Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the Liaodong Peninsula and near Mukden in Southern Manchuria, with naval battles taking place in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.
Russia had pursued an expansionist policy in Siberia and the Far East since the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. At the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895 had ceded the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur to Japan before the Triple Intervention, in which Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to relinquish its claim. Japan feared that Russia would impede its plans to establish a sphere of influence in mainland Asia, especially as Russia built the Trans-Siberian Railroad, began making inroads in Korea, and acquired a lease of the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur from China in 1898. Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902, and began offering to recognize Russia's dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as part of Japan's sphere of influence. However, this was rejected by Russia.
After negotiations broke down, Japan opened hostilities in a surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur on. Both sides declared war, and Japanese troops landed in Korea, crossed the Yalu River into Manchuria in May, and landed more forces on the Liaodong Peninsula. In August, the Japanese laid siege to Port Arthur, which eventually fell in January 1905. In March 1905, Japanese troops took Mukden, the Manchurian capital, after heavy fighting. The Russian Baltic Fleet, which had sailed over seven months and 18,000 nautical miles from the Baltic Sea to reinforce its Pacific Fleet, arrived in the region in May and was intercepted and destroyed by the Japanese Combined Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima. The war was concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt.
The treaty recognized Japanese interests in Korea, and awarded to Japan Russia's lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, control of the Russian-built South Manchuria Railway, and the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. The complete military victory of an Asian and non-Western nation over a European and Western power surprised international observers, and transformed the global balance of power, with the Empire of Japan emerging as a great power and the Russian Empire declining in prestige among the European powers. Russia's incurrence of substantial casualties and losses for a cause which resulted in a humiliating defeat contributed to internal unrest culminating in the 1905 Russian Revolution, during which the Russian autocracy was forced to make concessions. More widely, however, Japan's win effectively damaged the credibility of European dominance across Asia.
Historical background
Modernization of Japan
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Meiji government endeavoured to assimilate Western ideas, technological advances and ways of warfare. By the late 19th century, Japan had transformed itself into a modernized industrial state. The Japanese wanted to be recognized as equal with the Western powers. The Meiji Restoration had been intended to make Japan a modernized state, not a Westernized one, and Japan was an imperialist power, looking towards overseas expansionism.A Japanese sphere of influence
The United States saw Japan as an ally in the U.S.'s quest to control the Pacific and maintain for the U.S. China's "Open Door Policy." In Autumn 1872, U.S. minister to Japan Charles DeLong explained to U.S. General Charles LeGendre that he had been urging the Government of Japan to occupy Taiwan and "civilize" the Taiwanese indigenous people just as the U.S. had taken over the land of the Native Americans and "civilized" them. General LeGendre encouraged the Japanese to declare a Japanese "sphere of influence" modeled on the Monroe Doctrine that the U.S. had declared for the exclusion of other powers from the Western Hemisphere. Such a Japanese sphere of influence would be the first time a non-White state would adopt such a policy. The stated aim of the sphere of influence would be to civilize the barbarians of Asia. "Pacify and civilize them if possible, and if not...exterminate them or otherwise deal with them as the United States and England have dealt with the barbarians," LeGendre explained to the Japanese.In the years 1869–1873, the Seikanron had bitterly divided the Japanese elite: one faction wanted to conquer Korea immediately, while the other wanted to wait until Japan was further modernized before embarking on a war to conquer Korea. Significantly, no one in the Japanese elite had ever accepted the idea that the Koreans had the right to be independent, with only the question of timing dividing the two factions. In much the same way that Europeans used the "backwardness" of African and Asian nations as a reason for why they had to conquer them, for the Japanese elite the "backwardness" of China and Korea was proof of the inferiority of those nations, thus giving the Japanese the "right" to conquer them.
Count Inoue Kaoru, the foreign minister, gave a speech in 1887 saying "What we must do is to transform our empire and our people, make the empire like the countries of Europe and our people like the peoples of Europe," going on to say that the Chinese and Koreans had essentially forfeited their right to be independent by not modernizing. Much of the pressure for an aggressive foreign policy in Japan came from below, with the advocates of a "people's rights" movement calling for an elected parliament also favouring an ultra-nationalist line that took it for granted the Japanese had the "right" to annex Korea, as the "people's rights" movement was led by those who favoured invading Korea in the years 1869–1873.
As part of the modernization process in Japan, social Darwinist ideas about the "survival of the fittest" were common from the 1880s onward and many ordinary Japanese resented the heavy taxes imposed by the government to modernize Japan, demanding something tangible like an overseas colony as a reward for their sacrifices.
Furthermore, the educational system of Meiji Japan was meant to train the schoolboys to be soldiers when they grew up, and as such, Japanese schools indoctrinated their students into Bushidō, the fierce code of the samurai. Having indoctrinated the younger generations into Bushidō, the Meiji elite found themselves faced with a people who clamored for war, and regarded diplomacy as a weakness.
