The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, Vol. 1 by John W. Steinberg, et al; and The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero. Vol. 2 by David Wolff, et al (review)

Abstract

reviews 559 variance with most of the rest of his evidence but decidedly strange, in the light of the Endek-led anti-Jewish boycott from 1912, supposedly for the sins ofWarsaw Jewish voters in not supporting the Endek candidate in theDuma elections of that year. These quibbles aside, Weeks's book is excellent in charting the growing gap between the comfortable rhetoricwhich imagined theJews 'on the inside' and a reality inwhich Jewish difference became intolerable not only to the 'national egoists' of the endecja but almost the entire patriotic camp. Porter's study showed how the political urge to engage with the reality of the here and now undermined a vision of progress, one of whose firstand abiding casualties was the notion of mutual co-existence. Weeks demonstrates that a bedrock of actually liberal cultural assumptions helped close off thatpossibility even earlier.While elite Poles, frustrated in theirnationalism without a state, were latecomers to the modern antisemitic camp, their own emerging brand of anti-Jewish animus had fully fledged roots in an Enlightenment tradition. It makes those Poles like Kazimierz Kelles-Kraus and Jan Baudouin de Courtenay who '"imagined" a Polish-Jewish condominium thatwould have respected the cultural and national differences of both sides' (p. 178) all the more visionary and extraordinary. Parkes Centre forJewish: non-Jewish Relations MarkLevene UniversityofSouthampton Steinberg, John W.; Menning, Bruce W.; Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David; Wolff, David; Yokote, Shinji (eds). The Russo-JapaneseWar in Global Perspective: World War %ero.History of Warfare, 29. Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2005. xxiii 4671 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Index. 158.00: $213.00. Wolff, David; Marks, Steven G.; Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David; Steinberg, John W.; Shinji, Yokote (eds). The Russo-JapaneseWar inGlobal Perspective: World War %ero. Vol. 2. History ofWarfare, 40. Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2007. xv + 583. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. 165.00: $223.00. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 was a regional conflict with global ramifications. Most scholars of the long nineteenth century have come to accept this argument, firstadvanced by Ian Nish over two decades ago in his study of the origins of thiswar. Even so,many readers will balk at the assertion made in the subtitle of these two otherwise very valuable volumes; this reviewer certainly does. It is true, as one of the editors, John W. Stein berg, argues in his succinct operational overview, the military contest between these two aspiring Asian hegemonial powers involved a whole range of large scale military, political and economic factors that anticipated aspects of the twentieth-centuryworld wars. But itdid not make thewar in the Far East 'World War Zero'. To redesignate it as such is to purchase an attention grabbing subtitle at the price of substantive inexactitude. The essays brought together here do not make the case for some form of prospective redesignation 560 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 of the Russo-Japanese War. To appreciate the full global impact of this conflict, itneeds to be seen in a global context; and the two volumes under review here are too narrowly Russo-Japanese in focus and orientation. This reservation aside, the two volumes make an important contribution to the study of theRusso-Japanese conflict in itsmilitary, diplomatic, politi cal, social, economic and cultural settings. The studies on the war efforts of theRussian Empire more especially benefit from extensive research in new ly available Russian archival materials. Limited space does not allow equal attention to all fifty-five chapters. Readers of this journal, however, will be particularly interested in some of the following. The essays by David Schim melpenninck van der Oye and Ian Nish on themore immediate origins of the clash between the two Asian rivals offer penetrating analyses of Japa nese attempts to preempt war by arriving at a viable regional modus vivendi with Russia and the latter's unresponsive attitude. David Goldfrank's fine comparative essay on Russian diplomacy before the Crimean and the Russo Japanese wars suggests that, unlike the eighteenth-century Bourbons, Romanov diplomacy had forgottenmuch but, like them, had learnt nothing frompast mistakes. IgorV. Lukoianov's fineessay on 'theBezobrazovtsf throws some revealing light on the somewhat shadowy, informal circles ofWitte's opponents. Not only does Lukoianov offer...