People study wars for all sorts of reasons. And some people intentionally avoid the topic, as articulated musically in the gospel song “Down by the Riverside,” with its famous verse, “Ain’t gonna study war no more.” I find the idea of not studying war terrifying; it would be like deciding to stop studying famine, pestilence and death. Thought and study are our only protection from the famous Four Horsemen. Of course study can only do so much, a point made eloquent by a friend of one of my sons, who bought four pet hamsters and named them War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. To be the owner of the Four Hamsters of the Apocalypse is no ordinary ambition, but surely it confers a certain solemnity or gravitas obtainable no other way.
This year is the centennial of the Great War, which in later years was demoted to World War One. The Great War did not occur in a vacuum. Scholars today suggest the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 was a sort of World War Zero setting in motion the currents that led to World War One. One wonders if historians centuries from now will see all the wars of the 20th century as a single Great War, the way we now understand the Hundred Years War or the Eighty Years War.
This year is the centennial of the Great War, which in later years was demoted to World War One. The Great War did not occur in a vacuum. Scholars today suggest the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 was a sort of World War Zero setting in motion the currents that led to World War One. One wonders if historians centuries from now will see all the wars of the 20th century as a single Great War, the way we now understand the Hundred Years War or the Eighty Years War.
This week is the 110th anniversary of the beginning of World War Zero, the first industrialized war, a war of mass conscripts, the first steam-powered armor-plated war. It’s little studied in the West. This probably won’t look familiar:
February 6, 1904: Russian forces cross the Yalu River into Korea.
February 7: Japanese cavalry cuts telegraph lines to the Russian naval base at Port Arthur (Lushun) on the Liaodong Peninsula.
February 8: A Japanese naval task force enters the harbor at Chemulpo (Inchon), Korea, disembarking infantry to seize Seoul.
February 9: In a surprise night attack, Japanese torpedo boats attack Russian battleships. at anchor in the Port Arthur naval base. Japanese cruisers at Chemulpo sink two Russian warships there.
February 6, 1904: Russian forces cross the Yalu River into Korea.
February 7: Japanese cavalry cuts telegraph lines to the Russian naval base at Port Arthur (Lushun) on the Liaodong Peninsula.
February 8: A Japanese naval task force enters the harbor at Chemulpo (Inchon), Korea, disembarking infantry to seize Seoul.
February 9: In a surprise night attack, Japanese torpedo boats attack Russian battleships. at anchor in the Port Arthur naval base. Japanese cruisers at Chemulpo sink two Russian warships there.
The disasters of the Russian army and navy left Imperial Germany in control of the Baltic Sea and unafraid of war with Russia. The Russian Empire’s economic, political and military failure in the east led to bread riots, naval mutinies and worker rebellions while Japanese agents funded revolutionary movements in Russia and spread rumors of secret Japanese naval bases in Sweden and Denmark. After a Russian fleet sank English fishing boats in the English Channel in the belief that they were Japanese, Britain briefly considered joining the war.
Ships were seized in the Mediterranean. Madagascar drew the gaze of the world as a naval point d’appui, and a fleet of yachts and other pleasure craft set out from Singapore with picnic baskets to watch the doomed Russian Baltic Fleet steam by in a column miles long en route to the largest naval battle in history to date—even though the decisive battle of Mukden, one of the largest land battles in history with well over half a million troops engaged, had already been lost by Russia, and the dream of a huge Russian colony in China with it. Popular disappointment and ferment over the war lent momentum to what would become the Russian Revolution.
President Teddy Roosevelt brokered the peace in New Hampshire, at the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 1905). The peace inspired disappointment and social ferment in Japan and even set off riots. After two wars (the first being the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895), the United States, Russia and Great Britain ceded control of Korea to Japan in exchange for Japanese recognition of US and British interests in the Pacific. But Manchuria, conquered for the second time by Japan, was taken away again and returned to China. To many Japanese this felt like the tragic betrayal of a costly national sacrifice. The sense of tragic betrayal felt by the Korean and Chinese people can only be imagined or estimated.
In 1904-05, Japanese troops in Korea, China and Manchuria revisited the graves of Japanese soldiers killed in the First Sino-Japanese War ten years before. In 1918, 70,000 Japanese troops invaded Siberia by way of Vladivostok and Manchuria. A generation later, Japanese soldiers would invade Manchuria again, and find the graves of three previous wars.
Finally Manchukuo, a Japanese colony a half million square miles in size, came into existence in 1931. Few in the west seem to remember this entity ever existed. Manchukuo’s final collapse in 1945 added additional hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Japanese and Russian casualties to the end of World War Two.
The past demands attention. It’s famously said that the past is a foreign country. That is true, but it’s the unknown country we live in. Somehow the immediate issues of 1914 seem largely closed. No one anticipates another invasion of Belgium. On the other hand, the issues of 1904 seem alive still -- Not just two Koreas, but multiple theories of Korea; disputes over rocky islets and natural resources; borders in dispute, identities in dispute. History’s ghosts sleep very lightly. See for instance this article in The Japan Times:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/03/reference/yasukuni-its-open-to-interpretation/#.UvJ67_u4TAo
The past demands attention. It’s famously said that the past is a foreign country. That is true, but it’s the unknown country we live in. Somehow the immediate issues of 1914 seem largely closed. No one anticipates another invasion of Belgium. On the other hand, the issues of 1904 seem alive still -- Not just two Koreas, but multiple theories of Korea; disputes over rocky islets and natural resources; borders in dispute, identities in dispute. History’s ghosts sleep very lightly. See for instance this article in The Japan Times:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/03/reference/yasukuni-its-open-to-interpretation/#.UvJ67_u4TAo
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