First Sino-Japanese War

The First Sino-Japanese War was fought from July 1894 to April 1895 between Qing China and Japan, mainly over control of Korea. The modernised Japanese army and navy won a rapid series of victories on land and sea, and by the Treaty of Shimonoseki China recognised Korea's independence, ceded Taiwan to Japan and paid a huge indemnity. The war marked Japan's arrival as a major power and exposed the weakness of the Qing dynasty.

For centuries Korea under the Joseon dynasty had recognised China's emperor as overlord in a tributary relationship. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan rapidly built a Western-style state and armed forces and began to treat Korea as vital to its security and ambitions. In 1876 Japan forced Korea to sign a treaty opening ports to its trade. Over the following decade the two powers backed rival factions at the Korean court; after a failed pro-Japanese coup in 1884, the Convention of Tientsin of 1885 required China and Japan to notify each other before sending troops to Korea.

In 1894 a peasant uprising inspired by the Donghak religious movement broke out in southern Korea, and the Korean government asked China for help. China sent troops, and Japan responded by landing a larger force. Although the uprising soon paused, neither side withdrew. On 23 July Japanese troops seized the royal palace in Seoul and installed a government favourable to Japan. Two days later, on 25 July, Japanese warships attacked Chinese vessels near Pungdo and sank the Kowshing, a British-owned transport carrying more than a thousand Chinese soldiers. War was formally declared on 1 August.

The Chinese forces suffered from divided command, uneven training and equipment, and corruption. On 15 September Japanese troops took Pyongyang, driving the Chinese out of Korea. Two days later, at the Battle of the Yalu River, the Japanese navy defeated China's Beiyang Fleet, which withdrew to port. Japanese armies then crossed into Manchuria, and on 21 November captured Port Arthur, the fortified naval base at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. Japanese troops then killed large numbers of Chinese soldiers and civilians in the town; foreign correspondents reported the massacre, though the number of victims is disputed. In February 1895 Japanese forces took the naval base at Weihaiwei on the Shandong Peninsula, and the remains of the Beiyang Fleet surrendered.

China sent its senior statesman Li Hongzhang to negotiate in Japan. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April 1895, required China to recognise Korea as fully independent, to cede Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, to pay an indemnity of 200 million taels of silver and to open further ports to Japanese trade.

Within days, Russia, Germany and France, in what became known as the Triple Intervention, pressed Japan to give back the Liaodong Peninsula, which it did in exchange for an additional payment. When Russia itself leased Port Arthur in 1898, resentment in Japan grew. Taiwan resisted the Japanese takeover for several months but became Japan's first major colony.

The defeat shocked Chinese reformers and encouraged the European powers to seize leases and spheres of influence in China, a process that fed the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. The court of Empress Dowager Cixi suppressed a short-lived reform movement in 1898, and the dynasty fell in 1912. Korea, freed from Chinese overlordship, came under growing Japanese pressure. Rivalry with Russia over Korea and Manchuria led to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and in 1910 Japan annexed Korea.

Our 1880 map shows Korea and Taiwan before the war, and the 1900 map shows the region after it, with Korea no longer bound to China and the Empire of Japan on the rise.