Ouverture del Novecento

The essay deals with the relations between the Russo-Japanese War and the international politic of Europe before the World War I, and it aims to analyze the role played by the far-eastern conflict into the European balance of power, taking into account the events leading to the war as well as its aftermaths. Using several published collections of diplomatic documents and some excerpts from German and Italian newspapers, the author try to give an overview of the main developments in the international setting, stressing both the strategy of Japanese empire and the activities of European powers, and to describe the different opinions, that took shape during the conflict among the western commentators. In this perspective, the clash between Russia and Japan becomes a turn of the road-to-war in Europe, representing a meaningful event tracing the isolation of German Empire as well as the rapprochement between England and Russia.