The Sino-Japanese War Of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, And Primacy

by S.C.M. Paine

This book examines the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, a significant event in world history virtually ignored in Western literature. Japan so rapidly defeated China that citizens of Europe suddenly perceived Japan, not only as the dominant power of Asia, but also as a key international player. Western disgust with Chinese military performance led to their rapidly growing intrusions on Chinese sovereignty while Japan soon became an ally of the ruling superpower, Great Britain. To the present day, China is still struggling to reverse the judgment of this war and restore its regional dominance.

Genres: History, Japan, China, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Japanese History

428 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 2002

About the author

Sarah Crosby Mallory Paine is an American historian who was the William S. Sims Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College from 2014 to 2025.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the end of the 19th century a dramatic shift took place in East Asia, as Japan replaced China as the dominant country in the region. While this shift was the result of a series of developments that took place over decades, a key turning point was the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, when Japan defeated China in a short, sharp conflict that reflected the changing balance of power in the area. The consequences of the war were considerable. By its end Japanese forces had ended Korea's tributary status and established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, one that was treated almost as an equal by the Western imperial powers. With China's weakness now manifest, the Western powers moved in to partition her territory. And having been shaken, in the words of Liang Qichao, "out of the four thousand years' dream," the Chinese began a new wave of military reforms that proved of momentous consequence in the years to come.

That such "a seminal event in world history" has not received its due from Western historians is not surprising given the language barriers confronting scholars seeking to write about the war. For this reason alone Sarah Paine's effort to provide English-language readers with a long-needed history of the war is a commendable one. Yet this very demand contributes to a sense of disappointment with this book. To write it, Paine relies heavily upon the often unreliable coverage of the war in contemporary newspapers, supplemented with published documentary collections and the related secondary literature on the subject. Nowhere in its pages is there any evidence of archival research on her part that would provide a basis for judging the veracity of sometimes contradictory reports she uses, leaving unaddressed the numerous questions raised in her book about the exact course of events and the motivations behind the decisions made in response to them. Nor does it help when she exaggerates the importance of the war by ascribing to it developments that arguably predated (such as Western perceptions of Chinese decline) or postdated (such as Western regard for Japan as a modern power) it.

The result is a work that is a serious letdown. Had Paine undertaken the archival labors necessary to sort through the often confusing reportage of events it would have been a major contribution to our understanding of the war and its place in modern history. As it is, however, she has written a book that is useful as an introduction to the conflict but ultimately serves to demonstrate how much more work needs to be done to properly understand its place in the transformation of the fortunes of China and Japan in the late 19th century.

[N. N. Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rare overview of this pivotal moment in modern history. Paine is especially good on the historical background to the war, and the diplomatic chess match over Korea that drew China in to it.

The section on the war itself is not quite up to the level of what comes before - as others have mentioned, it focuses a great deal on contemporary newspaper coverage (largely European, with Asian-based British papers being the best informed) which often means that after a paragraph summarizing certain events, a few paragraphs often follow quoting what was said in the press of the day. One cannot exactly fault the author for this, as she explicitly aims to "examine the war through the eyes of the journalists who filed reports...to show how the war changed outside perceptions of the relative power of China and Japan", however these excerpts do not add much to the play-by-play and can be quite repetitive, and might have been better organized in to a chapter of their own.

After previously making many perceptive points regarding inter-cultural bases of political misunderstandings between China, Japan, and the Western nations (mainly British, French and Russian), the final chapter 'The Cultural Dimensions of the Sino-Japanese War' does not quite follow through. Her analyses of the respective cultures of China, Japan and Europe are maybe a little too simplistic and essentialist, perhaps inevitable though when trying to deal with this topic in the space of a single chapter.

An exception I would take with Paine would be over one aspect of her writing regarding the importance of 'face' in the diplomatic dealings of the Sino-Japanese War, and the part it plays in explaining many of the diplomatic and political moves made by certain Asian countries. While it is true that Western countries have often been entirely oblivious as to the subtext of certain Asian actions, have made and still make blunders in etiquette, I would argue this is not because in China and Japan "the concept of 'face' played a critical role in human relations" while in Western nations such things would be "considered to be superficial issues". Rather, it is that 'face' depends on implicit communication, and if the contextual playing field is not the same or is unknown, the required inferences cannot be drawn.

