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.
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 book contains some 600 entries on a range of topics from ancient Chinese warfare to late 20th-century intervention operations. Designed for a wide variety of users, it encompasses general reviews of aspects of military organization and science, as well as specific wars and conflicts. The book examines naval and air warfare, as well as significant individuals, including commanders, theorists, and war leaders. Each entry includes a listing of additional publications on the topic, accompanied by an article discussing these publications with reference to their particular emphases, strengths, and limitations.
Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces. This first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese army traces its origins, evolution, and impact as an engine of the country's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of the Japanese homeland from mid-nineteenth-century incursions through the end of World War II. Demonstrating his mastery of Japanese-language sources, Drea explains how the Japanese style of warfare, burnished by samurai legends, shaped the army, narrowed its options, influenced its decisions, and made it the institution that conquered most of Asia. He also tells how the army's intellectual foundations shifted as it reinvented itself to fulfill the changing imperatives of Japanese society-and how the army in turn decisively shaped the nation's political, social, cultural, and strategic course. Drea recounts how Japan devoted an inordinate amount of its treasury toward modernizing, professionalizing, and training its army-which grew larger, more powerful, and politically more influential with each passing decade. Along the way, it produced an efficient military schooling system, a well-organized active duty and reserve force, a professional officer corps that thought in terms of regional threat, and well-trained soldiers armed with appropriate weapons. Encompassing doctrine, strategy, weaponry, and civil-military relations, Drea's expert study also captures the dominant personalities who shaped the imperial army, from Yamagata Aritomo, an incisive geopolitical strategist, to Anami Korechika, who exhorted the troops to fight to the death during the final days of World War II. Summing up, Drea also suggests that an army that places itself above its nation's interests is doomed to failure.
With particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region, this book examines the rise and fall of sea powers. In the Asia-Pacific region there has been significant expansion of sea-based economies together with burgeoning naval power. Many claim that these processes will transform the world’s future economic and security relationships. The book addresses the question of to what extent the notion of ‘Asia rising’ is reflected by and dependent on its developing sea power. A central theme is the Chinese challenge to long-term Western maritime ascendency and what might be the consequences of this. In order to situate current and future developments this book includes chapters which analyse what sea power means and has meant, as well as its role, both historic and contemporary, in the rise and fall of great powers. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian politics, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, IR and security studies.
