In the late nineteenth century, the major powers of the world divided the coast of China into spheres of economic influence. Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Russia, and Japan had exclusive rights to trade within their spheres. In 1899 the United States convinced these countries to cooperate, rather than compete, by the adoption of the Open Door policy. Under this plan, the whole of China would be open for free trade, and the spheres of influence would gradually fade away.
The Russians held sway in Manchuria, and had laid claim to Vladivostok as the base for its Pacific fleet since the 1860s. After the Sino- Japanese War ended in 1895, Russia, France, and Germany put diplomatic pressure on Japan to withdraw from Korea, which the Japanese did under protest in what seemed to them a humiliating concession. Therefore, Russia and Japan were already unfriendly when in 1903, Russia failed to give up its rights in Manchuria, in which Japan was intensely interested. Russia promised to leave within six months, but instead reinforced its army, strengthened fortifications, and sent additional warships. This buildup not only contradicted their Open Door promises, but also gave the impression of threatening Korea, where Japan was keeping its pledges to open trade. Anticipating that Russia might prove recalcitrant, in 1902, Japan had entered into a defense agreement with Great Britain stating that either country would come to the aid of the other if one of the countries were fighting two enemies. The Japanese estimate seemed accurate, because the Russians refused to negotiate in good faith and continued their military buildup. By January 1904 the Japanese were convinced that further negotiation was futile, so military action seemed the only alternative.
On 8 February, the Japanese navy struck the Russian fleet based at Port Arthur. Torpedo boats sneaked into the harbor, flashing Russian signal lights, then torpedoed two battleships and a cruiser. The next day the Japanese fleet stood outside the harbor and shelled the ships and facilities inside. The Russian ships that survived did little to challenge the Japanese. The Russian fleet commander realized his sailors were not well trained in fleet maneuvers, so he decided not to challenge the Japanese in open water. Leery of the coastal defenses around Port Arthur, the Japanese hesitated to draw close enough to the harbor to destroy the Russians. Both sides kept a close eye on each other for some months.
The Japanese army was in action as well, landing on 8 February at Inchon, Korea, then moving slowly up the peninsula over bad roads. Russian resistance was minimal, and the Japanese worked their way northward toward the Yalu River, the border between Korea and Manchuria. The Japanese staged a brilliant river crossing in April, which established them in Manchuria and forced the Russians to withdraw into the mountains. With bridges under their control, the Japanese were prepared to invade Manchuria from Korea as well as from the south. Japanese forces landed on the peninsula above Port Arthur on 5 May and rapidly sealed off the city from reinforcements. Japan hoped to capture Port Arthur easily, as it had done in the war against China 10 years earlier, but the Russians mounted a much stouter defense. More and more men were committed to breaking through the well-prepared Russian defenses, and the siege lasted months longer than anticipated. Trench networks, massed artillery barrages, machine guns in defensive positions—all brought about massive loss of life on both sides in a preview of France in World War I.
In Port Arthur the Russians were in deep trouble. The fleet attempted to attack the Japanese in August but failed, leaving the navy demoralized. The Russians anchored their ships and moved the sailors to man the defenses on land. Through the fall of 1904, the Japanese continued their assaults on the city, inflicting and receiving huge casualties but edging ever closer. By December the highest point overlooking the city was in Japanese hands, and artillery placed there finished off the Russian fleet. The defenders, though killing more men than they themselves were losing, realized that there was no hope of relieving forces from the north. The Russian commander surrendered the city on New Year’s Day 1905. The Japanese fleet could now go home for repairs, and the Japanese army marched north to aid their comrades near Mukden.
In late February, the largest battle started. Just over 200,000 Japanese attacked almost 300,000 Russians in a double envelopment at Mukden. It was a long, slowly developing battle with poor leadership decisions and hesitant generalship on both sides. On 9 March the Russians withdrew the bulk of their forces before being surrounded, leaving behind 90,000 casualties. More aggressive action on the part of the Japanese would have captured the entire force, but the Russians re-formed 40 miles northward. It made little difference, as no more major land fighting took place.
