Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and Japan from February 1904 to September 1905, over rival ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. It ended in a clear Japanese victory, the first time in the modern era that an Asian power had defeated a major European one in a full-scale war. The outcome made Japan a great power and helped trigger revolution in Russia.

After its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Japan had hoped to keep the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria, but Russia, France and Germany pressed it to give the territory back. Russia then leased the same peninsula from China for itself, including the ice-free harbour of Port Arthur, and extended its railway network across Manchuria. Japan saw Korea as its own sphere of interest and Russian troops in Manchuria as a threat to it. Talks on dividing the region into spheres of influence broke down early in 1904.

On the night of 8–9 February 1904, before a formal declaration of war had been received, Japanese torpedo boats attacked the Russian Pacific Fleet at anchor in Port Arthur. Japan quickly gained command of the sea, landed armies in Korea and pushed the Russians back across the Yalu River into Manchuria. From August a Japanese army besieged Port Arthur itself. The siege was long and extremely costly, with waves of infantry thrown against fortified hills, and the fortress did not surrender until early January 1905.

The largest land battle came at Mukden, in Manchuria, in February and March 1905, involving more than half a million men on the two sides. The Japanese took the city, but the Russian army withdrew in reasonable order and neither side could easily continue. The decisive blow fell at sea. Russia had sent its Baltic Fleet on a voyage of some seven months halfway around the world to restore the balance in the Pacific. On 27–28 May 1905, in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan, Admiral Togo Heihachiro's fleet destroyed or captured most of it, while losing only a few small torpedo boats.

Both countries were exhausted. Japan was close to the limit of its money and manpower, and Russia was shaken by unrest at home after troops fired on demonstrators in St Petersburg in January 1905. The American president Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate, and the Treaty of Portsmouth, negotiated in New Hampshire, was signed on 5 September 1905. Russia recognised Korea as a Japanese sphere, handed over its lease of the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur and the southern branch of its Manchurian railway, and ceded the southern half of Sakhalin. Japan received no cash indemnity, which caused riots in Tokyo. Estimates of military deaths vary widely, with commonly cited figures of roughly 40,000 to 70,000 Russian and 80,000 to 86,000 Japanese dead, many of them from disease.

For Russia, defeat deepened the crisis known as the Revolution of 1905, which forced Nicholas II to accept an elected parliament, the Duma. Russia turned its attention back towards the Balkans, with consequences for the outbreak of World War I. For Japan, victory opened the way to a protectorate over Korea in 1905 and annexation in 1910, and to growing influence in Manchuria. Across Asia the result was watched closely as evidence that European empires could be beaten.

Our 1900 map shows the Russian Empire leasing the Liaodong Peninsula from the Qing dynasty, and our 1914 map shows Korea and southern Sakhalin as part of the Empire of Japan.