A COLONIAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR OF 1904-1905 FROM THE STRAITS TIMES

Abstract

The inventions of the wireless telegraph and submarine cable had made international communications much easier. With it, came the concurrent explosive growth of newspapers and news agencies in the early decades of the twentieth century as the public hunger for news increased. Aided by industrialisation and increased literacy around the world, the general public demanded news and information on everything about the world around them. Thus newspapers of the past represented a microcosm of the societies they served and hence were able to offer historians valuable perspectives of their lives and times. This Honours Thesis seeks out a colonial perspective on the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, using The Straits Times as the main primary source. With Japan as Britain's ally in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the newspaper's discussions of the war and its background highlights the dimensions of Anglo-Russian rivalry in East Asia as well as the nature of Britain's alliance with Japan, and gives us a deeper insight into the changes in colonial perspective as a result of the war in relation to international developments. Reuters was the news agency of the British Empire and The Straits Times was a leading newspaper of the Straits Settlements, and hence, they were exemplary of a British perspective, colonial in its outlook and imperial in its scope, to the readers of the paper in Singapore. As a source, The Straits Times provides us with a view of history as it is being made as well as insights into a British colonial mentality during an important transitional period.