Abstract
There are some intriguing parallels between the Russo-Japanese War and late Imperial Russia’s two other great military debacles. Like the Crimean conflict 50 years earlier, the war against Japan of 1904 and 1905 was fought on the empire’s periphery, where daunting logistical difficulties hampered the struggle against a modern, well-equipped adversary. And, as in the Crimea, tsarist generals on Manchuria’s Liaodong Peninsula, where most of the action took place, conducted a defensive campaign, which included a lengthy and heroic siege of their principal naval garrison in the theater. The similarities between the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War are even more striking: never before had the home front been so intimately linked to the combat itself. As in Ukraine and Belorussia in 1917, the Russian armies in southern Manchuria were defeated not only by a superior enemy, but also by the severe political unrest their continual reverses brought about back in the capital.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Sources and Further Reading
There are two good recent histories of the Russo-Japanese War in English: Richard Connaughton, The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear (London: Routledge, 1991) and
J. N. Westwood, Russia against Japan, 1904–1905 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). For a summary of the land war, see the relevant chapter in Bruce Menning’s Bayonets before Bullets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 152–199. Readers with a command of Russian should certainly consult two excellent studies written for a domestic, military audience:
A. A. Svechin, Russo-Iaponskaia voina [The Russo-Japanese War] (Oranienbaum: Izdatel’stvo Ofitserskoi Strelkovoi Shkoli, 1910) and
N. A. Levitskii, Russo-Iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. [The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905] (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1936).
Many accounts of the conflict soon appeared in its wake. While they often provide exhaustive detail, they lack the benefit of hindsight and objective scrutiny. The British 3-volume Official History (Naval and Military) of the Russo-Japanese War by the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1910–20) is among the more reliable of this genre. Two useful memoirs by observers attached to the Russians and the Japanese are, respectively,
Eberhard, Freiherr von Tettau, Achtzehn Monate mit Russlands Heeren in der Mandschurei [Eighteen Months with the Russian Army in Manchuria] 2 vols. (Berlin: Mittler, 1907) and Sir
Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book during the Russo-Japanese War, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1905). Naval aficionados should consult the previously classified study commissioned by the Admiralty’s Intelligence Division:
Julian S. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, 2 vols. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994). On the outbreak of the war, see
Ian Nish, The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Longman, 1985) and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2002 Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van der Oye, D.S. (2002). The Russo-Japanese War. In: Kagan, F.W., Higham, R. (eds) The Military History of Tsarist Russia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-10822-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-10822-6_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-60258-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10822-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)