Customer Reviews

The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905,

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Denis and Peggy Warner's The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5 is an excellent history of this pivotal event in Asian, and world, affairs. Drawing on the histories of two distinct antagonists, Russia and Japan, as well as military, political, and diplomatic events, it is vividly descriptive, balanced, and prophetic. The Warners start with the assumption, that readers wrongfully would dismiss the brief war as insignificant, and convincingly prove, how this little war changed the world. From the evocation of Pearl Harbor in the first chapter, the book still resonates today, post 9/11.

The Russo-Japanese War, along with the American Civil War and World War One, showed how much technology had changed military science. Additions, such as machine guns and naval plating, made traditional tactics obsolete and deadly. Japanese officers also outperformed their Russian opponents, and fortune persistently favored the Japanese, in the form of freak weather patterns and unforeseen logistical planning. The book provides a useful introduction to the unfortunate journey of the Russian Baltic Fleet defeated at Tsushima. Appalling descriptions of the interactions of bodies and modern weapons, as well as the effects of the Manchurian winter, add color to dry tactics. The narrative structure of the writing, alternating from the Japanese to the Russian side, highlights the flow of events and the errors in judgment in a war before modern communication and satellites, but with torpedoes and siege guns.

There is also the discussion of the Japanese use of irregular forces. From the intelligence activities of Colonel Akashi in St. Petersburg, which facilitated revolution, to the indigenous, Manchurian Chunchus cavalry and secret society agents acting as agents provocateurs, the Japanese excelled at efficiently marshalling their limited resources. On the other hand, the Russian armies never realized the true loyalties of their Chinese laborers. The crass anti-Semitism of many Russian leaders also rebounds to the Japanese advantage, when Jewish financiers loan money for a cash-strapped Japan.

On the diplomatic front, the book delineates the consequences of the war for the rest of the century. The Japanese, who considered the peace brokered at Portsmouth humiliating, resented the United States. Not appeased by gaining territorial control of Korea, Japan continued to dream of a Manchurian empire and control of China. The United States lost influence in the entire region, not just diplomatically, but economically as well. And, Korea ceased to exist. A new generation of Asian leaders raised Japan as a beacon for their own anti-colonial dreams.

Although the first introductory section is excellent, the epilogue chapter is dated. However, the book is well annotated, with a good index, maps, bibliography, and photographs.

Along the way, the book presents poignant portraits of various leaders and lesser characters on both sides, from Count Witte to Marquis Ito. The book really begins in Japan with the Meiji Restoration and the failed reforms in Russia. The war highlights the condition of two countries in a situation brewing for generations. Tide At Sunrise demonstrates, how an excellent book can make much out of a little war.

This is one of the best history volumes I have ever read; the
closest I can come in comparison is "The Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation," by Donald Morris. It is
a comprehensive account of the conflict, packed with details and
analysis, and almost impossible to put down once started. It is
of special interest with the centennial of the conflict and the
fates of the nations involved over the past century. An almost
unbelievable tale of heroes, scoundrels, soldiers, and politicians. You will treasure this book....

This is how history should be written. The Warner's have perfected the historical narrative to a fine art. They have the perfect combination of the attention to detail, the global view, biographical details on the major participants, and proper attention to military and political events.

There area also the explosion of a few myths: of course the Japanese were daring and intelligent, the Russians were largely incompetent and out-generalled by the Japanese. Basic trends in the Japanese descent in eventual barabarity in their treatment of prisoners was here as well. Japanese DID treat their prisoners well once they were captured, but in the heat of battle they were not so generousl. Many of these myths about the "gallant little Japanese" were purposefully fostered by the British press and butressed by interesting supportive stories from the British military liaison officers.

Japan was not as efficient as she is often protrayed. There was serious lack of fast manuevre warfare in many cases. General Nogi was a pain to not only his troops, but the entire effective Japanese military hierarchy. Generals Oku, Kuroki, Kodama and even the plodding Oyama were much more effective in accomplishing their tasks and regarded Nogi as a pain to be disposed of.

