Piotr Olender

This is a short but interesting read about a little-known conflict whose consequences we live with to this day. Surprisingly. this work, which originated in Poland in 2014, was released by a British modeling publication house, Mushroom Modeling Publications. Perhaps inspired by the release of some Peiyang Fleet ship model kits by the Chinese model manufacturer Bronco, this book attempts to fill in some of the details about a conflict only tangentially mentioned in most naval histories.

Spanning only 228 pages, this book by author Piotr Olender contains no less than 28 numbered chapters, which means that several of these chapters are very short. The textual body of the book is followed by a number of appendices, most of which contains data tables detailing the true focus of this work: the navies of the combatants. The appendices are followed by a bibliography that shows how wide the author had to cast his research net to put this book together. Finally, the final pages of the book contain constant scale outboard profiles of the warships of the Peiyang and Japanese Fleets.

Olender's work follows a traditional military/naval history arrangement with the initial chapters setting the stage for the war followed by a chronological telling of the course of the war. The book contains a goodly number of maps, illustrations, and period photographs which contribute to making this title such a quick read.

This will be an enjoyable read for anyone interested in modern naval history. The Sino-Japanese War was a significant milestone in naval history given its impact on fleet tactics and warship design, and Mr. Olender makes these points in the course of the text. The humiliating outcome of this war for China marked both Japan's rise as a modern nation-state and China's decline as a traditional Asian power. The war pointed out the need for the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a battleship navy which, coupled with the tactics used during the hallmark Battle of the Yalu, set the stage for Japanese success in its conflict with Russia a mere decade later. As for the Chinese, defeat in this war established the nation as a failed state vulnerable to any nation wishing to exploit it. The Chinese have never gotten over this blemish in their history--a clue to their aggressive behavior in foreign policy today.… (altro)

The remit of this book is rather wider than the title might suggest, as Olender goes to some lengths to put all operations, land & sea, into perspective; not just the duel between the Japanese main naval force and the Chinese Pei-yang Fleet. About the only point on which I would fault the author on is that he doesn't seem to recognize that some of the criticism traditionally aimed at the Dowager Empress CiXi in regards to military preparedness is probably just misogynistic scapegoating after the fact; the failure of the last Imperial Chinese dynasty was a collective effort. I now regret failing to acquire Olender's work on the French intervention into Vietnam when I could do so at a reasonable price.… (altro)