Russian-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War
Clockwise from top: Russian cruiser Pallada under fire at Port Arthur, Russian cavalry at Mukden, Russian cruiser Varyag and gunboat Korietz at Chemulpo Bay, Japanese dead at Port Arthur, Japanese infantry crossing the Yalu River
Date 8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905 (1 year, 6 months and 4 weeks) Location Manchuria, Yellow Sea, Korean Peninsula Result Japanese victory; Treaty of Portsmouth
Belligerents
Empire of Japan	Russian Empire Principality of Montenegro
Commanders and leaders
Emperor Meiji Ōyama Iwao Kodama Gentarō Nogi Maresuke Kuroki Tamemoto Tōgō Heihachirō	Nicholas II Yevgeni Alekseyev Aleksey Kuropatkin Stepan Makarov † Rozhestvensky
Strength
1,200,000 (total) 650,000 (peak)	1,365,000 (total) 700,000 (peak)
Casualties and losses
47,152–47,400 killed 11,424–11,500 died of wounds 21,802–27,200 died of disease	34,000–52,623 killed or died of wounds 9,300–18,830 died of disease 146,032 wounded 74,369 captured

Russian Empire

1,200,000 (total)

1,365,000 (total)

The Russo-Japanese War (Russian: Русско-японская война, Russko-yaponskaya voina; Japanese: 日露戦争 Nichirosensō; 1904–05) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan and the Yellow Sea.

Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year. Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan feared Russian encroachment on its sphere of influence. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian Far East from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China, in a surprise attack.

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