Was the Russo‐Japanese War World War Zero?

Abstract

As with any war in history, the Russo-Japanese enjoys its share of myths and legends that range from Admiral Alekseev's barber being a Japanese spy to the saga of the Baltic Fleet becoming the fleet that had to die. Perhaps because of such legends, or perhaps because World I broke out less than a decade after the Russo-Japanese formally ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, the centennial anniversary of Japan's stunning victory witnessed a resurgence in Russo-Japanese studies. Scholars from around the world responded to this date by convening various seminars, workshops, and conferences to reopen the study of a conflict that, while never completely forgotten, was largely overlooked after World I. Always considered a bilateral engagement between two military powers, which it was in its most basic sense, the aim of all of these scholarly endeavors was to broaden our understanding of not only the war but also its global impact. The three following articles represent the work of one of the first such intellectual endeavors, a conference on Re-imagining Culture in the Russo-Japanese War that was held at Birkbeck College in London in March 2004.1 By addressing the impact of the conflict on society from its art and literature to the public reaction to the war as it progressed, Naoko Shimazu, Rosamund Bartlett, and David Crowley exhibit the depth of engagement that existed at every level of the civil-military nexus. Cultural history, therefore, provides a deeper understanding of the impact of conflict on the societies that military establishments absolutely depended on especially at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. The beginning of the twentieth century became synonymous with the dawn of a new age based on a belief in hope and human progress because of the accomplishments of industrialization and the accompanying maturing of some form of participatory government that could be held responsible to the body politic. Citizens/subjects of nations/empires