David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye

The West has been accused of seeing the East in a hostile and deprecatory light, as the legacy of nineteenth-century European imperialism. In this highly original and controversial book, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. Exploring the writings, poetry, and art of representative individuals including Catherine the Great, Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Borodin, and leading orientologists, Schimmelpenninck argues that the Russian Empire’s bi-continental geography, its ambivalent relationship with the rest of Europe, and the complicated nature of its encounter with Asia have all resulted in a variegated and often surprisingly sympathetic understanding of the East among its people.

Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration

Russian Orientalism

Here, the author examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. He argues that the Russian Empire's bi-continental geography and the complicated nature of its encounter with Asia have all resulted in a variegated understanding of the East among its people.

What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? This book attempts to find the answer in Russia's erratic and confused diplomacy. It explains how the key to understanding tsarist involvement in East Asia lies in the ideologies of the Russians who competed to impose their visions of imperial destiny on the East.

Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan

Toward the Rising Sun

Steve Marks

Shinji Yokote

David Wolff

Bruce Menning

John Steinberg

Like Volume one, Volume two of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective examines the Russo-Japanese War in its military, diplomatic, social, political, and cultural context. In this volume East Asian contributors focus on the Asian side of the war to flesh out the assertion that the Russo-Japanese War was, in fact, World War Zero, the first global conflict of the 20th century. The contributors demonstrate that the Russo-Japanese War, largely forgotten in the aftermath of World War I, 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 also helps us better understand Japan as it emerged at the beginning of its fateful 20th century.

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye

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