Battle of the Yellow Sea (First Sino-Japanese War) in woodblock print by Kobayashi Kiyochika Inoue Kichijirô, 1894

(17) SINO-JAPANESE & RUSSO-JAPANESE WARS (1894-1945)

The wars fought over half a century that, while often overlooked, surprisingly underlie or encapsulate much of modern history, particularly the world wars and cold war of the twentieth century.

I say surprisingly – or often overlooked – because there tends to be a focus on modern history from an Atlantic or European perspective, which might similarly by encapsulated by Franco-German wars, from the Franco-Prussian War to the Second World War (while postwar European history is encapsulated by Franco-German rapprochement).

However, I think there’s a strong argument that the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars might be ranked similarly to the Franco-German wars for impact and significance in modern history.

If nothing else, it’s a pity that European powers didn’t pay more attention ahead of the First World War to the Russo-Japanese War for its precursors of industrial firepower in the twentieth-century battlefield, rather than their preferred model of quick victory in the Franco-Prussian War. Or for that matter, the United States didn’t pay more attention to it ahead of the Second World War, with the Japanese attack on Russian forces at Port Arthur as a model for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It’s striking how much impact or how many precursors come from the strategic contest between two ‘corners’ of a geopolitical triangle, China and Russia, with the third corner, Japan – fought in the arena of northeast Asia and northeast Pacific.

The two ‘corners’ of China and Russia may not be surprising, but the third ‘corner’ of Japan definitely is, as very much the underdog vis-a-vis China as the world’s most populous nation and Russa as the largest. Japan had only recently – 40 years or so – been dragged from its isolation into the modern world by the American naval expedition under Commodore Perry in 1853, narrowly escaping Western colonization by a crash course in modernization with its Meiji Restoration in 1868, only about 25 years previously.

The wars might be classified into three phases, linked by the continuity of Sino-Japanese conflict that recurred throughout them. That conflict predominated the first phase, essentially corresponding to the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895. However, the second phase saw that conflict eclipsed by Russo-Japanese conflict, which culminated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The third phase was again predominated by Sino-Japanese conflict but intermittently punctuated by Russo-Japanese conflict, the former seeing its climax in the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945.

Japan initially lacked the strength to take on a European power, even one like Russia that was embarking on its own crash course of modernization to catch up to its European peers. However, China in the final flailing decline of its imperial Qing dynasty, was another matter, and hence the First Sino-Japanese War was fought between them, driven by their rivalry over Korea – echoing the Japanese invasions of Korea and conflict with Ming China in 1592-1598.

Interestingly, Japan remained the underdog, at least in international perception as “the prevailing view in many Western circles” was that they would be crushed by China. Instead, it was the reverse as Japan inflicted one defeat after another on China, obtaining Taiwan (and other islands) as prize of war – something that would become of particular significance in the Chinese Civil War and Cold War.

The war turned Qing China’s decline into free fall, at it collapsed in less than two decades. It also saw Japan replace China as the predominant Asian power and increasingly recognized as peer by Western powers by their usual colonization club criteria of beating up China.

China continued to present itself as target for further Japanese incursion, except for the resistance which came not so much from China itself but from European powers – above all Russia, with the sphere of influence they sought in northeast China and Asia clashing in the same geographical area as that sought by Japan, particularly Manchuria and Korea.

Hence the Russo-Japanese War was fought between them. Once again, Japan was the underdog, with international observers again anticipating Japan would be crushed by Russia – although having previously been baulked by European powers over China, this time Japan had secured itself an alliance with the foremost European power, Britain, in 1902.

And once again, Japan surprised the world by not only prevailing but decisively defeating Russia – albeit its military victories disguised that it would have been in serious trouble in a prolonged war but for the peace treaty negotiated by the United States.

Japan’s victory didn’t just surprise the world but shocked it – and those shock waves had wide repercussions. In the short term, Russia no longer opposed Japan as the latter extended its sphere of influence in Korea and Manchuria. In the longer term, Russia’s defeat lit the fuse on the First World War, emboldening Germany against Russia, as well as on the Russian Revolution. Beyond Russia, the defeat of a European power by an Asian one lit the fuse on decolonization throughout the world but particularly in Asia. Ironically even the Chinese were enthused by Japanese victory.

The battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War also saw many precursors of trench warfare and total war of the First World War – not least in the casualties from artillery and machine guns.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Sino-Japanese conflict again predominated in the third phase of wars between Japan on one side and China or Russia on the other. Foremost for this conflict looms the Second Sino-Japanese War. Its commencement in 1937 might well be regarded as the true start of the Second World War, the other theaters of which it ultimately merged with in 1941. However, it is often overlooked with respect to the wider Second World War – not just in origin but also in its continued interaction and impact on other theaters.

Of course, the Second Sino-Japanese War itself can be traced to earlier conflict between them, most notably with Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931, but also the skirmishes between them from 1931 to 1937. There were also incidents between them from Japan’s so-called Twenty-One Demands to China in 1915 during the First World War (in which Japan was a British ally) to the Jinan incident in 1928.

However, Russia didn’t go away either but was transformed by revolution into the Soviet Union and the ongoing Sino-Japanese conflict was intermittently punctuated by Russo-Japanese conflict, albeit now as Soviet-Japanese conflict.

At first, Japan had the upper hand in Soviet-Japanese conflict. Japan was the most aggressive and persistent of Russia’s former allies attempting to strangle the revolution in its cradle – fielding the largest Allied contingent in Siberia or Russian Far East and for the longest time, remaining until 1922.

However, Japan soon lost the upper hand, becoming increasingly alarmed by the Red Army’s growing strength as the latter won in the 1929 Sino-Soviet War (against a Chinese warlord). That alarm proved to be well-founded as Japan was badly outfought in border skirmishes with the Red Army in 1939, most notably with Japan’s defeat in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (as variously spelt) – labelled by some historians as the Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War and overlooked for its impact on the wider Second World War.

That defeat was repeated, only catastrophically worse for Japan, with the Soviet declaration of war against Japan and invasion of Manchuria in 1945 – which virtually wiped out Japan’s occupying Kwantung Army and set up the battle lines for the Cold War in Asia, notably in Korea

RATING: 4 STARS****

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