Pressure from the people
The British Japanologist Richard Storry wrote that the biggest misconception about Japan in the West was that the Japanese people were the "docile" instruments of the elite, when in fact much of the pressure for Japan's wars from 1894 to 1941 came from the ordinary people, who demanded a "tough" foreign policy, and tended to engage in riots and assassination when foreign policy was perceived to be pusillanimous.Though the Meiji oligarchy refused to allow liberal democracy, they did seek to appropriate some of the demands of the "people's rights" movement by allowing an elected Imperial Diet in 1890 and by pursuing an aggressive foreign policy towards Korea.
In 1884, Japan had encouraged a coup in the Kingdom of Korea by a pro-Japanese reformist faction, which led to the conservative government calling upon China for help, leading to a clash between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Seoul. At the time, Tokyo did not feel ready to risk a war with China, and the crisis was ended by the Convention of Tientsin, which left Korea more strongly in the Chinese sphere of influence, though it did give the Japanese the right to intervene in Korea. All through the 1880s and early 1890s, the government in Tokyo was regularly criticized for not being aggressive enough in Korea, leading Japanese historian Masao Maruyama to write:
Just as Japan was subject to pressure from the Great Powers, so she would apply pressure to still weaker countriesa clear case of the transfer psychology. In this regard it is significant that ever since the Meiji period demands for a tough foreign policy have come from the common people, that is, from those who are at the receiving end of oppression at home.
Russian Eastern expansion
Tsarist Russia, as a major imperial power, had ambitions in the East. By the 1890s it had extended its realm across Central Asia to Afghanistan, absorbing local states in the process. The Russian Empire stretched from Poland in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the east. With its construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the port of Vladivostok, Russia hoped to further consolidate its influence and presence in the region. In the Tsushima incident of 1861 Russia had directly assaulted Japanese territory.First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)
The first major war the Empire of Japan fought following the Meiji Restoration was against China, from 1894 to 1895. The war revolved around the issue of control and influence over Korea under the rule of the Joseon dynasty. From the 1880s onward, there had been vigorous competition for influence in Korea between China and Japan. The Korean court was prone to factionalism, and at the time was badly divided between a reformist camp that was pro-Japanese and a more conservative faction that was pro-Chinese. In 1884, a pro-Japanese coup attempt was put down by Chinese troops, and a "residency" under General Yuan Shikai was established in Seoul. A peasant rebellion led by the Tonghak religious movement led to a request by the Korean government for the Qing dynasty to send in troops to stabilize the country. The Empire of Japan responded by sending their own force to Korea to crush the Tonghak and installed a puppet government in Seoul. China objected and war ensued. Hostilities proved brief, with Japanese ground troops routing Chinese forces on the Liaodong Peninsula and nearly destroying the Chinese Beiyang Fleet in the Battle of the Yalu River. Japan and China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded the Liaodong Peninsula and the island of Taiwan to Japan. After the peace treaty, Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to withdraw from the Liaodong Peninsula. The leaders of Japan did not feel that they possessed the strength to resist the combined might of Russia, Germany and France, and so gave in to the ultimatum. At the same time, the Japanese did not abandon their attempts to force Korea into the Japanese sphere of influence. On 8 October 1895, Queen Min of Korea, the leader of the anti-Japanese and pro-Chinese faction at the Korean court was murdered by Japanese agents within the halls of the Gyeongbokgung palace, an act that backfired badly as it turned Korean public opinion against Japan. In early 1896, King Gojong of Korea fled to the Russian legation in Seoul, believing that his life was in danger from Japanese agents, and Russian influence in Korea started to predominate. In the aftermath of the flight of the King, a popular uprising overthrew the pro-Japanese government and several cabinet ministers were lynched in the streets.In 1897, Russia occupied the Liaodong Peninsula, built the Port Arthur fortress, and based the Russian Pacific Fleet in the port. Russia's acquisition of Port Arthur was primarily an anti-British move to counter the British occupation of Wei-hai-Wei, but in Japan this was perceived as an anti-Japanese move. Germany occupied Jiaozhou Bay, built the Tsingtao fortress, and based the German East Asia Squadron in this port. Between 1897 and 1903, the Russians built the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria. The Chinese Eastern Railroad was owned jointly by the Russian and Chinese governments, but the company's management was entirely Russian, the line was built to the Russian gauge and Russian troops were stationed in Manchuria to protect rail traffic on the CER from bandit attacks. The headquarters of the CER company was located in the new Russian-built city of Harbin, the "Moscow of the Orient". From 1897 onwards, Manchuriawhile still nominally part of the "Great Qing Empire"started to resemble more and more a Russian province.