would find soldiers whose bodies were studded by up to 70 bullets.⁴⁰ Those who watched carefully already recognized that warfare would never be the same again. Battles had turned into whole campaigns, particularly the Battle of Mukden, where 600,000 combatants fought over a period of 18 days. Even if the supporters of war maintained their opinion of the justice and heroism of battle, the countless anonym...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Russo-Japanese War on land and sea
• 3 Asia and the Russo-Japanese War
• 4 The road to revolution
• 5 Portsmouth: the first step towards Pearl Harbor
• 6 Björkö, the Schlieffen Plan, and offensive strategies
• 7 Conclusion
• Sources and bibliography
• Index