The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War

Origins of Modern Wars

by Ian Nish

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was a turning point in the development of the modern world: the Japanese humiliation of Russia announced a very different era in the relations of East and West from that familiar to nineteenth-century imperialists, while Russia's defeats made their own contribution to the revolution of 1905 and, ultimately, 1917. The origins of the war have thus a more than local significance geographically and historically, and are the subject of Ian Nish's major study.

Professor Nish shows how the causes of the war are to be found in the events of the previous decade: China's weakness after her catastrophic defeat in her war with Japan (1894-5) and Russia's attempt to act as her 'European protector'. After the Boxer disturbances in 1900, the Russian armies moved into Manchuria, the three north-eastern provinces of China and despite promises to evacuate only withdrew partially from the territory. Japan negotiated with Russia about Manchuria and the related problem of Korea and, when the negotiations failed, declared war.

In a series devoted to the study of the origins of wars it is important to examine the origins of wars between European and non-European countries. The Russo-Japanese conflict was a war in the age of railways and in the period of large navies. it was a war fought with vast armies which ended with vast casualties. And though it was a regional rather than a global war, it intimately involved many countries apart form the two belligerent powers themselves. Professor Nish examines in detail the responses of China (whose territories were fought over), the United States, Britain, France and Germany to the developing crisis.

Genres: Japan, Japanese History, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 1985

About the author

A specialist in the history of Japanese foreign policy and Anglo-Japanese relations, Ian Hill Nish CBE was Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortly after midnight on February 9, 1904, a squadron of Japanese destroyers entered the harbor of Port Arthur, a Russian-controlled port in northeast China. Once inside the destroyers launched a series of torpedo attacks against the battleships and cruisers of the First Pacific Squadron anchored there. Though the attackers possessed the advantage of surprise only three of their torpedoes hit their targets, damaging two battleships and a protected cruiser. Believing the strike to be more successful than was the case, the Japanese Combined Fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō approached the harbor later that morning to bombard the survivors, only to withdraw in the face of a now-prepared force supported by shore batteries.

Despite its modest result, the brazen audacity of the attack shocked the Russians, who believed that Japan was too weak to challenge them militarily and that their threats to do so were sheer bluff. Not only did this assumption leave the Russians unprepared for such an aggressive assault, but it was one that had shaped Russian policy in the region in the years leading up to the Russo-Japanese War. As Ian Nish demonstrates, however, it was far from the only factor that led to the conflict. His book offers a meticulous overview of the diplomatic maneuverings in the decade leading up to the war, and the politics in both Tokyo and St. Petersburg behind their respective efforts. Through it he details how the war was a product of strategic decisions on both sides made by a handful of politicians seeking to maximize their country’s influence in northeast Asia – and how they reacted when those interests clashed.

Nish traces the origins of the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the Sino-Japanese War nearly a decade before. As they would in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan scored an unexpectedly spectacular victory over a much larger opponent, one that left them occupying a large amount of territory in eastern Asia. Though Japan secured control over much of this territory in the Treaty of Shimonoseki at the end of the war, a three-power coalition of European nations led by Russia – the Dreibund – forced Japan to return most of their territorial gains to China in return for a larger indemnity. This intervention was far from altruistic, as Russia feared that expanded Japanese control would clash with their own plans for the region, which their own leaders were aggressively pursuing.

The focus of these shared ambitions was Manchuria and Korea. Though sparsely inhabited, Manchuria was rich in timber and mineral resources, which interested Japan, and possessed the year-round ice-free ports that Russia so greatly desired. Over the next decade, the two sides jockeyed for the upper hand in the region, leveraging their treaty rights and pursuing negotiations amidst ever-evolving circumstances. Both sides courted other powers in this escalating competition, with Russia leveraging China’s need for a counter to Japan to gain control of Port Arthur and Japan securing British and American support in an effort to compel Russia to evacuate their forces from Manchuria after the Boxer Uprising. Constraining Japanese leaders was the exhausted state of their finances after their war with China, which the Russians exploited to reduce Japanese influence with an early payoff of the indemnity owed to them.

