Crouching tiger, rising mammoth

On February 9, 1904, Japan launched a surprise naval attack on the Russian fleet stationed at Port Arthur, China, leading to a war between the two countries.

- UTTARAN DAS GUPTA

The hostilities would end on September 5, 1905, with the complete defeat of the Russian Empire and peace mediated by then US President Theodore Roosevelt. Several historians around the world recognise this as the first major defeat of a European power by an Asian country in the modern age. This convenient signpost also serves as a metaphorical premonition of the decline of the West and the cultural and economic rise of the East over the 20th century.

At the time of the Russo-Japanese war, much of Asia was under the colonial sway of the European powers. Britain and France hungrily gobbled up large swathes of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War in 1918. But over the next half-century, most of these countries would be roiled by the independence movements, often violent, pushing out the colonial powers. As early as 1924, German diplomat Karl Haushofer wrote about the "Pacific Age", which envisaged the growth of Japan, India, and China. After the meeting between Deng Xiaoping of China and then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, the 21st century came to be referred to as the "Asian Century" in the media.