Paine highlights the tug-of-war between Japan and China over the equivalent ranking of officials in each negotiation party as quintessentially about 'face'. Western nations too have engaged in similar wrangling over protocol over the centuries, with similar intentions to weaken the bargaining or reputational position of an adversary. Personally, I have come across 'face' used as a concept by people who have no notion that it is Chinese in origin, to describe events in their own lives - just because a culture doesn't have a specific word for something, it doesn't mean the idea doesn't exist. While the degree to which 'face' matters may indeed be different to different people (surely an overlap with implicit and explicit cultures in general), I do not agree that it is a purely Chinese/Japanese concept that has no corollaries in the wider world, just that what counts towards it is different in different countries.

[Barry Sierer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Paine’s book scrutinizes a war that is largely unexamined in the west, and its consequences from multiple perspectives including (but not limited to) the western powers, China’s own inverted view of its position in the world, and the clash between industrial and pre-industrial societies. The most of fascinating factor that may escape illumination of is that of “face”. Before, during, and after the crisis in Korea that brought the war about, “face” was an essential but largely unseen component in the interplay between China and Japan.

For a time, China simply refused to recognize the new Meiji government of Japan and referred to the Japanese as “dwarves”, even in official correspondence. Both sides made policy and military decisions that were meant to force the other to know “its place” in the developing situation. China struggled with its inability to preserve its insular “reality” that was no longer tenable (and hadn’t been for a long time) while Japan struggled to force China to accept the new reality of its position in northeast Asia.

By asserting a new position on Korea, Japan put itself in direct competition with other powers, particularly Russia. These circumstances set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
Paine’s examination of the war itself is limited by her use of newspaper articles from the time, but is still a valuable work that examines the dynamics of power in the region in this pivotal, but often overlooked, time.

[Daniel Waddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a great book outlining the background of and implications of the first Sino-Japanese war, this is a great introduction. This book is dense but you’ll come out of much more well versed in origins of many of the geo-political challenges in the pacific today.


I think this book does an excellent job integrating some of the socio-cultural origins / implications that heavily influenced all belligerents. Conversely, it relies nearly entirely on journalistic pieces from the time period. This provides a great cultural narrative but it obviously has the implications of painting a (although period accurate) sensationalist narrative of the conflict.

Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a great primer of this period of Asian history or looking for some more context as to the origins of modern day China and/or Japan, this is a great read and I would encourage anyone to dig into it.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read to a war that had huge future implications. A tale of two paths for countries. Japan gets onset by Westerners, starting with the US forcing Japan open. Japan comes to the realization that they are far out matched due to the industrial revolution. They set to revise top down their government and military at full throtal speed. Meanwhile, China is in a world of its own. While large in size, its government is corrupted and turns up its nose at any outsiders. Not realizing the world has moved on, thus leaving China in the dust. Korea, who seems to be the little kid while comparing the rest of the 3 countries(Russia), is pretty much torn apart for influence. The Korean government itself is playing a game of thrones while filled with corruption trying to fight but also kindle outside influence. Enter contestant #4 Russia. Russia is looking to expand East instead of West and has China and Korea in its sights. Japan has always set Korea as a natural country. Yet, China's push and, for the most part, Russia causes Japan to go to war with China to stop its aggression in Korea while demonstrating it strength to Russia.

The liaodong peninsula becomes a huge factor that tarnishes Japan's victory and turns their eyes on Russia. Also, it allowed Japan to see the West's hypocrisy.

Wars effected

Russo-Japanese War
WWI
Sino-Jappaneese War II
WWII
China Communist Party
Korea
Vietnam
Tawain

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Sino-Japanese War... is a seminal event in world history.... Ever since this war, the focus of Chinese foreign policy has been to undo its results whereas the focus of Japanese foreign policy has been to confirm them."

