Russia was unprepared for war in the Far East. The Japanese Navy consisted of seven battleships (six new and one old) eight armored cruisers, including two built abroad, which arrived after the outbreak of the war 17 light cruisers, including three old ones 19 destroyers 28 torpedo boats (in the Combined Fleet only) and 11 gunboats. During the war the Japanese government mobilized approximately 1.2 million men. After mobilization the Japanese Army had 13 infantry divisions and 13 reserve brigades (more than 375,000 men and 1,140 field guns). The tsarist government, whose expansionist policy in the Far East was directed by the adventuristic Bezobrazov clique, was counting on an easy victory in a war against Japan and hoping that such a victory would make it possible to overcome the growing revolutionary crisis.Įconomically and militarily, Japan was significantly weaker than Russia, but the remoteness of the Far Eastern theater of war from the center of Russia reduced Russia’s military capabilities.
Japan began actively to prepare for war against Russia, concluding an alliance with Great Britain (the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902). During the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China, tsarist troops occupied Manchuria (1900).
In 1896 the Chinese government granted Russia a concession to build a railroad across Manchuria, and in 1898, Russia leased the Kwantung Peninsula with Port Arthur (Lüshun) from China, obtaining the right to build a naval base there. This marked the beginning of the exacerbation of Russo-Japanese relations.
Under pressure from Russia, which had the support of France and Germany, Japan was forced to give up the Liaotung Peninsula. According to the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), Japan, having defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, received the island of Taiwan (Formosa), the P’enghu Islands (the Pescadores), and the Liaotung Peninsula. For both sides, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was expansionist, unjust, and imperialist.Ĭapitalist Japan, which aspired to seize Korea and Northeast China (Manchuria), played a particularly active role in the growing rivalry among the powers in the Far East. A war that developed out of the growing struggle among the imperialist powers for the partition of semifeudal China and Korea.
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