In five minutes
The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was a war between the Russian Empire and Japan for control of Korea and southern Manchuria. Japan struck first, on the night of 8–9 February 1904, and went on to win on land at Port Arthur, Liaoyang and Mukden and at sea at Tsushima. Peace came through American mediation in the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on 5 September 1905. It was the first time in the modern era that an Asian state defeated a European great power. Japan came out as the dominant power in Korea and southern Manchuria, but it was nearly out of money and men. Russia came out humiliated and shaken by the revolution of 1905. For the wider story of Qing China, Japan and the Western powers, see the hub article Qing China, Japan and the West (1793–1912).
Causes: why did the Russo-Japanese War start?
The war grew out of a collision of two empires in the same place. Russia was building the Trans-Siberian Railway, begun in 1891, and wanted a warm-water port on the Pacific. Japan, which had beaten Qing China in 1894–95, saw Korea as the land bridge to its own islands and could not accept a rival power on it.
In 1895 Russia, backed by France and Germany, forced Japan to give back the Liaodong Peninsula it had won from China (the Triple Intervention). In 1898 Russia itself leased Port Arthur and Dalny on that same peninsula and made Port Arthur a naval base. When the Boxer Rebellion broke out in 1900, Russian troops moved into Manchuria and did not leave. By 1903 Russia was also pushing timber concessions along the Yalu River on the Korean border.
Japanese leaders offered a trade: Russia would have a free hand in Manchuria, Japan in Korea. Talks ran from mid-1903 into early 1904, but Russia would not give up its interest in Korea, and proposed a neutral zone in northern Korea instead. Many in St Petersburg believed Japan would not dare to fight, and that if it did it would lose.
Japan had one important advantage: the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 30 January 1902. Britain agreed to stay neutral if Japan fought one enemy, and to join in if a second power sided with that enemy. That kept France, Russia's ally, out of the war. On 6 February 1904 Japan broke off diplomatic relations.
1904: the war opens at Port Arthur and Chemulpo
On the night of 8–9 February 1904, Japanese torpedo boats attacked the Russian Pacific Squadron anchored outside Port Arthur and damaged two battleships and a cruiser. The formal declarations of war came on 10 February. On 9 February, at Chemulpo (Incheon) in Korea, the Russian cruiser Varyag and the gunboat Koreets sailed out against a larger Japanese squadron, were badly damaged, and were destroyed by their own crews. With the Russian fleet bottled up, Japan could land armies in Korea. Its First Army, under General Kuroki Tamemoto, won the first big land battle at the Yalu River on 30 April–1 May 1904.
Port Arthur: the siege that cost Japan most
The Russian fleet's base had to fall, or Japan's sea lanes would never be safe. Admiral Makarov, the Russian squadron's best commander, was killed on 13 April 1904 when his flagship hit a mine. On 10 August the squadron tried to break out toward Vladivostok at the Battle of the Yellow Sea; its commander, Admiral Vitgeft, was killed and the ships scattered or turned back.
The Japanese Third Army under General Nogi Maresuke then besieged the fortress. Its first general assault in August 1904 was a costly failure: infantry charged forts protected by barbed wire, machine guns and trenches, and Japan lost something like 15,000 men in a few days. Nogi switched to heavy artillery and, from late November, concentrated on 203 Metre Hill, which overlooked the harbour. Once it fell on 5 December 1904, Japanese gunners could see the Russian ships and sank most of them at their moorings. General Stoessel surrendered the fortress on 2 January 1905. The whole siege cost Japan more than 50,000 casualties, including the sick.
Liaoyang and Mukden: the great land battles
While Port Arthur held out, Field Marshal Ōyama Iwao's armies pushed north against General Kuropatkin. At Liaoyang, from late August to early September 1904, about 125,000 Japanese attacked a Russian force of more than 150,000. Japan lost heavily but forced Kuropatkin to retreat to Mukden. Fighting at the Sha-ho in October and at Sandepu in January 1905 changed little.
