Sarah Paine — How Imperial Japan defeated Tsarist Russia & Qing China

On this episode

About this episode

After my last lecture series with Sarah Paine ended, I still had so many questions . I knew we’d only scratched the surface of Sarah’s scholarship, so I immediately invited her back for another series: she graciously agreed, and we’ll be releasing the results online over the coming weeks and months! This first lecture is focused on the balance of power in East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Specifically, how did Japan (population 47M) defeat China (400M) and Russia (130M) to become Asia's dominant power? For me, the most interesting thing was that Japan's surprise attack on Port Arthur at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War (1904) helps us understand why Japan might have thought…