Examining Russian military intelligence in the war with Japan of 1904-05, this book, based on newly-accessible documents from the tsarist era military, naval and diplomatic archives, gives an overview of the origins, structure and performance of Russian military intelligence in the Far East at the turn of the twentieth century, investigating developments in strategic and tactical military espionage, as well as combat renaissance. It provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the role of military intelligence in the years immediately preceding the First World War, by comparing the Russian military secret services to those of the other great powers, including Britain, Germany, France and Japan.

This second volume in the two-volume series Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5, comprises nineteen chapters and is largely based on the papers presented at a special conference convened at Nichinan, Kyushu, Japan, in 2005. Importantly, it brings together a set of original essays by Japanese, Korean and Chinese scholars, together with analyses by Russian, US and European specialists, thereby reflecting the multinational mix of contemporary influences forming the international vortex of the war. The contributions are thematically structured into six topics: The Force of Personality, Facets of Neutrality, The Power of Intelligence, Interior Lines, Gender and Race, and Global Repercussions. Above all, through the use of primary sources which could not be readily accessed by contemporaries, the contributors have sought to highlight the setting of the conflict in the development of international politics and strategic thinking in the twentieth century, but at the same time eliciting fresh perspectives on the human experiences and dilemmas which impacted on different individuals and groups during the course of the war.

The Russo-Japanese war saw the first defeat of a major European imperialist power by an Asian country. When Japanese and Russian expansionist interests collided over Manchuria and Korea, the Tsar assumed Japan would never dare to fight. However, after years of planning, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Port Arthur, on the Liaoyang Peninsula in 1904 and the war that followed saw Japan win major battles against Russia. This book explains the background and outbreak of the war, then follows the course of the fighting at Yalu River, Sha-ho, and finally Mukden, the largest battle anywhere in the world before the First World War.

Despite the growing number of publications on the Russo-Japanese War, an abundance of questions and issues related to this topic remain unsolved, or call for a reexamination. This 30-chapter volume, the first in the two-volume project Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, provides a comprehensive reexamination of the origins of the conflict, the various dimensions of the nineteen-month conflagration, the legacy of the war, and its place in the history of the twentieth century. Such an enterprise is not only timely but unique. It has benefited from a multinational team of thirty-two scholars from twelve nations representing a broad disciplinary background. The majority of them focus on topics never researched before and without exception provide a novel and critical view of the war. This reexamination is, of course, facilitated by a century-long perspective as well as an impressive assortment of primary and secondary sources, many of them unexplored and, in a number of cases, unavailable earlier.

This two volume series is comprised of essays by leading international scholars in their field during two different conferences which took place in 2004 and 2005. The first volume's essays are from the Centennial Conference held in Jerusalem and Haifa, discussing topics such as: the military, international and economic aspects of the war, the media and mutual images during the Russo-Japanese War, the cultural and artistic expressions of the war, the repercussions of the war in Japan and Russia, and the war in the West and Asia. The second volume's essays are from a special conference at Nichinan, Kyushu, Japan, discussing topics such as: the force of personality, facets of neutrality, the power of intelligence, interior lines, gender and race and global repercussions.

Like Volume one, Volume two of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective examines the Russo-Japanese War in its military, diplomatic, social, political, and cultural context. In this volume East Asian contributors focus on the Asian side of the war to flesh out the assertion that the Russo-Japanese War was, in fact, World War Zero, the first global confl ict of the 20th century. The contributors demonstrate that the Russo-Japanese War, largely forgotten in the aftermath of World War I, actually was a precursor to the catastrophe that engulfed the world less than a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This study also helps us better understand Japan as it emerged at the beginning of its fateful 20th century.

Examining Russian military intelligence in the war with Japan of 1904-05, this book gives an overview of the origins, structure and performance of Russian military intelligence in the Far East at the turn of the twentieth century.