Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War
Clockwise from top: Russian cruiser Pallada under fire at Port Arthur, Russian cavalry at Mukden, Russian cruiser Varyag and gunboat Korietz at Chemulpo Bay, Japanese dead at Port Arthur, Japanese infantry crossing the Yalu River
Date 8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905 (1 year, 6 months and 4 weeks) Location Manchuria, Yellow Sea, Korea, Sea of Japan Result Japanese victory Treaty of Portsmouth
Belligerents
Russia	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Nicholas II Aleksey Kuropatkin Roman Kondratenko † Anatoly Stessel  Oskar Gripenberg Yevgeni Alekseyev Stepan Makarov † Wilgelm Vitgeft † Robert Viren Zinovy Rozhestvensky	Meiji Katsura Tarō Ōyama Iwao Yamagata Aritomo Kodama Gentarō Nogi Maresuke Kuroki Tamemoto Oku Yasukata Tōgō Heihachirō Itō Sukeyuki
Strength
1,365,000 (total)[1] 700,000 (peak)	1,200,000 (total)[1] 650,000 (peak)
Casualties and losses
Total:43,300–71,453 dead [2][3] 34,000–52,623 killed or died of wounds 9,300–18,830 died of disease 146,032 wounded 74,369 captured Material losses: 8 battleships sunk 2 battleships captured	Total: 80,378–86,100 dead [2][3] 80,378–86,100 dead 47,152–47,400 killed 11,424–11,500 died of wounds 21,802–27,200 died of disease Material losses: 2 battleships sunk

Events leading to World War I
Unification of Germany 1866–1871 Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871 Second Concert of Europe 1871 Great Eastern Crisis 1875–1878 Campaign in Bosnia 1878 Dual Alliance 1879 Boer Wars 1880–1902 Austro–Serbian Alliance 1881–1903 Triple Alliance 1882 Berlin Conference 1884 Bulgarian Crisis 1885–1888 Reinsurance Treaty 1887–1890 Franco-Russian Alliance 1894 Anglo-German naval arms race 1898–1912 Fashoda incident 1898 Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1902 Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905 Entente Cordiale 1904 First Moroccan Crisis 1905–1906 Pig War 1906–1908 Anglo-Russian Convention 1907 Young Turk Revolution 1908 Bosnian Crisis 1908–1909 Racconigi Bargain 1909 Second Moroccan Crisis 1911 Italo-Turkish War 1911–1912 Balkan Wars 1912–1913 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 1914 July Crisis 1914
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The Russo-Japanese War (Japanese: 日露戦争, romanized: Nichiro sensō, lit. 'Japanese-Russian War'; Russian: русско-японская война, romanized: russko-yaponskaya voyna) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire.^[4] The major theatres of military operations were in the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean both for its navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok remained ice-free and operational only during the summer; Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by the Qing dynasty of China from 1897, was operational year round.

Russia had pursued an expansionist policy east of the Urals, in Siberia and the Far East, since the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.^[5] Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan had feared Russian encroachment would interfere with its plans to establish a sphere of influence in Korea and Manchuria. Seeing Russia as a rival, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of the Korean Empire as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded the establishment of a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan in Korea, north of the 39th parallel. The Imperial Japanese Government perceived this as obstructing their plans for expansion into mainland Asia and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy opened hostilities in a surprise attack on the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China on 9 February [O.S. 27 January] 1904. The Russian Empire responded by declaring war on Japan.

Although Russia suffered a number of defeats, Emperor Nicholas II remained convinced that Russia could still win if it fought on; he chose to remain engaged in the war and await the outcomes of key naval battles. As hope of victory dissipated, he continued the war to preserve the dignity of Russia by averting a "humiliating peace". Russia ignored Japan's willingness early on to agree to an armistice and rejected the idea of bringing the dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. After the decisive naval battle of Tsushima, the war was concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth (5 September [O.S. 23 August] 1905), mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised international observers and transformed the balance of power in both East Asia and Europe, resulting in Japan's emergence as a great power and a decline in the Russian Empire's prestige and influence in Europe. Russia's incurrence of substantial casualties and losses for a cause that resulted in humiliating defeat contributed to a growing domestic unrest which culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution, and severely damaged the prestige of the Russian autocracy.