The final major battle of the war took place at sea. In October the Russian government had dispatched the Baltic fleet to sail to Vladivostok and engage the Japanese fleet. It finally arrived in late May 1905 and ran into the Japanese in the narrows between Japan and Korea at Tsushima Strait. The Russian fleet was old and manned by inexperienced crews, and the battle was no contest. The more modern Japanese ships pounded the Russians in a day-long battle that cost the Russians 34 of their 40 ships, either sunk or captured. The Japanese capital ships all took heavy damage, but only three destroyers were sunk. After the devastation at Port Arthur and Tsushima, the Russian navy virtually ceased to exist.
The Japanese were winning every battle, but financially they were unable to continue fighting. Though the Russians lost every battle, they continued to send men and supplies 5,000 miles down the Trans-Siberian Railway to keep the war going. The news of the losses, however, fomented discontent in Moscow, and the Russian government had to deal with revolutionary rumblings. Since the outbreak of the war, American President Theodore Roosevelt had offered to mediate, but both sides refused. After Tsushima, the Japanese secretly informed him that if he would again offer his services, the Japanese would agree to talk. The Russians agreed to Roosevelt’s new proposal on the condition that the Japanese publicly agree first, and that only representatives of the belligerents conduct negotiations. Roosevelt provided a venue for talks in Washington, D.C., in August 1905, but after no progress was made he moved them to the more comfortable site of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Though not allowed into the conferences, Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to assist the negotiations, and he was able to bring them to a successful conclusion. The Portsmouth Treaty recognized Japan as the premier power in Manchuria, but the Japanese had to return captured Russian ships and not demand reparations payments from Russia. For his efforts Roosevelt received the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Japanese people were not happy with the treaty. They felt that they deserved more spoils of war, and blamed Roosevelt for the shortfall. Coupled with anti-Japanese legislation passed in California, relations between the two countries became strained. Roosevelt’s personal influence in both California and Tokyo defused the situation, but he saw that Japan was a new power to be reckoned with. His dispatch of the American battleship fleet on an around-the-world cruise in 1907 was aimed primarily at flexing American muscles in the Pacific while concluding the Root-Takahira Agreement, which spelled out American and Japanese spheres of influence in the Pacific region. The two nations remained fairly friendly until the 1930s.
The war itself was an omen for any soldier who would see it. Observers in Manchuria, especially German General Staff members, saw the devastating effects of machine guns, and incorporated the knowledge into their military views. What almost everyone failed to see, however, was that the improved defensive capabilities called for new offensive doctrine. Many of the elements of destruction the Europeans inflicted on one another in World War I made their appearance in Manchuria.
In Russia, the czarist government’s days were numbered. The poor handling of the war by both generals and governmental leaders, plus the cost in money and men, encouraged the radicals in Moscow and St. Petersburg to preach revolution. The 1905 uprising, which the government suppressed, laid the groundwork for the revolution of 1917, again brought on by military disasters. In Japan, the people and government reluctantly accepted the peace, but they savored a taste of victory that encouraged future military ventures. Their success in 1904–1905 over the heavily favored Russians reinforced the longstanding traditions and training of the Japanese military and established a tradition for their navy. Their introduction to the modern industrialized world a mere 50 years earlier made the Japanese realize they needed raw materials that their country did not possess and, whether it was in Manchuria or elsewhere, military action was a proven method of gaining them. Participation in World War I to obtain German possessions in the Pacific, as well as aggression in the 1930s in China, can both be traced to the successes of 1904–1905.
See also: Korea, Japanese Invasion of (Sino-Japanese War); China, Japanese Invasion of.
References:
Coonaughton, R. M., The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear (London: Routledge, 1991); Walder, David, The Short Victorious War (London: Hutchinson, 1973); Warner, Denis, The Tide at Sunrise (New York: Charterhouse, 1974).