title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Russians quickly learned, and soon employed, the Japanese tactic of offensive minelaying. On 15 May 1904, two Japanese battleships, the and the , were lured into a recently laid Russian minefield off Port Arthur, each striking at least two mines. The "Hatsuse" sank within minutes, taking 450 sailors with her, while the "Yashima" sank while under tow towards Korea for repairs. On 23 June 1904, a breakout attempt by the Russian squadron, now under the command of Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, failed. By the end of the month, Japanese artillery were firing shells into the harbour.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The siege of Port Arthur commenced in April 1904. Japanese troops tried numerous frontal assaults on the fortified hilltops overlooking the harbour, which were defeated with Japanese casualties in the thousands. With the aid of several batteries of 11-inch (280 mm) howitzers, the Japanese were eventually able to capture the key hilltop bastion in December 1904. With a spotter at the end of a phone line located at this vantage point, the long-range artillery was able to shell the Russian fleet, which was unable to retaliate against the land-based artillery invisible over the other side of hilltop, and was unable or unwilling to sail out against the blockading fleet. Four Russian battleships and two cruisers were sunk in succession, with the fifth and last battleship being forced to scuttle a few weeks later. Thus, all capital ships of the Russian fleet in the Pacific were sunk. This is probably the only example in military history when such a scale of devastation was achieved by land-based artillery against major warships.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Meanwhile, attempts to relieve the besieged city by land also failed, and, after the Battle of Liaoyang in late August, the northern Russian force that might have been able to relieve Port Arthur retreated to Mukden (Shenyang). Major General Anatoly Stessel, commander of the Port Arthur garrison, believed that the purpose of defending the city was lost after the fleet had been destroyed. In general, the Russian defenders were suffering disproportionate casualties each time the Japanese attacked. In particular, several large underground mines were exploded in late December, resulting in the costly capture of a few more pieces of the defensive line. Stessel, therefore, decided to surrender to the surprised Japanese generals on 2 January 1905. He made his decision without consulting either the other military staff present, or the Tsar and military command, all of whom disagreed with the decision. Stessel was convicted by a court-martial in 1908 and sentenced to death on account of an incompetent defense and for disobeying orders. He was later pardoned.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Even before the war, British and Japanese intelligence had co-operated against Russia due to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. During the war, Indian Army stations in Malaya and China often intercepted and read wireless and telegraph cable traffic relating to the war, which was shared with the Japanese. In their turn, the Japanese shared information about Russia with the British with one British official writing of the "perfect quality" of Japanese intelligence. In particular, British and Japanese intelligence gathered much evidence that Germany was supporting Russia in the war as part of a bid to disturb the balance of power in Europe, which led to British officials increasingly perceiving that country as a threat to the international order.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In contrast to the Japanese strategy of rapidly gaining ground to control Manchuria, Russian strategy focused on fighting delaying actions to gain time for reinforcements to arrive via the long Trans-Siberian Railway, which was incomplete near Irkutsk at the time. On 1 May 1904, the Battle of Yalu River became the first major land battle of the war; Japanese troops stormed a Russian position after crossing the river. The defeat of the Russian Eastern Detachment removed the perception that the Japanese would be an easy enemy, that the war would be short, and that Russia would be the overwhelming victor. This was also the first battle in decades to be an Asian victory over a European power and marked Russia's inability to match Japan's military prowess. Japanese troops proceeded to land at several points on the Manchurian coast, and in a series of engagements, drove the Russians back towards Port Arthur. The subsequent battles, including the Battle of Nanshan on 25 May 1904, were marked by heavy Japanese losses largely from attacking entrenched Russian positions.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: With the death of Admiral Stepan Makarov during the siege of Port Arthur in April 1904, Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft was appointed commander of the battle fleet and was ordered to make a sortie from Port Arthur and deploy his force to Vladivostok. Flying his flag in the French-built pre-dreadnought , Vitgeft proceeded to lead his six battleships, four cruisers, and 14 torpedo boat destroyers into the Yellow Sea in the early morning of 10 August 1904. Waiting for him was Admiral Tōgō and his fleet of four battleships, 10 cruisers, and 18 torpedo boat destroyers.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: At approximately 12:15, the battleship fleets obtained visual contact with each other, and at 13:00 with Tōgō crossing Vitgeft's "T", they commenced main battery fire at a range of about eight miles, the longest ever conducted up to that time. For about thirty minutes the battleships pounded one another until they had closed to less than four miles and began to bring their secondary batteries into play. At 18:30, a hit from one of Tōgō's battleships struck Vitgeft's flagship's bridge, killing him instantly.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: With the "Tsesarevich"s helm jammed and their admiral killed in action, she turned from her battle line, causing confusion among her fleet. However, Tōgō was determined to sink the Russian flagship and continued pounding her, and it was saved only by the gallant charge of the American-built , whose captain successfully drew away Tōgō's heavy fire from the Russian flagship. Knowing of the impending battle with the battleship reinforcements arriving from Russia (the Baltic Fleet), Tōgō chose not to risk his battleships by pursuing his enemy as they turned about and headed back into Port Arthur, thus ending naval history's longest-range gunnery duel up to that time and the first modern clash of steel battleship fleets on the high seas.