Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War (review)

Rotem Kowner, chair of the Department of East Asian Studies and professor of modern Japanese history and culture at the University of Haifa, Israel, has provided specialists and generalists with a highly readable and well balanced reference book. Volume 29 of Scarecrow Press's Series of Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest, this book features over 400 pages of entries, a set of photographs, five appendixes of documents, a lengthy bibliography, and a useful index.

True to the organization of any dictionary, the entries in this book are placed alphabetically, are brief, and cover a broad range of topics. As might be expected, Kowner provides entries for Tsars, Emperors, and major politicians, but also for minor diplomats; he follows the same pattern for military leaders, providing short biographies of commanders as well junior officers. He also provides short notes on every major and many minor treaties, and on alliances, agreements, and relationships between nations; he supports these notes on diplomatic history with brief policy studies of all the major powers as well as all other countries affected by the events surrounding and the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War. Recognizing the significance of diplomacy at the beginning of the twentieth century, Kowner also provides a document set in his first appendix that includes: The Japanese and Russian declarations of war; the Treaty of Portsmouth; and the text of the Russo-Japanese Treaties of 1907, 1910, 1912, and 1916.

As it should be, however, the true strength of this book is in its coverage of the war and of the respective military establishments of Russia and Japan. Kowner provides readers with a source that includes every battle (major and minor) as well as short entries on who commanded every Russian Army Corps and Japanese Division and where they fought after arriving in Korea and Manchuria. More in-depth studies on service branches, including each nation's intelligence network, support the entries on military units. In addition, the book offers numerous entries on weapons ranging from rifles, swords, and bayonets, to howitzers and field guns, to new innovative weapon systems such as mines, torpedoes, and submarines. Kowner should be commended for his entries on the naval side of the war. Besides offering short entries on every ship engaged that include technical data, the book provides readers with articles on each navy and its various units. Through these assorted "definitions" the author provides revealing insights into the military balance between the two belligerents before, during, and after the war.

The dictionary is rounded out with numerous geographic entries that focus primarily on cities, provinces, ports, and rivers. As well, Kowner supplies his readers with numerous entries that range from related political events such as Bloody Sunday and the Hbiya Riots to topics directly related to the war such as the status of military observers and POWs.

The entries in this book are informative but not analytical. Kowner does provide a short (24 pp.) introduction entitled: "The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War," that actually covers the entire war. Here he could have provided a more in-depth analysis of the war and its consequences. Because the bibliography is organized topically, many citations are repeated while many other important sources are not included, which is disappointing since there is no one comprehensive bibliography of the war. But as a standard reference, Kowner's dictionary does an admirable job of providing readers with a balanced readable reference work on the Russo-Japanese War.