This was a good read, and the author shows why this war had such far reaching effects, down to the 21st century. While this war, for the Japanese, and the Russo-Japanese War, were wars of limited objectives, both wars showed a policy-strategy match against cooperative adversaries for limited objectives, and demonstrated effective war termination criteria. Paine contrasts the diplomatic and warfighting abilities of China and Japan, and more importantly, points out that Japan drew the wrong lessons from this war, and the Russo-Japanese War which followed. China lost because they had done quite a bit to assist the Japanese in their own defeat, and the Japanese people failed to appreciate how much their victory depended on Chinese failure. The broader lesson is that wars matter, regardless of their objectives, and have consequences that are still being felt. The more immediate lesson is that the Japanese matched their strategy to their objective, giving support to Clausewitz who emphasized the importance of a policy/strategy and objective match.

[Vivian Blaxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fine study of a war that changed the world but has been unregarded in the literature. I read with great interest and considerable enjoyment, even though the author is quite wrong to set the beginning of Japanese imperialism at 1895 when it actually began with the take over of Ainu Moshir (Hokkaido) in 1869, and even though the last chapter on Chinese and Japanese sociocultural patterns in the late 19th century is both hackneyed and non sequiturial.

[Gary Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not your typical military campaign history book. It begins by exploring the historical context and strategy of the belligerents in great detail, followed by a discuss of Chinese and Japanese "face" culture. Only the middle third of the book goes into the battles themselves (Pyongyang, Yalu, Port Arthur, Weihaiwei, etc.). I gained valuable insight into Eastern culture and warfare from this book.

[Benemint · Rating 1 out of 5]

No nuance, no complexity, no reflections on basic concepts. Quite refreshingly straightforward...

[Rob Hocking · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I've read a lot of books that touched on the first Sino-Japanese war, this is the first full-length book that I have read devoted to it, and it is extremely well done. This is because rather than simply giving an account of the raw sequence of events of the war, the book dives deep into their significance.

The first thing to understand about the war is that it is not at all what it seems. It was a war fought between China and Japan, ostensibly over Korea, but the real aim was Russian containment. In other words, the real enemy was Russia, not China, and Korea was just an excuse to start a war in order to obtain territorial concessions that would act as a bulwark against Russian expansionism in the far East. In the years leading up to the war the Russians were building the trans-Siberian railway, and the Japanese perceived this as a direct security threat. The Russians already had a port in the Far East at Vladivostok, but it was frozen part of the year, and they were after a port that would be open year round. In winning the war, Japan expelled the Chinese from Korea (which until then had been a Chinese protectorate), took over the Liaodong peninsula with the fresh water port of Port Arthur (pre-empting the Russians from doing so), took control of Taiwan, and secured a large indemnity from China.

However, the triple intervention of Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to cede the Liaodong peninsula back to China, and within a few years China had ceded it to Russia - giving the Russians the fresh-water port they wanted. This, combined with the Russian takeover of large parts of Manchuria, precipitated the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 (lost by Russia), in which the Russians were expelled from Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsula, which were then ceded to Japan. In 1910 the Japanese took control of Korea. So, the Russo-Japanese war and the subsequent Japanese takeover of Korea can be seen as a mopping up of the unfinished business in the Sino-Japanese war.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the war was how it changed the perception of China and Japan abroad. Prior to the war, China was considered the hegemonic power in Asia, and Japan was considered a small island of little importance. The war inverted the status of China and Japan in the eyes of the world, getting Japan the respect it desired (one outcome being a British-Japanese security treaty), and leading to the perception of China as "The sick man of Asia". After the war, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan all preceded to carve out their own spheres of influence in China, believing the Chinese government to be (a) too weak to stop them and (b) too incompetent to be trusted to manage these areas on their own.

There are a whole lot of reasons why a small island nation like Japan was able to defeat a behemoth like China. One reason is that at the time - the Qing dynasty - China was ruled not by Han Chinese, but rather by a small racial minority of Manchus who had invaded the country a few hundred years before. This made national unity difficult, because the Manchus needed to keep the Han majority divided amongst themselves in order to prevent them from joining forces and toppling the dynasty. So, China lacked a centralized army or navy, and in fact only the navy of Northern China took part in the fighting. Japan did not have these problems.

