On the night of February 8 to 9, 1904, the Japanese fleet attacked, without a declaration of war, the Russian fleet at Port-Arthur, and torpedoed seven enemy ships. Suddenly, Japan acquired mastery of the seas; a war begins, which will end the following year with the victory of Japan.
The conflict takes place in the North Pacific region, specifically in Manchuria and China, two areas where the England, the United States and France are struggling to secure good economic positions, but where, above all, Japan and Russia have been competing since 1891, when the latter country built the Trans-Siberian. It is the aggressive policy of Russia that is the cause of the conflict. In 1893, with the support of France and Germany, Russia humiliated Japan, winner of China in 1895:it forced this country to return the Liaodong peninsula, which it recognized on the occasion of this victory. Shimonoseki's treatise. Japan had also obtained at the same time Formosa, the Pescadores Islands and the recognition by China of the independence of Korea.
In 1896, by a secret agreement with China, the Russians guaranteed Chinese territory against external aggression and, in return, obtained the concession of the railway which would cross Manchuria from Harbin to the sea. confirms the Russian economic penetration and its influence in eastern China. When, in 1897, the assassination of two German missionaries led to the cession of the territory of Kiao-Tcheou to Germany by a 99-year lease, Tsar Nicolas II demanded a 25-year lease for the southern part of Liaodong, including Port Arthur. In 1898, China granted Russia the lease of Port Arthur with the right to establish a naval base there. Finally, in 1900, the Chinese national uprising of the Boxers, in reaction against the foreign countries present, was crushed by a military intervention of eight great powers, in which Russia took part. After that, Russian troops remained on the ground, under the pretext of supporting the construction of the Transmanchuriln. Russian adventurers propose, at the same time, to develop a project of forest concessions on the Yalu in Manchuria, which would allow the subjects of the tsar to penetrate into Korea. Nicolas II is very enthusiastic about this project, because he thinks that Russia has a civilizing mission in Asia and he grossly underestimates Japanese power and ambitions. His finance minister, Witte, who formally opposed it, was forced to resign. Negotiations and the war At first, Japan tried to negotiate. He proposes a partition that would give the Russians the north of Manchuria and Japan the south, as well as Korea. But, very quickly, the Japanese officials realize that the attempts at conciliation are useless:military intervention is decided.
So, on February 8, 1904, Japan attacked the Russian fleet in the harbor of Port Arthur without a declaration of war. It is militarily well prepared and well organized; Allied with Great Britain, it is diplomatically supported and, finally, it fights close to its bases. Opposite, Russia is not ready (its command in the Far East, provided by Admiral Alexeiev and General Kuropatkin, is incompetent and its troops insufficient); the reinforcements are routed by the single-track Trans-Siberian, which is very slow and interrupted at Lake Baikal. Finally, the power is weakened by the waves of internal discontent.
This disproportion explains the success of Japanese operations:Russian defeats at the Battle of Liaoyang (August 24-September 5, 1904), at the Cha-ho River (October 5-18, 1904) and at Mukden (February 21-March 10, 1905), which push back the Russian army in the north of Manchuria. On May 27-29, 1905, Admiral Zinovi Rojdestvenski's fleet, which came from the Baltic with great difficulty to try to save Port Arthur, was destroyed during the battle at the Tsushima Strait. Russia is now obliged to negotiate. Peace:the humiliation of a Western nation An armistice is concluded between the two governments:if the Russians are very weakened by the revolution of 1905, Japanese finances are totally exhausted and the Japanese Empire no longer has the means to destroy the bulk of Russian troops in the Far East. With the mediation of American President Theodore Roosevelt, a Peace Conference was organized in Portsmouth, United States, on September 5, 1905. The clauses of the treaty signed on this occasion contained the following stipulations:Russia must recognize the pre-eminence of the interests of the Japan in Korea; it yields to its winner its lease on the Liaodong peninsula, its base in Port-Arthur, the railway line south of Chandong and the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. The two countries, by mutual agreement, undertake to return Manchuria to China. Despite Japan's insistence, no war indemnity is provided.
This war is a real blow for the Russian government, which absolutely did not expect defeat. The humiliation of the first reverses contributed to precipitate an event which would have taken place in any case:the revolution of January 1905. On the Japanese side, on the other hand, it is a real triumph, because, for the first time in the history of the world, a Western nation is defeated by an Asian nation. The Japanese Empire derives considerable military prestige from it, which will last until 1945; A war and a revolution At the same time that Russia finds itself engaged in a conflict against Japan in East Asia, it is weakened internally by the outbreak of a revolution in January 1905.
This revolution is explained by economic causes, by student discontent and by the appearance of an organized opposition made up of social democrats (S.D.) and social-revolutionaries (S.R.), of Marxist allegiance.
The revolution broke out on January 22 in Saint Petersburg, where the repression killed 130 people. Despite this, the movement spread and reached army circles (mutiny of the battleship Potemkin, in the Black Sea, in the summer). Reaction did not succeed in triumphing until the beginning of the following year. The interwar period:penetration into northern China In 1919, Japan obtained most of the former German islands in the Pacific. But the Washington Conference (1921) forced him to abandon Chandong to China, to evacuate his troops from Siberia and to limit his war fleet. Japanese troops occupied Mukden (September 18, 1931) following border incidents, then all of Manchuria, which in 1932 became Manchukuo, an independent state under Japanese protectorate. In 1933, Japan left the S.D.N. In 1937, he occupied part of China. From the "Pacific War" to the Hiroshima disaster Engaged in the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936, Japan issued an ultimatum to French Indochina in 1940. Then, without first declaring war on the United States, General Tojo had the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor destroyed on December 7, 1941. At this time the Pacific War began, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia were occupied. In 1942, the Battle of Midway halted the Japanese advance. From 1943 to 1945, the United States recovered ground. They launched the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima and on August 9 on Nagasaki. On August 14, Japan capitulates:it is brought back to its 19th century borders.