Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
There are many battles in history which say, change the course of a war, but there are some
whose impact is actually much larger than that. There are battles so significant that they changed
the course of Empires, for generations. Some so important that they impact events half a world
away. Some that so transform our understanding of the nature of warfare, that they turn all planning
and prediction for the future on its head. But battles like that are usually pretty well
remembered, even amongst the population generally ignorant of history. Battles that important are
heavily studied and well known, but some are surprisingly forgotten, or at least forgotten
outside the area in which the battle was fought. And one such battle was fought May 27th and 28th
of 1905. The Battle of Tsushima is a largely obscure battle in an almost forgotten war that was
overshadowed by the much larger world wars of the 20th century. And yet the Battle of Tsushima is
perhaps one of the most influential naval battles in history. And it deserves to be remembered.
By the start of the 20th century, conflict between Japan and Russia in the Far East was virtually
unavoidable. Both were expanding empires with competing aims. Both more and more aggressively
considered Manchuria and Korea to be within their spheres of influence,
and both mistrusted the other based on race. Under Tsar Nicholas the Second, the Far East
was the focus of Russian territorial desires. Russia sent over 170,000 troops to Manchuria,
as part of the international intervention, during the nineteen hundred Boxer Rebellion.
And after the rebellion, most of those troops remained. Russia, considered one of the world's
great powers, was considerably improving its ability to move troops to the Far East,
with the construction of the still incomplete, trans-siberian railway. The Russians had leased
the warm water port of Port Arthur from the Chinese, and stationed a powerful naval squadron
there. Although the base was largely to counter British influence in the Far East, it was seen
by the Japanese as a direct threat. And Russia was negotiating timber and mineral leases on the
Korean Peninsula, which they increasingly saw as being their sphere of influence.
At the beginning of the 19th century Japan was still a feudal state, but the Tokugawa Shogunate
collapsed in 1867, and Japan embarked upon a new era that, rather than rejecting foreign influence,
embraced modernization and reform. This became known as the Meiji Revolution. The
word Meiji means Enlightened Rule, and the goal was to combine modern advances with traditional
Eastern values. The Meiji period resulted in many political and economic reforms,
and transformed the Japanese economy and industry. But it also reformed the military,
introducing not just Western weapons and tactics, but Universal Conscription. When combined with the
cultural spirit of the samurai, Japan created a powerful modern imperial army and navy,
and a very militaristic society. As the nation grew, the leadership was keen to
cultivate a sphere of influence that matched other great powers and they, like Russia,
saw as their destiny to dominate Korea and Manchuria. Between August of 1894 and April
of 1895, Japan had easily defeated China in the conflict over influence in Korea. The victory
in the first Sino-Japanese War, established Japan as the preeminent power in the Pacific.
The conflicting interest in Manchuria and Korea made armed conflict virtually unavoidable,
and while US President Theodore Roosevelt tried to negotiate a peaceful solution,
the Japanese eventually grew tired with the slow pace of the negotiations,
and in February of 1904, declared war on Russia. The Japanese launched a surprise
attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, before the Russians had even gotten word of
the declaration of war. To the surprise of the West, who thought Russia the superior power,
most of the actual fighting in the Russo-Japanese War favored the Japanese.