The Japanese did not really effectively bottle up the Russian Fleet in their initial attack. In fact no ships were sunk in the initial attack on Port Arthur. The Russians were really bottled up only in their own mind, but they still managed to effectively throw a continuous scare into the Japanese and Togo did avoid seriously pressing the Russians until he allowed the Army bombardment to effectively sink the Russian Far Seas Fleet.

Togo found his backbone when the Baltic Fleet steamed to its doom at the straits of Tsushima. The Warner's dedicate a lot of time on the travels of the fleet: its firing on British fishboats at Dogger Bank, its time spent in Madagascar and its eventual journey to be seriously out-maneuvred and sank at Tsushima. The maps on this part of the battle are however sparse and I could not help but to have wished that they included more narrative on the sea battle.

I very much enjoyed this book and looked forward to reading chapters every night. Very much a top-rated study on this war. Sources are balanced with very much original work translated from Japanese and Russian and Chinese. All done in a way that engages the reader with a lively and well-paced style.

Fine introduction to the Russo-Japanese War. Covers the political origins of the war as well as the naval and military engagements. Mr. Warner does a splendid job of characterizing the participants and describes places and events in terms that are graphic, memorable, and instructive.

My copy contains over 600 pages of text, scores of contemporary photographs, a useful index, and an extensive bibliography.

The book is a very detailed history of a important war that few Americans know about. Sometimes it might pop up in the History books because Teddy Roosevelt helped bring it to a close. But it is important, because it shows Japan not just as an Asian power, but a WORLD power. True, the peace that came afterwards was not to its advantage - it didn't get as much as it wanted, it was in debt, and nations that had been friendly to it before the war were now anti-Japanese - but it had proven itself a match for European powers by defeating Russia on all fronts.
The book also enlightened on some facts I did not know of. The Japanese, for example, helped fuel the unrest within Russia, helping bring the revolution closer to reality. The interaction between the Russian Generals seem to be, to me, almost childish but not as childish as that between the Kaiser and the Tsar. The Battle of Tsushima, in which ANOTHER Russian Fleet was destroyed by the Japanese, becomes the climax of a war fought with machine guns, spies, mines, thousands of men moved by ships and trains, and,it seems, tons of luck.
This is a major turning point in Asian and World history and a great book too.

It is hard to find a better one-volume history of ANY war than Denis and Peggy Warner's Tide at Sunrise. Superbly written and impeccably researched, it flows with ease of a novel and belittles the war's limited size with an epic scope. If the Russo-Japanese war seems distant and irrelevant to you, all the better reason to read this fantastic book. No reader can finish it without a profoundly better idea of what Japan was, what Russia is, and what future military encounters between the East and West will be like.

I came across this book in the course of a military war college, and assigned it the typical ho-hum enthusiasm reserved for all the dry texts I had been reading for months. The first chapter started with a vivid and interesting description of a Japanese attack on the Russian Naval base at Port Arthur, the first triumph of an Asian land force over a European opponent in modern times. It chapter closed with an Admiral commenting on the then surprising and audacious Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by saying "have they never heard of Port Arthur?" Apparently not, nor had I, really.

The book briefly but concisely covers Japanese history up to the 1904 war, and the remarkable rise of the Xenophobic Island to an industrial and military force in a span of a generation. It also gives the reader a wonderful primer on the decrepit and terminal Romanov dynasty in Russia, extinct within a decade. Typically, Russia represented a dismissive European view on Asia, and so the book is framed.

As a war, the Russo-Japanese war featured what was then the world's largest land battle, the introduction of full-scale modern weapons, and perhaps the most decisive Naval victory in world history at Tsushima straits. It was conducted by former Samurai, spoiled aristocrats, military geniuses, idiots, warriors and epileptics. It sowed the seeds of Marxist revolution by means of an interesting and unheeded subversion campaign by Japanese in Russia. Rather than being a static and unrecognized episode in world history, it is brought to life and given its proper significance. This alone is a testament to the ability of the Warners to write masterful history.

