the Dogger Bank (the Russians mistakenly imagined that they were Japanese warships), its search to find places to refuel and refit ships that had not been designed for such an arduous journey; and its rendezvous with reinforcements at Madagascar. By the time the fleet arrived in Asia, Togo was lying in wait and had little difficulty defeating it in the Battle of the Tsushima Straits on May 27, 1905, which dashed Russia’s last hopes.
The Russo-Japanese War was the first global conflict of the modern era and the first war in which an emerging Asian nation defeated a European great power. The Japanese victory inflamed Asian nationalism and contributed to the struggle against colonialism throughout the region. The military debacle exposed the weakness of the tsarist regime and is usually considered the prime cause of the Revolution of 1905. After the complete defeat of Russia’s land and naval forces, the tsar sued for peace. U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth (August 23, 1905), but the Japanese believed that they had lost the peace and did not trust Western diplomacy again until after World War II. Finally, from the technical standpoint, the Russo-Japanese War was a precursor to World War I. Both sides mobilized mass armies and used trenches, machine guns, and rapid-fire artillery-weapons that help define the early twentieth century battlefield. See also: BALTIC FLEET; JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH; KOREA, RELATIONS WITH; KUROPATKIN, ALEXEI NIKO-LAYEVICH; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; PORT ARTHUR, SEIGE OF; PORTSMOUTH, TREATY OF; REVOLUTION OF 1905; TSUSHIMA, BATTLE OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Committee of Imperial Defence, Historical Section. (1910-1920). Official History, Naval and Military, of the Russo Japanese War. 3 vols. London: Committee of Imperial Defence. Connaughton, Richard M. (1988). The War of the Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05. London: Routledge. Corbett, Julian S. (1994). Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05. 2 vols. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. German General Staff, Historical Section (1909). The Russo-Japanese War, tr. Karl von Donat. 9 vols. London: H. Rees. Kinai, M., ed. (1907). The Russo-Japanese War: Official Reports. 2 vols. Tokyo: Shimashido. United States, War Department, General Staff. (1907). Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War. 5 parts. Washington, DC, Government Printing Office. Walder, David. (1973). The Short Victorious War: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904-1905. New York: Harper amp; Row. Westwood, J. N. (1986). Russia against Japan, 1904-05: A New Look at the Russo-Japanese War. Albany: State University of New York Press.
JOHN W. STEINBERG
Disputes over territories along the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea and in the eastern Tran-scaucasus led to war between Russia and Persia from 1804 to 1813 and again from 1826 to 1828. The military conflict between the two empires was nothing new, but it entered a more decisive stage with the dawning of the nineteenth century. At the root of the first Russo-Persian War was the desire of Shah Fath Ali to secure his northwestern territories in the name of the Qajar dynasty. At the time, Persia’s claims to Karabakh, Shirvan, Talesh, and Shakki seemed precarious in the wake of Russia’s annexation in 1801 of the former kingdom of Georgia, also claimed by Persia. Meanwhile, Russia consolidated this acquisition and resumed its military penetration of border territories constituting parts of modern Azerbaijan and Armenia, with the objective of extending its imperial frontiers to the Aras and Kura rivers.
War broke out when Prince Paul Tsitsianov marched to Echmiadzin at the head of a column of Russian, Georgian, and Armenian troops. The outnumbered Russian army was unable to overcome the town’s stubborn defense and several weeks later also unsuccessfully besieged Yerevan. Throughout the war, the Russians generally had the strategic initiative but lacked the strength to crush the Persian resistance. Able to commit only about ten thousand troops, a fraction of their total force in the Caucasus, the Russian commanders relied on superior tactics and weapons to overcome a numerical disadvantage of as much as five to one. Overlapping wars with Napoleonic France, Turkey (1806-1812), and Sweden (1808-1809), as well as sporadic tribal uprisings in the Caucasus, distracted the tsar’s attention. Yet state-supported, centralized military organization provided Russian
1335
columns with considerable combat power. In contrast, the Persian forces were largely irregular cavalry raised and organized on a tribal basis. Abbas Mirza, heir to the throne, sought French and British instructors to modernize his army, and resorted to a guerrilla strategy that delayed the Persian defeat.
In 1810, the Persians proclaimed a holy war, but this had little effect on the eventual outcome. The Russian victories at Aslandaz in 1812 and Lankarin in 1813 sealed the verdict in Russia’s favor. Under the Treaty of Golestan, Russia obtained most of the disputed territories, including Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan, and reduced the local khans to the status of vassals.
Another war between Russia and Persia broke out in 1826 following the death of Alexander I and the subsequent Decembrist revolt. Sensing opportunity, the Persians invaded in July at the instigation of Abbas Mirza, and even won some early victories against the outnumbered forces of General Alexei Yermolov, whose appeals to St. Petersburg for reinforcements went unfulfilled. With only twelve regular battalions, the Russians effectively delayed the Persian advance. A contingent of about eighteen hundred, for instance, held the strategic fortress at Shusha against a greatly superior force. On September 12, a Persian army under the personal command of Abbas Mirza was defeated at Yelizabetpol. In the spring of 1827, the Russian command passed to General Ivan Paske-vich. He captured Yerevan at the end of September and crossed the Aras River to seize Tabriz. In November, Abbas Mirza reluctantly submitted. Under the Treaty of Torkamanchay (February 1828), Persia ceded Yerevan and all the territory up to the Aras River and paid a twenty million ruble indemnity. See also: CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; IRAN, RELATIONS WITH; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkin, Muriel. (1980). Russia and Iran, 1780-1828. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curtiss, John S. (1965). The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825-1855. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kazemzadeh, Firuz. (1974). “Russian Penetration of the Caucasus.” In Russian Imperialism: From Ivan the Great to the Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Between Peter the Great’s outright accession in 1689 and the end of Romanov dynastic rule in 1917, Russia fought eight wars (1695-1696, 1711, 1735-1739, 1768-1774, 1787-1792, 1806-1812, 1828-1829, and 1877-1878) either singly or with allies against the Ottomans. In addition, Turkey joined anti-Russian coalitions during the Crimean War (1854-1856) and World War I (1914-1918). Although these conflicts often bore religious overtones, the fighting was primarily about power and possessions. Early on, Russian incursions into Poland, the Baltics, the Crimea, and the southern steppe threatened useful Ottoman allies. By the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the issue between St. Petersburg and Constantinople had become one of titanic struggle for hegemony over the northern Black Sea and its northern and northwestern littoral. In the nineteenth century, the issue came to involve Russian aspirations for influence in the Balkans and the Middle East, access to the Mediterranean through the Turkish Straits, and hegemony over the Black Sea’s Caucasian and Transcaucasian littoral. As the rivalry became increasingly one-sided in Russia’s favor, St. Petersburg generally advocated maintenance of an enfeebled Turkey that would resist outside interference and influences while supporting Russia’s interests.
Russia scored its most important successes in the Black Sea basin during Catherine II’s First (1769-1774) and Second (1787-1792) Turkish Wars. In particular, three of her commanders, Peter Alexandrovich Rumyantsev, Alexander Vasile-vich Suvorov, and Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, introduced into the fight a winning combination of resolve, assets, tactical mastery, logistics, colonists, and military-administrative support. Subsequently, with Imperial Russian attention and assets diverted elsewhere, and with the increasing interference of the European powers on Turkey’s behalf, St. Petersburg proved unable to repeat Catherine’s successes. Outside interference was no more evident than in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, when considerable Russian gains in the Balkans were virtually erased in June-July 1878 by the Congress of Berlin. See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
