| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 640 words from this article are provided below; about 466 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

John W. Steinberg et al, eds. The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero. (History of Warfare, number 29.) Boston: Brill. 2005. Pp. xxiii, 671.
This volume is the offspring of an idea that exuberated into an enterprise. Over a decade ago, one historian had the thought of undertaking collaborative research on the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He recruited a colleague, thereby setting in motion forces that over the years coalesced into an operation employing the services of five editors (three of whom doubled as peripatetic facilitators), dozens of specialists (authors, consultants, keynoters), and a "project secretariat" in Tokyo. Collective labors, midwifed by Japanese funds, produced a "conference volume" formally presented to a gathering of interested parties in Tokyo on May 26, 2005, centenary of Togo Heihachiro's near annihilation of a hapless Russian squadron in the Strait of Tsushima. The timing the ceremony raises the possibility that its organizers may not have encumbered themselves with punctilious solicitude for sensibilities within the Russian Federation, a scenario that would account for the absence of Russian universities, libraries, and research institutes from a cosmopolitan roster in the acknowledgements.	1
Appearances commend this volume to the eye. The binding, paper, and typography convey an impression of authority. The title promises innovative élan. Copious photographs lend a human touch to the combatants and their leaders. Full-color reproductions of contemporary cartoons vivify popular as well as artistic imaginations. Detailed campaign maps, amply furnished with arrows and arcs, bring a semblance of order to the geography of combat.	2
Expectations raised by appearances are for the most part not disappointed. Thirty-one chapters tackle the subject under four headings: "In the Shadow of War," "War on Land and Sea," "The Home Front," and "The Impact." Five chapters trace remote and immediate backgrounds. Nine chapters examine military operations with an emphasis on plans, flaws, myths, intelligence, and subversion. Seven chapters explore perceptions among officials, journalists, artists, and writers. War financing, peace making, domestic politics, and diplomacy each receive one or more chapters. Two chapters illumine the war in mirrors of historical memory. The final two chapters relate how the triumph of an "Asian" power over a "European" colonial empire stirred nationalist sentiment in Egypt, India, and Southeast Asia.	3
Conference volumes commonly suffer from uneven quality, but the papers in this collection are uniformly literate and workmanlike. The contributors are first-rate scholars. Most of them focus on a well-defined topic and carefully scrutinize documentary evidence. Others take a panoramic view and offer more subjective fare. All eschew jargon, ideology, and levity. Their conclusions are solid and sensible, at times mildly revisionist. The editors have performed a doubly valuable service to the field: first by assembling scholars from different generations, disciplines, and national origins to undertake a multifaceted exploration of a large, complex subject; second by securing the participation of Russian historians whose scholarship might not otherwise reach an anglophone audience. Given such inclusiveness, the absence of Chinese and Korean contributors may puzzle readers insofar as the war was fought on Chinese and Korean soil, with fateful consequences for both countries. This lacuna will, it appears, be addressed in a second volume now in preparation.	4
In contrast to the judicious empiricism that sets the tone of the volume's individual components, the packaging shows symptoms of trendiness in the notion of "World War Zero." In a very brief introduction, the editors claim that Russia and Japan engaged in a "prototypical world war" (p. xxi) that inaugurated "the modern era of global conflict" (p. xix). They proceed to substantiate this claim with four pages of arguments adducing political, financial, technological, and demographic evidence. These arguments recur only faintly and obliquely in the main text. None of the contributors really takes up the cause. "World War Zero" does not appear in the index.	. . .

There are about 466 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.