Cassell's History of the Russo-Japanese War (Special Subscriber's Edition)

A$200 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books · No longer available

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED. Cassell's History of the Russo-Japanese War. London: Cassell and Company, Limited, [1904–5]. 4 vols. 4to. Original publisher's red cloth, gilt titling and decorations to spines. [Pagination to be confirmed per volume.] Illustrated throughout with photographs, maps, plans, portraits, and colour frontispieces to each volume. Special edition, prepared for subscription only and not available through general booksellers. The war that broke out between Japan and Russia in February 1904 announced itself, to those paying attention, as something new in the history of the world. Japan had been a feudal agrarian society within living memory; forty years of extraordinary self-transformation had produced a modern industrial state with a modern army and navy trained and equipped to the highest contemporary standards. Russia was one of the great European powers, vast in territory and manpower, backed by the full weight of imperial tradition. When Japan struck — in a surprise torpedo attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur — most Western observers expected a relatively brief demonstration of Russian strength. What followed shattered that expectation entirely. In the land campaigns at Liaoyang, on the Sha-ho, and in the decisive Battle of Mukden — the largest land battle in history to that point — the Japanese army proved itself the equal of anything in the world. At Tsushima in May 1905, Admiral Tōgō's fleet annihilated the Russian Baltic Squadron after its e

• Binding: Hardcover

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