Korea
On the coast of China, just opposite Japan, lay the independent State of Korea. Its people were of the yellow race—not great fighters, but they had successfully resisted some rather half-hearted efforts of the Chinese to subdue them. Against the Chinese they invoked Japanese help—and not in vain. Japan had an interest in this country which lay just opposite her own islands, across a narrow sea, and which gave an outlet for her own surplus population. Over the Korean question, then, Japan and China came to war in 1894. The Japanese armies met and repeatedly defeated the Chinese, in the north of Korea and in the Chinese province of Manchuria just northward again. At sea, it was evident that Japan still had much to learn, for the Chinese for a while had rather the better of the naval engagements. Finally the Japanese prevailed there also.
One result of that war was that Korea was formally declared independent, but the Government was so feeble that the Japanese, in the years that followed, gained more and more power over it. By the terms of peace, the large island of Formosa was ceded to Japan. But the war's most important result was to reveal to the Western powers the weakness of China. Russia, thwarted in her advances towards India, was pushing but eastward into Manchuria, and now encouraged China to resist some of the demands of the victorious Japanese. In compensation, she obtained for herself certain advantages, as the friend of China. China handed to her Manchuria, partly as the result of pressure, partly of friendly persuasion. What was of still more importance for her was that she acquired the ice-free harbour of Port Arthur; for hitherto her only Pacific port had been Vladivostock, farther north and often ice-bound.
It mattered comparatively little to Japan that Great Britain and Germany, to balance these gains of Russia, demanded and took for themselves, from the enfeebled hands of the Chinese, ports in the same neighbourhood. What did matter was that the menace of Russian power, and Russia's insatiable desire to expand, became more and more formidable to her. But among the peace terms which she had not failed to extort from China was a large money indemnity, and that money she spent in buying ships of war.
So then, in 1904, as Russia grew more and more aggressive in her eastward push, Japan, confident in her German-instructed army and her British-instructed and greatly enlarged fleet, ventured on a kind of David and Goliath contest. She declared war on the vast power.
The Russo-Japanese War
And, just as, through the test applied by this surprising little island power in the Pacific, had been revealed the essential weakness of great China, so now, to the astonishment of the world, was revealed by the very same test the weakness of great Russia. The Russian fleet, sailing from the Gulf of Finland, circumnavigated the world to come into touch with the Japanese fleet awaiting it in Japan's home waters; and at the very first touch that sea-worn fleet of Russia was sent to the bottom, save for such inconsiderable remnants as the Japanese allowed to remain afloat or to run ashore.
On land the fighting was hard. Port Arthur, strongly fortified, held out bravely, but was invested and forced to yield. The Japanese armies were victorious, driving the Russians back, but at price of a continually lengthening line of communications as the battle rolled north. The victories had cost Japan the very utmost that she could afford. She consented to terms of peace which surprised Europe by their moderation. But the details were of little importance compared with the astonishing achievement. This little island State, scarcely emerged out of its feudal era, had become, at a stroke, a great modern power, the naval ruler of the Pacific, Great Britain's counterpart in the East, and her ally on equal terms.
She might now gratify her wish about Korea, and formally declared it a Japanese protectorate in 1910. The Russian menace was rolled back, by the restoration of Manchuria in the same year.