Includes bibliographical references (pages 310-314).

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was a European conflict fought by proxy in Korea, Manchuria, and the South China Sea. Its origins lay in a Europe stalemated by military alliances. The Trans-Siberian Railway gave the traditional rivalry between Russia and Briain yet another dimension. Russia now had access to the Pacific; her imperial presence in Asia threatened established British interests in the Far East. When China leased the ice-free Port Arthur to Russian warships, the two empires seemed set on a collision course. Reluctant to commit herself to so distant a theater of war, Britain took the unprecedented step of allying herself with the growing industrial and military power of Japan. In so doing, she found her "soldier in the East". David Walder recreates a conflict too long neglected. He discovers some striking pointers to the future: the effectiveness of Japan's imitation of Western militarism; Russian military incompetence which provoked Bloody Sunday and the first Russian Revolution; but above all he reveals how the performance of new weapons and the clash of vast armies and powerful battle fleets were monitored by observers from all the major European powers. A decade later, Europe was to suffer from the lessons learned and unlearned.

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