Transnational Solidarities and Competing Visions of Europe: Vienna's Vote on the Russo‐Japanese War

Abstract

AbstractThe 1904–05 Russo‐Japanese War is commonly described as a clash between a European power (Russia) and an Asian one (Japan). This binary framing is problematic, however, as ideas of Europeanness and Asianness were hotly contested during the war. Both Russia and Japan laid claim to being more European than the other, based on competing notions of racial and ideological kinship. The Russo‐Japanese War instantaneously became a first‐rate media event that galvanised audiences worldwide, prompting them to take sides with one or the other of the belligerents. This article examines reactions to the war in the public sphere of Vienna in neutral Austria‐Hungary. It focusses especially on an opinion survey launched by the popular newspaper Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt in late February 1904, which attracted more than 12,000 responses and resulted in a narrow victory for Japan. The survey provides us with a valuable sample of ordinary people's voices on the war and reveals that Viennese society was deeply split between solidarity with Russia and with Japan, reflecting the contested socio‐political situation in the city and in the Austro‐Hungarian Empire as a whole. While supporters of Russia excluded Japan from a racially, religiously and geographically defined vision of Europe, supporters of Japan often envisioned a community of civilisation, freedom and justice, which excluded Russia and included Japan. Additionally, competing racisms against ‘yellow’ Japan and Slav Russia reveal substantial disagreement about whether Japan or Russia should be regarded as Europe's Other.