The Russo-Japanese war of February 1904 to September 1905 was the outcome of competing expansionist ambitions on the part of both combatants, who aimed to extend spheres of military, naval and economic influence over Manchuria and Korea.1 Japan’s initial foray into mainland Asia during the Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895) had been thwarted by the adverse reaction of the great powers. Russia had strengthened its own position in Manchuria during the Boxer rebellion of 1900, reneging on a subsequent agreement to withdraw the more than 100,000 troops it stationed there. This heightened tension with Japan, which in 1902 signed an alliance with Britain. By late 1903 war was increasingly likely, and Japan took the initiative in February 1904 with attacks on the Russians at Port Arthur and landings in Korea, prior to an invasion of Manchuria. Almost all the military and naval engagements went in favour of the Japanese, although the Russians’ aptitude for timely fighting withdrawals avoided catastrophic defeat on land. Nonetheless, in January 1905 the Russian garrison at Port Arthur was forced to surrender following a siege lasting more than four months. Japanese victory in February/March at the battle of Mukden (the largest ever, at that point, in world history in terms of troop numbers) confirmed their domination in the field, although the losses sustained ensured that Japan was not in a position to carry on the fight for much longer. The spectacular success of Admiral Togo in annihilating the Russian second and third Pacific squadrons (which had journeyed from the Baltic) at the battle of Tsushima in late May left the Russians with few options but to consider peace negotiations. The Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), brokered by US President Theodore Roosevelt, brought the conflict to a close, with Japan gaining the southern half of the island of Sakhalin along with the Liaotung peninsula in Manchuria. Public opinion in both belligerent nations accepted the settlement reluctantly: Russia’s repeated wartime humiliations contributed to domestic unease and the outbreak of the 1905 revolution, while in Japan what were thought to be the treaty’s meagre gains fuelled widespread rioting quelled only by the imposition of martial law. In the longer term, Japan’s success transformed the geo-politics of East Asia and the Pacific, as well as being globally recognised as the first time a European power had suffered defeated at the hands of an Asian state. For some this was confirmation of the ‘yellow peril’, for others (especially colonial peoples), it was the harbinger of a new age. Russia’s defeat impelled it to refocus its ambitions on south-eastern Europe and to strengthen its defensive alliances, first with France and, in 1907, with Britain. It was the existence of this ‘Triple Entente’ that helped shape the broader context whereby the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 led to the outbreak of the First World War a month later.2
Throughout the Russo-Japanese war, British sympathies were largely aligned with Japan, although there was a clear reluctance to become too closely embroiled, especially while there was any risk of the intervention of either France or Germany.3 Once it was evident that this geographically distant war would be relatively self-contained, there was great interest in its progress on land and sea. The fact that the Japanese navy was, in part, modelled on the Royal Navy (with some vessels being British-built) allowed observers to view its accomplishments as a vicarious endorsement of Britain’s maritime might. The set-piece battles and the titanic confrontation around Port Arthur encouraged military attaches and press correspondents to draw lessons (not always accurately) for the future shape of European warfare.4 Quite apart from the interest of those ‘in the trade’, the British public more generally was very receptive to news of the war, the outcome of which, at least up until Tsushima, could not be predicted. The scale of the conflict dwarfed anything in which British troops had been engaged since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and the losses suffered by both sides appeared horrendous in scale, albeit they were to be outstripped very swiftly a decade later on the fields of France and Flanders.
Public interest in the conflict spawned a breadth of products aimed at a British domestic audience. Most major tobacco manufacturers produced cigarette card series devoted to the Russo-Japanese war, and issuers of picture postcards also found the conflict fertile subject matter.5 Illustrated magazines (such as Cassell’s History of the Russo-Japanese War) ran to multi-part volumes, while the weekly Graphic and Illustrated London News carried many images of the war and its leading figures. ‘No war in prior history’, writes Frederic Sharf, ‘had ever been observed as closely, or recorded in so many formats … technological advances came together with new market forces and tastes to produce a stream of consumer products devoted entirely to the conflict’.6 Editorial cartoons in the popular press were one such product.
Given the war’s popularity in the British print media of the time, that little scholarship has been devoted to its visual representation speaks volumes about the fact that the conflict was soon to be overshadowed by the ‘war to end all wars’. Glenn Wilkinson utilises some examples from the Russo-Japanese war in his works on the depiction of war in the Edwardian press, but his focus is not on the conflict and its representation per se and, as discussed later, his analysis of visual imagery tends towards the literal and superficial.7 This is an absence not rectified by work on other European nations, notwithstanding essays by Falt on Finland and Lehner on Austro-Hungary.8
This essay considers the commentary on and interpretation of the Russo-Japanese war offered by cartoons appearing in two popular British newspapers. The News of the World was Britain’s most successful Sunday newspaper, with a rapidly rising circulation exceeding 1 million by 1906.9 The Western Mail was a leading provincial daily, published in Cardiff.10 Both newspapers had been owned by the same consortium since 1891, and both employed the same political cartoonist, Joseph Morewood Staniforth (born Gloucester, 1863, died Lynton, 1921), one of the most prolific and popular ‘black-and-white’ artists of the early twentieth century.11 The News of the World carried Staniforth’s cartoons on the front page of each issue. The Western Mail printed them amidst the editorial and news pages. Over 1000 Staniforth cartoons were republished in various stand-alone volumes, both themed and general collections, in the course of his career, testament to their enduring appeal, at least during the cartoonist’s lifetime.
The Staniforth cartoons that appeared in the News of the World and the Western Mail during the Russo-Japanese war were almost entirely specific to the two papers. Although, between 1899 and 1903, most Staniforths in the News of the World had already appeared in the previous week’s Western Mail, such republication was rare from 1904 onwards.12 Figure 1 provides one of only two such examples from the total corpus of cartoons, and the only example of mi...
