This volume examines the Russo-Japanese War in its military, diplomatic, social, political, economic, and cultural context. Through the use of research from newly opened Russian and little used Japanese sources the editors assert that the Russo-Japanese War was, in fact, World War Zero, the first global conflict in the 20th century. The contributors demonstrate that the Russo-Japanese War, largely forgotten in the aftermath of World War One, actually was a precursor to the catastrophe that engulfed the world less than a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This study not only further reveals the weaknesses of Imperial Russia but also exhibits Japan as it entered its fateful 20th century.

Contributors: Oleg Rudolfovich Airapetov; Boris Vasilevich Ananich; Michael Auslin; Paul A. Bushkovitch; John Bushnell; Frederick R. Dickinson; Tatiana Aleksandrovna Filippova; David Goldfrank; Antti Kujala; Dominic Lieven; Igor Vladimirovich Lukoianov; Pertti Luntinen; Steven Marks; Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka; David Maclaren Mcdonald; Bruce W. Menning; Edward S. Miller; Ian Nish; Dmitrii Ivanovich Oleinikov; Nicholas Papastratigakis; Paul A. Rodell; Norman E. Saul; Charles Schencking; Barry Scherr; David Schimmelpenninck Van Der Oye; Evgenii Iurevich Sergeev; Naoko Shimazu; Yokote Shinji; John W. Steinberg; Richard Stites; James T. Ulak; David Wolff; Don Wright.
About the Author: John W. Steinberg is Associate Professor of History at Georgia Southern University. His book on the education, training, and performance of the Imperial Russian General Staff, 1898-1914 is forthcoming.

Bruce W. Menning is a Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. A specialist in modern Russian military history, he is the author of Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914.

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye is Associate Professor of Russian and East Asian History at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. He, together with Bruce Menning, edited Reforming the Tsar's Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution.

David Wolff is Senior Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, specializing in Northeast Asian political and diplomatic history. He has held appointments at Princeton and Berkeley. He is the author of To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914.

Yokote Shinji is Professor of Russian History and Politics at Keio University. He is most recently author of Higashi Ajia no Roshia (Russia in East Asia).