The Battle of Mukden, 20 February to 10 March 1905, was the largest land battle the world had seen before the First World War. Depending on the count, each side had between about 270,000 and 330,000 men. Nogi's army, freed by the fall of Port Arthur, swung around the Russian right flank, and Kuropatkin ordered a retreat north. Japan lost about 75,000 men and Russia about 90,000, including prisoners. Neither side could land a final blow: Japan's army was exhausted and its supplies stretched, and Russia still had men but little will to fight on.
Tsushima: the voyage and the battle
Russia's last card was its Baltic Fleet, renamed the Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. It left Libau in October 1904, and its voyage around Africa and across the Indian Ocean covered about 18,000 nautical miles. On the way it fired on British fishing boats at the Dogger Bank on the night of 21–22 October, nearly causing a war with Britain. In May 1905 it reached the Korea Strait, taking the shortest route to Vladivostok.
Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō was waiting with the Combined Fleet. Japan had four modern battleships against Russia's eight, but Japanese ships were faster, better gunned in practice, and used better shells and signalling. On 27 May 1905, Tōgō turned his line across the head of the Russian column so that his ships could concentrate fire on the leaders. The flagship Knyaz Suvorov was knocked out, Rozhestvensky was wounded, and by evening several battleships were sinking. Torpedo boats attacked through the night, and on 28 May the remaining ships under Admiral Nebogatov surrendered. Every Russian battleship was sunk or captured; only a handful of vessels reached Vladivostok. Russia lost about 4,500 men killed and about 6,000 captured. Japan lost three torpedo boats and fewer than 150 men.
The Treaty of Portsmouth: who won the Russo-Japanese War?
Japan won the war, but it could not afford to keep fighting. It had borrowed heavily abroad, including from American and British banks, and its army was spent. Russia, meanwhile, was shaken by Bloody Sunday on 22 January 1905 and the strikes and mutinies that followed. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate, and the talks opened at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in August 1905. The Japanese delegate was Komura Jutarō; the Russian was Sergei Witte. The full story is in The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) and Theodore Roosevelt.
The treaty, signed on 5 September 1905, gave Japan recognition of its paramount interests in Korea, the Russian lease of the Liaodong Peninsula (Port Arthur and Dalny), the railway in southern Manchuria, and the southern half of Sakhalin. Russia paid no indemnity. Many Japanese had expected one, and riots broke out in Tokyo on the day of signing (the Hibiya incendiary incident). Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
Consequences: Korea, Russia and Asia
For Korea the result was loss of independence. Japan had already forced agreements on Seoul in 1904, and in November 1905 it made Korea a protectorate; formal annexation followed in 1910. For Russia, defeat helped ignite the revolution of 1905 and forced Tsar Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto. It also turned Russian attention back toward the Balkans, with consequences in 1914. For Japan the victory brought great-power status, but also huge debts, a stronger army and a growing belief that force could secure the empire on the continent.
Across Asia the news spread as proof that a non-European country could modernise and win. Reformers and nationalists in China, India, Vietnam and elsewhere took heart, even though Japan itself was becoming an imperial power. Military observers saw machine guns, barbed wire, trenches and long-range artillery do their work, a rehearsal for the First World War.
What exams ask
- Significance: the first victory of an Asian power over a European great power in the 20th century; Japan emerges as a regional imperial power.
- Key terms: Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902); Port Arthur; Mukden; Tsushima; Treaty of Portsmouth; Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize (1906).
- Link to Russia: defeat plus Bloody Sunday gave rise to the 1905 revolution and the October Manifesto.
- Link to Korea: the 1905 protectorate and 1910 annexation.
- Typical question: explain why Japan won, and why it did not get everything it wanted at Portsmouth.
Read next
- The Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902): the diplomatic deal that kept the war to two powers.
- The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) and Theodore Roosevelt: how the peace was negotiated and what it gave each side.
- The First Opium War (1839–1842): where the Western pressure on East Asia began.
- Qing China, Japan and the West (1793–1912): the hub for the whole topic.
