The Russo-Japanese War was a war between the imperialist powers fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire over control of China's Liaodong Peninsula and the Korean Peninsula between 1904 and 1905. It ended with the defeat of the Russian Empire.
The contradiction between Japan and Russia can be said to have a long history. After the Meiji Restoration in the 1890s, Japan overthrew the feudal rule of the Tokugawa shogunate internally, and externally escaped the national crisis of becoming a semi-colony and embarked on capitalism, becoming the only independent bourgeois state in Asia at that time. However, because the reform was not thorough, Japan retained a large number of feudal remnants and gradually embarked on the road of militarism, so the militarist ideology of foreign expansion and aggression pervaded Japan. In this way, the Russian Empire, which was also a feudal militarist empire at that time, became an obstacle to Japan's foreign expansion.
In 1894, Japan won the Sino-Japanese War with the Qing Dynasty, and the following year Japan forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Maguan with it, which humiliated the country. Since the content of the agreement to cede the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan was considered by Russia to be detrimental to its interests, the Russian Empire, together with the German Empire and the French Third Republic, intervened under the banner of "friendly advice" to force Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to the Qing government. Although Japan later received "compensation" of 30 million taels of silver from the Qing government, the Russian Empire's move was undoubtedly a direct enemy of Japan.
In 1896, the Russian Empire began to build the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to extract more benefits from northeast China, which greatly stimulated Japan, which also wanted to take benefits from northeast China and Korea. As a result, Japan invested a large amount of the reparations obtained in the Treaty of Maguan into military construction, and its active armament intention was obviously to prepare for the "ownership" of northeast China with the Russian Empire.
In 1897, the Russian Empire seized the entire Liaodong Peninsula through a series of ingenious conquests and obtained its coveted "ice-free port" - Lushun.
In 1900, the Eight-Power Coalition Army, including Japan and Russia, invaded Beijing, the capital of the Qing Dynasty, in the name of suppressing the Boxers, and the Russian Empire took advantage of this opportunity to send heavy troops to invade northeast China, the purpose of which was to occupy the entire three eastern provinces, and such conspiracies must have aroused strong resistance from all Chinese people. Although the Russian Empire and the Qing government finally signed a withdrawal agreement under pressure from many sides, they have been trying their best to delay.
In 1902, Japan saw the opportunity of the Russian Empire's attempt to monopolize the entire northeast of China and cause dissatisfaction among many parties, and formed an alliance with Britain through the exchange of interests, while at the same time co-opting the United States, which had always wanted to intervene in northeast China, and jointly targeted the Russian Empire.
In 1904, japan, on the one hand, saw that the Russian Empire was ill-prepared for war, and combined with the favorable international situation at that time, on the night of February 8, it launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet docked in the port of Lushun without declaring war.
However, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, almost no forces were optimistic about Japan, and there was a big gap between Japan and the Russian Empire in terms of its strength at that time.
From the perspective of resources, the vast land area of the Russian Empire is proud of the world's abundant resource reserves, while Japan's lack of resources as a narrow island country is simply difficult to compare. In the case of steel, which consumed so much during the war, the Russian Empire produced 2.72 million tons a year in 1904, while Japan had only 60,000 tons. Nearly 50 times the gap. In terms of the number of troops, the population of the Russian Empire is almost 100 million more than that of Japan (141 million in the Russian Empire, 44 million in Japan). Russia undoubtedly has the upper hand in terms of both the number of standing armies and the source of reserve troops. From the perspective of various equipment, the strength of the Russian Imperial Army was second only to Germany and France at that time, and the tonnage of warships in the Navy was also appropriately higher than that of Japan. In terms of comprehensive combat strength, Japan is clearly at a disadvantage in the competition with Russia.
Why, then, was the direction and eventual outcome of the Russo-Japanese War so unexpected?
First of all, although the number of the Russian Empire's army as a whole was much higher than that of Japan, in terms of deployment, most of the Russian Empire's army was deployed in the western region near Europe, and the number of troops in northeast China at that time was not superior to that of Japan. Secondly, the military equipment of the Russian Empire was not suitable for use in northeast China, while the Japanese side equipped the army with a large number of mountain cannons suitable for combat in view of the characteristics of the mountainous forests in northeast China. Moreover, most of japan's naval ships are new ships made by the British, which not only have superior performance but also have uniform specifications to avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble. Third, Japan has been preparing for this war for many years, is very familiar with the situation in northeast China, and has obvious advantages in the proper use of tactics in the course of the engagement. Finally, there was the important dereliction of duty of the Russian commander, who at that time was not only heavily bureaucratic, but also indecisive in giving orders and often missed the fighter. What is even more serious is that its emphasis on the overall operational ideology seriously lags behind the war at that time. On the other hand, in the Japanese army, not only did many grass-roots commanders have the background of studying in Western military schools, but also the Japanese commander-in-chief, Oyama Yan, not only paid attention to absorbing the advanced military ideas of the West, but also used his own military deceit, and his command and combat ability was much higher than that of the Russian commander-in-chief.
In summary, the war between the two great imperial powers ended in the victory of the Japanese. But what we must not forget is that this unjust war of plunder between imperialism has caused immeasurable harm to China and the Korean people.