[Jean Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone wishing to understand China’s efforts to assert itself on the world stage in recent decades and be considered as a superpower (which status it has to all intents and purposes attained) would do well to read this book. The author uses primarily newspaper accounts of this little-known but vitally important war (for which the catalyst was control of the Korean peninsula) to recount how it caused a revolution in the way China and Japan perceived themselves and each other, and in how they were seen and treated by the Western powers. She also, in the book’s most important and concluding chapter, discusses the cultural underpinnings and motivations which governed each country’s actions. For China, the result was humiliation (“loss of face”), loss of control of important parts of its territory, and the eventual end of the Manchu (Qing) dynasty, followed by decades of political upheaval, war, and the deaths of millions; a case can be made that China’s involvement in the Korean War, and later on the disastrous 1958-62 Great Leap Forward, an abortive attempt to industrialize the country, can be seen as part of China’s effort to reassert itself and recover lost ground. For Japan, the result was its elevation to status as a world power and a determination to acquire a colonial empire in order to emulate the Western powers, and to make sure that it, and not Russia, dominated East Asia. However, this also meant that Japan’s military came to control the country and its foreign policy, especially after victory in the subsequent Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan’s national pride further increased when the Allied powers enlisted its aid in the Great War. The corresponding increase in hubris and belief in its own cultural and military superiority later led Japan to try to oust the Western powers entirely from East Asia (which it saw itself as obligated to “civilize” according to its own terms) and to control vast swaths of China (1931-45) and, entirely, Korea (1910-45), and it took another world war, with untold suffering and death for herself, China, Korea, and many other nations, to reverse all this and change the Japanese mindset to a more pacifistic one—for, unlike China in 1894-95, and in a way the Japanese did not expect, the United States and its allies marshaled all their resources and fought back hard—and fought to win. To this day there remains a wariness toward Japan among all the nations of Asia – especially China.

There is far too much detailed information in this book to be discussed in a brief review, but it is essential reading for a comprehension of the Asian situation today. The author has also written “Imperial Rivals”, which deals with the history of the Russo-Chinese border in Central Asia and the territorial disputes and ethnic rivalries that have revolved around it; also very worthwhile. The notes and bibliographies in both books are absolutely first-rate. The latter book and others by Ms. Paine are available online at ABEbooks.com; reasonably priced.

**** review by Chuck Graham ****

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent diplomatic history of the Sino-Japanese war, including foreign views of the events and how the players did (or didn't) respond to them. Very detailed recounting of events based on contemporary newspapers in multiple languages. Let down by a penultimate chapter that wades into weird Orientalist theorizing in a way that reminds you that it was written in the '90s and uncritically citing The Chrysanthemum and the Sword was still a thing people did.

[Sophie Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Sino Japanese War is a completely overlooked event in the English speaking world. Paine offers an overview of the war, mixing analysis with a collection of newspaper clippings from the time of the war. While the war does not cover everything and her cultural commentary could be argued to be a bit simplistic, this book offers fascinating insights into this overlooked history.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so much a military history as it is the history of how the First Sino-Japanese War altered East Asian diplomacy and geopolitics as well as how the fear of Russian expansion was the primary motivator of Japanese policy throughout most of the history of the empire.

[George Stopka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This treatise is indispensable for an understanding of east Asia in a world context for Western audiences.
The book is punctuated throughout with the most insightful breakdowns from every possible angle.
The main players and their motivations come alive.

[Devyani]

reading

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was one of the best books I've read this year (91 books so far), it was well above my expectations and indeed I thought its a model of history writing. I will look back to this book for its style, structure, focus and technique.

I thought it was amazing, I've read it twice. I realized that this was the most reliable source for the war because of the author's genius analysis and research, its hands down the best, and its fantastic for anyone who hasn't read up on this time period.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on a rarely covered topic in the West.