Japan used this influx of money to expand their military in preparation for war. Nish is particularly good at detailing how the shifts in Japanese politics shaped strategic policy. This was a product of the tension between the military, the Diet, and the genrō, or the elder statesmen who exerted considerable influence both officially and unofficially. Though the methods of attaining their goals in the region changed with various ministries, the goal remained the same throughout: the securing of a predominantly Japanese sphere of influence in Korea and northeastern China. By the end of 1903, a consensus had emerged that Russia would never offer terms to resolve their difference that would be satisfactory to Japan, and was only dragging out negotiations in order to buy time to secure their position in the region. Once such a conclusion was reached war became inevitable, with the other Western powers lacking the influence needed to avert a conflict.

As a scholar of Anglo-Japanese relations during this period, Nish brings to his subject an extensive familiarity with Meiji-era foreign policy in particular and international relations more generally. This he supplements with impressive work in both Japanese and Russian primary sources, as well as the secondary literature on his subject. Though critical of the flawed assumptions and missteps made on both sides, Nish’s judgments are even-handed and always supported by a clear explanation grounded in his research. From this emerges a meticulous account of the diplomatic engagement between Russia and Japan over Manchuria and Korea that, while often getting bogged down in the details of various exchanges, is never less than insightful in its analysis of the motivations of the various statesmen involved and the consequences of their decisions. It all makes for a book that is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins of such an opaque yet pivotal conflict.

[Tacitus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nish ably goes through the failure in negotiations that led up to the Russo-Japanese war. He apparently understands at least 3 languages (not just English, but also Russian and Japanese), and combs through a wide array of source material to trace the origins of this war. The lead-up to war is worth studying in its own right, but it also sheds light on parallel decision making in Russia in 1914 and Japan in 1941.

In a nutshell, Russia had built a railway in Manchuria that it sought to protect. Japan had a colony of sorts in Korea. Throughout this period, Japan tried to negotiate with Russia about a treaty that would define spheres of influence. Japan, which started the war, wanted to preserve its position in Korea, and it saw Russia's presence in Manchuria as threatening to that. Japan was on the diplomatic side of the Open-Door powers (UK and USA) who wanted Russia completely out of China. Japan outmaneuvered Russia diplomatically by gaining an alliance with the UK; this allowed Japan to act with some freedom later, as she didn't have to worry about a Western alliance similar to the one that undercut her in 1895.

For its part, Japan tried numerous times to negotiate with Russia. It seems that there could have been a deal struck on the basis of trading Korea for Manchuria, in a sense; Japan preserves dominance in Korea, while Russia does so in Manchuria. However, Russia never saw Manchuria as being on the table; Russia consistently maintained that Russian presence there was a bilateral Chinese-Russian matter.

Russian policy was incoherent, as opinion was divided among ministers, or among those in St. Petersburg vs those in Port Arthur. Exacerbating matters, a Russian connected to the court opened a timber company on the Yalu river. This one issue seems to have reinforced fears in Japan about Russian incursions from Manchuria into Korea.

Making matters even worse, the Tsar often had to push off making a decision due to various personal reasons (vacationing in Crimea, illness of the Tsarina, and so on). Japan read these delays as intentional prevarication, and in some sense that's true, as Russia had no sense of urgency about resolving the issue and, quite frankly, never took the threat of Japanese capacity or intentions for war seriously. Russian reactions during this period have a somnambulatory quality that reminded me of Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers, a certain disconnectedness from events that seems peculiar to Nicholas II, right up to his last days.