So readable, so interesting, so significant. The Tide at Sunrise is History at its finest; no novel could tell such a meaningful and interesting story. Far more than any WWII book I have read (and I have read several), it tells a better tale of the Japanese Warrior ethos, which would be propelled by this war and die in the fires of Hiroshima. It is scholarship that is enjoyable, and perhaps the finest one-volume history book I have come across.

(This would be 5 stars if the maps were better.)

This is a very well researched book on a subject much under-rated in the West. The R-J War was in many ways a prelude to WWI and was fought on the same relative scale and with many of the same novel tactics and weapons that would be brought to bear by the much richer European powers to their mutual exhaustion in 1914-1918. Since the R-J War was partially responsible for the Russian revolution of 1905, perhaps Russia could have avoided the Bolshevik revolution of 1918 if it had heeded its own recent histroy in 1905.

The Warners had extensive experience with Japanese and Chinese culture and history which shows up in their excellent introduction to the diplomatic and historical lead up to the war so that it isn't until page 155 that you actually see the beginning of the war. By that time it actually makes sense to you, in its own twisted way.

Tha R-J War saw the use of trench warfare, the machine gun, and massive infantry assualts on fortified positions. If the European powers had learned anything from their observers in the war they might have avoided many of the same problems that made WWI such a disaster.

The book has one maddening flaw which is no map index. In addition, the maps are not in context so it is hard to tell where on the larger area of conflict a particular battle is taking place. Other than that the sources are extensive and well annotated. There also seems to be a typo in that early on they mention a Japanese 14 centimeter gun as being massive when they had many larger guns available on all their ships.

The RJW was an extremely comples war. It was the most deadly 1 year war of its time, and Japan nearly lost. The book itself is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of info on the war. But, do not assume that a single reading of this book will bring everything you need to know about the war into place. In fact, despite the great amount of information and good writing style, the authors do an awful lot of bouncing around the clock and calendar. It becomes difficult to know just when the author's passages occurred, and the skiping around can get frustrating.

Still, do get this book and do read it. It will really help understand the developments that occurred in that part of the world from 1850 to 1950.

(Also, consider this -- what would have happened if Russia actually had prepared for war with Japan in the later part of the 1880s and 1890s? What if Japan's intel had been flawed? Could Russia have actually mobilized its 1.1 million soldiers to defeat Japan? The what ifs are fascinating, but in reality, Imperial Russia was a basket case, missing out on the industrial progress other countries in the world were discovering.)

Although the Russo-Japanese War is rather obscure to most people, it was an extremely important event in world history. It signaled the emergence of Japan as a world power and hastened the collapse of Tsarist Russia and subsequent takeover by the Communists. Having said that, the Warner husband and wife team did a great job recounting all aspects of the conflict. Much space is given to the causes of the war, including comprehensive histories of not only Russia and Japan but also China and Korea. The exploits of the Chinese Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi and the scheming Queen Min of Korea were especially colorful. Concerning the war itself there were many memorable moments, like the Japanese sneak attack on Port Arthur, eerily presaging Pear Harbor 37 years later. The narrative of the blinding dust storm during the Battle of Mukden was especially vivid. And of course great detail is given to the 'voyage of the damned' saga of the Russian fleet that made an extremely difficult trip half-way around the world only to be ambushed and destroyed by Admiral Togo at Tsushima Straits. Finally, the account of the dealings that went in to the US-brokered peace treaty at Portsmouth was fascinating. Ironically it was the only real victory the Russians won in the entire war. Anyway, I learned a lot about Asian and Russian history from this epic work. Highly recommended

A great book if you know little or nothing on the topic, or on the circumstances which led to the start of war. All the individuals are carefully described, and so are the political, economical and social factors influencing the war. I removed one star because there are very few maps, none of which presents the whole area, and because they are not listed in a location at the start of the book, so that they may be easier to find.