The story
In February 1904 Japan attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on the coast of Manchuria, beginning a war over who would control Manchuria and Korea. Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway was bringing it east, and Japan, allied with Britain since 1902, regarded Korea as vital to its security. The war lasted until the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, arranged by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. Japan won nearly every major engagement.
Japan's strength came from the Meiji Restoration, which since 1868 had built a modern army, navy and industry, and from the confidence gained by its victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895. Port Arthur fell in January 1905 after a costly siege, and the Battle of Mukden that winter and spring was among the largest land battles to that date. In May 1905 Admiral Togo Heihachiro destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet, which had sailed around the world, in the Battle of Tsushima, sinking most of its ships. Russia, shaken by revolution at home, made peace. It yielded southern Sakhalin, its lease on the Liaodong Peninsula and its influence in Korea. It was the first modern defeat of a European great power by an Asian one.
Why it mattered
- Japan became recognized as a great power and soon made Korea a protectorate and then annexed it in 1910.
- Japan's foothold in southern Manchuria led to later expansion and the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
- Russia's defeat helped trigger the 1905 Revolution and weakened the tsarist state before 1917.
- Nationalists across Asia, from India to China, drew hope from an Asian victory over a European empire.
Sources
- The Treaty of Portsmouth and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
- Russo-Japanese War Britannica
Written by AI from the sources above, to keep the wording neutral, and edited by a person. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
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