In its new Battle Studies series, War on the Rocks examines how the Battle of the Yalu River on September 17, 1894, marked a decisive turning point in the First Sino-Japanese War. Japan’s agile, well-trained fleet—equipped with quick-firing cruisers—outmaneuvered and overwhelmed China’s larger but poorly managed North Sea Fleet, exposing the limits of the Qing dynasty’s modernization. The victory secured Japan’s naval supremacy, paved the way for the annexation of Taiwan, and established Japan as a rising imperial power. Meanwhile, China’s defeat shattered confidence in the Qing’s reform agenda and hastened the dynasty’s decline. The battle quickly became a global case study in modern naval warfare—but also a reminder of how foreign analysts often draw the wrong lessons from others’ wars. They write:
The Battle of the Yalu on September 17, 1894, set the conditions for Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). The region — if not the world — has been dealing with the ramifications ever since. Strategically, Japanese success guaranteed sea control for an expeditionary assault on Korea and China. Geopolitically, the battle upset assumptions about hierarchies of prestige in East Asia and, more tangibly, led to the Japanese annexation of Taiwan. Technologically speaking, the battle offered a real-world test for novel and largely untried weapons: armored battleships, protected cruisers, and “quick-firing guns.” A globally contested war of words followed, as officials across Europe and the United States attempted to derive useful “lessons” from this natural experiment in modern war. […]
The core challenge for the Imperial Japanese Navy was to land forces on mainland Asia. Doing so required control of the sea, and control of the sea necessitated the defeat of the Qing Empire’s North Sea Fleet. […]
The gap between what most Americans know about the First Sino-Japanese War and the trouble its legacy may one day land them in is genuinely startling. Beijing’s revisionism aims at a region shaped by the Battle of the Yalu and its consequences. Sino-Japanese tensions in the East China Sea, the challenge of managing the U.S.-Japanese and U.S.-South Korean alliances, respectively, and above all, the nebulous status of Taiwan all grew out of Qing defeat in 1894-1895. These dynamics are not so much “past” as they are present politics. […]
At present, as intelligence services, industry players, and casual observers debate the implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the experience of the Sino-Japanese War begs the questions: Are 21st-century observers smarter than Alfred Thayer Mahan? Can they check biases in ways he could not?
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