[OTTOMAN MAP / THE RUSSO JAPANESE WAR] Japon, Kore ve Mançurî haritasi [i.e., Map of Japan, Korea, and Manchuria]

N. A.

Ahmet Ihsan ve Sürekâsi Servet-i Fünûn Matbaasi, Istanbul, 18 February 1904.

Original colour lithograph folded map. 33,5x46 cm. In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). A paper was added contemporarily on the recto of the fold. Slightly trimmed on margins. Otherwise, a good copy. 

A rare chromolithographed folded anonymous map from 669. issue of a long-run Turkish avant-garde journal Servet-i Fünûn [i.e., The Wealth of Sciences]. This map locating on the middle two pages of the magazine shows the early Theatre of War in China and Korea and contiguous parts of Russia (Vladivostok) on the northeast. It was published ten days later from Japan's declaration of war on 8 February 1904. The map includes a small inset of Port Arthur on the upper left. 

It was issued in the early ten days of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), which included the Japanese invasion of Korea, and the resulting conflict with Russia. The map is centred on North and South Korea and extends northwest to Manchuria, northeast to Vladivostok with Cape Povorotny and south to Shandong China and the Yellow Sea extends to the Korean Sea, as well as the eastern part of Mongolia on the west, and the Sea of Japan, complete Japan and the Pacific Ocean on the east. On the map, it’s identified by different colours the regions owned by the different stakeholders in the war. Russia and Manchuria are green, Japan and Korea are red, China and Mongolia are yellow. The map also shows completed and pending chausses, roads and railways. 

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire between 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major theatres of military operations were in the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War in favour of Japan garnered significant sympathy for the Japanese among the Ottoman people and intellectuals. However, the absence of official diplomatic channels and the geographical distance between the two nations hindered the direct exchange of information. Despite these challenges, numerous articles on various topics related to Japan appeared in Ottoman journals such as Servet-i Fünûn. Most of these works, however, were of Western origin and translated into Ottoman Turkish by intellectuals and journalists of the period.

“The declaration of war between Japan and Russia on February 10, 1904, generated waves of enthusiasm in Turkey as a traditional archrival of Russia, but the eventual impact of the war on the empire proved disastrous. Naturally, news about Russian defeats in Manchuria was a cause for celebration, but the Ottoman government followed a carefully gauged policy of neutrality in this conflagration in order not to antagonize the Tsarist government of the Romanov Empire, a contemporary autocratic regime like that of Abdulhamid II, the Turkish Sultan. An old-world empire that had once been the hegemonic power across the Balkans and extending to the Arabian Peninsula, the Ottomans had lost control of the Black Sea region to the Russians in the eighteenth century. In previous decades the Ottoman government had succumbed to disastrous defeat in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-1878 that had ended Ottoman rule in the Caucasus and furthered the erosion of Ottoman power in the Balkans. In the following years, the empire continued to disintegrate. In 1881 the British occupied Egypt, in 1885 Eastern Rumelia was united with Bulgaria, and in 1898 Crete was placed under international control after fighting arose between the Ottoman authorities and Greek rebels.”.