The Japanese were able to first bottle up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur,
and eventually capture the fortress. For its part, Russia fought mostly for delay, needing
time to move reinforcements across the vast Russian expanse on the trans-siberian railroad,
which was not yet fully complete. With its pacific fleet neutralized, Russia decided to send the bulk
of its large baltic fleet to the theater, but that was no mean feat. Britain would not allow
the use of the Suez Canal, and even most Russian allies, like France, were technically neutral in
the conflict, and there were strict limits on what aid they could provide to a belligerent. The fleet
left in August of 1904, and after an 18,000 mile journey, all around the tip of Africa,
was approaching Japan in May the next year. The fleet was exhausted, and morale was low after the
long and difficult voyage. The plan was to make for the Port of Vladivostok to join the remains
of the Russian Pacific squadron, but that required that they pass through the Sea of Japan. On May
27th 1905, the exhausted Russian ships ran into the Japanese Navy as they tried to enter the Sea
of Japan through the Tsushima Strait, located midway between the Japanese island of Kyushu,
and the Korean Peninsula. It was in an uneven battle. The Russian ships were in disrepair,
the crews exhausted, the decks were covered with coal for the voyage. The Japanese not
only had more ships, but theirs were more modern, had larger caliber guns, used newer
explosive rounds and had fresh crews. The first to go down was the Russian battleship, Oslyabya,
she was the first modern armored battleship to be sunk by gunfire alone. The Russian battleship,
Borodino, exploded when it took a direct hit to its magazine. In the initial fight,
the Russians lost a total of four battleships. The Japanese pressed a night attack,
using destroyers and torpedo boats. The Russian fleet became fragmented, and several more ships
were disabled. When the Japanese fleet caught up with what remained of the squadron in the morning,
the Russians, realizing they were outgunned, surrendered. Only three Russian vessels managed to
escape to Vladivostok, in the action, the Russians lost seven battleships and fourteen other ships
sunk, with another seven ships captured. While the Japanese fleet had sustained some damage,
they had only lost three torpedo boats sunk. The lopsided victory effectively ended the war.
The significant losses and increasing opposition at home forced Russia to sue for peace. Theodore
Roosevelt offered to mediate, and the war officially ended with a treaty signed in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, September 5th of 1905. Russia agreed to vacate Manchuria,
and to officially recognize Korea as within the Japanese sphere of influence. Japan officially
annexed Korea in 1910. For his efforts, Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The
Battle of Tsushima was the only decisive naval battle in history fought primarily between modern
steel battleship fleets. It was the first naval battle in naval history in which radio played a
critical role, and it was the last time in naval history that ships of the line of a defeated fleet
surrendered on the high seas. The lopsided loss so significantly impacted Russian prestige in Europe,
that had impacted war planning for places like Prussia, and Austria Hungary. And while it would
be an overstatement to say that the Battle of Tsushima caused the first World War, it so shifted
the balance of power in Europe, that had made that war much more likely. The success of the larger
caliber guns of the Japanese fleet convinced the British that battleships with bigger guns were
more valuable than the mixed caliber batteries that had dominated naval thinking to that point.
And that would give rise to a revolution in battleship building that started with the
launch of HMS Dreadnought, in 1906. And then that would lead to a naval arms race that increased
military spending in Europe by nearly 50%, and greatly contributed to the militarism that
would eventually lead to the First World War. The significant losses of the Russo-Japanese War were
a large driver of the dissatisfaction that drove the Russian Revolution of 1905, which forced Tsar
Nicholas the Second to make political concessions, and promulgate a new constitution in 1906.
And that unrest, and the resulting government oppression, would then drive the forces that,
in the Russian Revolution of 1917, would dismantle the monarchy, and give rise to the Soviet Union.
The lopsided Japanese victory established Japan as a World Power, but also strengthened the hand
of the militarists in Japan, and sent Japan on the path of trying to dominate all of Asia. And
that would eventually set them at odds with the United States, and European powers that
had an interest in the Far East, like Great Britain, and the Netherlands. What's more,
the Japanese were dissatisfied with the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, and they largely
blamed the United States, increasing tension between the two. Russian participation in the
Far East in the Second World War was largely designed around regaining the territory and
influence that was lost in the Battle of Portsmouth. And thus the Battle of Tsushima,
set the stage for the Pacific conflict, in the Second World War. The Battle of Tsushima not only
decisively ended a conflict between great powers of the world, greatly enhancing the reputation of
one and diminishing another. It changed the balance of power in Europe, and it changed
understanding of military technology that had led to a worldwide naval arms race, and it set the
stage for the events that would eventually bring the great powers into conflict yet again. The
largely forgotten Battle of Tsushima, more than any other single event, pre-staged the World Wars.
I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5-10 minutes long. And if you did enjoy it, please go ahead and
hit that thumbs up button which is there on your left. If you have any questions,
or comments, or suggestions for other topics for the History Guy,
feel free to write those in the comment section, and I will be happy to respond.
And if you’d like five minutes more forgotten history, all you need to do is subscribe.