Meanwhile, I was reminded of the start of the later Pacific War as I read about the Japanese side. There were factions for and against the war, chief of which were the army (pro) and navy (con). Japan broke off diplomatic negotiations, but didn't declare war before the shooting started, a murky situation that didn't seem to harm it here, but the parallels with 1941 are clear. It's perhaps no wonder that Japan, which had brought one sleeping giant to terms, thought it could do so again.

Nish discusses whether the war was preventable or not, and his conclusion is that it wasn't. Based on what he presents, I disagree. It seems that if Russia had withdrawn from Manchuria, and signed some sort of treaty with Japan over Korea, things could have been resolved adequately, at least in the short term. My conclusion is that Russia could have avoided what followed by negotiating with Japan much sooner. Ironically, though, it may be that Manchuria was simply not so important to the Russians as it was to the Japanese.

As for the other side, I'm not sure what was at stake for Japan in going to war, but obviously they felt their interests and self-respect sufficiently threatened and acted accordingly. One wonders whether they should have simply followed Russia's course and let things continue as they were. But they may have felt (as they would in 1941) that their enemy would only get stronger and more firmly ensconced as time went on; therefore, there's no better time to strike than now. In any case, the Japanese public was for it, based on Nish's readings of newspapers of the day.

Readers can draw their own conclusions and parallels in this excellent study. Nish's prose is somewhat stodgy and a slog to get through -- it took me much longer than I thought it would to get through the 250 main pages of narrative. However, his command of the sources (Russian and Japanese), and his analysis of them, provide much to consider.

[Alex Helling · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is essentially a diplomatic history of the run-up to the start of the Russo-Japanese war. Ian Nish provides a narrative of the events on the ground from the mid 1890s, particularly Russia’s use of the Boxer uprising to increase control in China’s northeast, to the start of the war. We are also given lots of detail following the ins and outs of diplomacy, which can at times be difficult to follow as they are often involving quite minor changes to positions or demands.

As a diplomatic history of Japan and Russia from 1894-1904 this is a really comprehensive book. But for a book on the origins of a war I think that the focus on the intricacies of diplomacy mean that other factors are ignored, or not sufficiently discussed. Perhaps excusably given this is the end of the 19th Century public opinion gets barely a mention until the conclusion but a bellicose public could certainly be considered a factor on the Japanese side so it is somewhat ignored. More inexcusable is how little analysis there is of the military balance. The navy does not really come up until they ask for a delay three quarters of the way in. The balance of armies is slightly more prominent as it is clear that part of the problem is the way that the Trans-Siberian could change that. But there is very little discussion about how mobilisation, readiness etc impact on the potential for war. The Russian army itself comes up a lot, but mostly in the form of its railway guards and where in Manchuria it is occupying. Given in the next big war, WWI, mobilisation timetables are seen as potentially key this seems a bit of an oversight.

While it is mostly quite well argued in some cases I am not clear how Nish gets to a conclusion. For example, an internal Japanese conference agrees four propositions which are to paraphrase (p153) 1, Japan should protest to Russia, 2, negotiate to resolve the Korean Q, 3, in Korea Japans rights must be recognised, 4, be prepared to recognise Russia’s rights in Manchuria. Nish sees this as “initial steps towards opening negotiations with Russia in full anticipation of, or even determination for, war.” I just don’t see how he gets to determination for war from the propositions.

Similarly, as part of Nish’s overall conclusion he oddly points to Japanese willingness to fight in Manchuria as suggesting that “Manchuria was the prime object of Japan in going to war”. Not only does the reasoning not stand – many countries have fought in places they did not covet (e.g. the UK in almost any continental European war) – but he has spent most of the book showing that Japan was at this time almost entirely interested in Korea with only limited interest in Manchuria and that mostly to trade off for Korea. Indeed, given the conclusion is where Nish has suddenly brought in the other factors like the military, popular opinion and the economy I think this is the weakest element.

So, a great book on the narrative of events in NE Asia at the turn of the 20thC and the international diplomacy around them. But not so convincing as an overarching look at the origins of the war.