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Meanwhile, the Russians were preparing to reinforce their Far East Fleet by sending the Baltic Fleet, under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. After a false start caused by engine problems and other mishaps, the squadron finally departed on 15 October 1904, and sailed halfway around the world from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific via the Cape Route around the Cape of Good Hope in the course of a seven-month odyssey that was to attract worldwide attention. The Dogger Bank incident on 21 October 1904, where the Russian fleet fired on British fishing boats that they mistook for enemy torpedo boats, nearly sparked a war with the United Kingdom (an ally of Japan, but neutral, unless provoked). During the voyage, the fleet separated into a portion that went through the Suez Canal while the larger battleships went around the Cape of Good Hope.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: It was reported in 1905 that many Russian females were raped by Japanese troops, causing a widespread infections of venereal diseases in large number of Japanese troops. During the fighting in Manchuria, there were Russian troops that looted and burned some Chinese villages, raped women and often killed those who resisted or did not understand what they wanted. The Russian justification for all this was that Chinese civilians, being Asian, must have been helping their fellow Asians (the Japanese) inflict defeat on the Russians, and therefore deserved to be punished. The Russian troops were gripped by the fear of the "Yellow Peril", and saw all Asians, not just the Japanese, as the enemy. All of the Russian soldiers were much feared by the Chinese population of Manchuria, but it was the Cossacks whom they feared the most on the account of their brutality and insatiable desire to loot. Largely because of the more disciplined behavior of the Japanese, the Han and Manchu population of Manchuria tended to be pro-Japanese. The Japanese were also prone to looting, albeit in a considerably less brutal manner than the Russians, and summarily executed any Chinese or Manchu whom they suspected of being spies. The city of Liaoyang had the misfortune to be sacked three times within three days: first by the Russians, then by the Chinese police, and finally by the Japanese.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Japanese hired Chinese bandits known variously as the Chunguses, Chunchuse or "khunhuzy" to engage in guerrilla warfare by attacking Russian supply columns. Only once did the Chunguses attack Japanese forces, and that attack was apparently motivated by the Chunguses mistaking the Japanese forces for a Russian one. Zhang Zuolin, a prominent bandit leader and the future "Old Marshal" who would rule Manchuria as a warlord between 1916 and 1928, worked as a Chunguse for the Japanese. Manchuria was still officially part of the Chinese Empire, and the Chinese civil servants tried their best to be neutral as Russian and Japanese troops marched across Manchuria. In the parts of Manchuria occupied by the Japanese, Tokyo appointed "civil governors" who worked to improve health, sanitation and the state of the roads. These activities were also self-interested, as improved roads lessened Japanese logistics problems while improved health amongst the Chinese lessened the dangers of diseases infecting the Japanese troops. By contrast, the Russians made no effort to improve sanitation or health amongst the Chinese, and destroyed everything when they retreated. Many Chinese tended to see the Japanese as the lesser evil.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: With the fall of Port Arthur, the Japanese 3rd Army could continue northward to reinforce positions south of Russian-held Mukden. With the onset of the severe Manchurian winter, there had been no major land engagements since the Battle of Shaho the previous year. The two sides camped opposite each other along 60 to of front lines south of Mukden.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Russian Second Army under General Oskar Gripenberg, between 25 and 29 January, attacked the Japanese left flank near the town of Sandepu, almost breaking through. This caught the Japanese by surprise. However, without support from other Russian units the attack stalled, Gripenberg was ordered to halt by Kuropatkin and the battle was inconclusive. The Japanese knew that they needed to destroy the Russian army in Manchuria before Russian reinforcements arrived via the Trans-Siberian railroad.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Battle of Mukden commenced on 20 February 1905. In the following days Japanese forces proceeded to assault the right and left flanks of Russian forces surrounding Mukden, along a front. Approximately half a million men were involved in the fighting. Both sides were well entrenched and were backed by hundreds of artillery pieces. After days of harsh fighting, added pressure from the flanks forced both ends of the Russian defensive line to curve backwards. Seeing they were about to be encircled, the Russians began a general retreat, fighting a series of fierce rearguard actions, which soon deteriorated in the confusion and collapse of Russian forces. On 10 March 1905, after three weeks of fighting, General Kuropatkin decided to withdraw to the north of Mukden. The Russians suffered a estimated 90,000 casualties in the battle.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The retreating Russian Manchurian Army formations disbanded as fighting units, but the Japanese failed to destroy them completely. The Japanese themselves had suffered heavy casualties and were in no condition to pursue. Although the Battle of Mukden was a major defeat for the Russians and was the most decisive land battle ever fought by the Japanese, the final victory still depended on the navy.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: After a stopover of several weeks at the minor port of Nossi-Bé, Madagascar, that had been reluctantly allowed by neutral France in order not to jeopardize its relations with its Russian ally, the Russian Baltic fleet proceeded to Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina passing on its way through the Singapore Strait between 7 and 10 April 1905. The fleet finally reached the Sea of Japan in May 1905. The logistics of such an undertaking in the age of coal power was astounding. The squadron required approximately 500,000 tons of coal to complete the journey, yet by international law, it was not allowed to coal at neutral ports, forcing the Russian authorities to acquire a large fleet of colliers to supply the fleet at sea. The weight of the ships' stores needed for such a long journey was to be another major problem.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Russian Second Pacific Squadron (the renamed Baltic Fleet) sailed 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to relieve Port Arthur only to hear the demoralizing news that Port Arthur had fallen while it was still at Madagascar. Admiral Rozhestvensky's only hope now was to reach the port of Vladivostok. There were three routes to Vladivostok, with the shortest and most direct passing through Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. However, this was also the most dangerous route as it passed between the Japanese home islands and the Japanese naval bases in Korea.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Admiral Tōgō was aware of Russian progress and understood that, with the fall of Port Arthur, the Second and Third Pacific squadrons would try to reach the only other Russian port in the Far East, Vladivostok. Battle plans were laid down and ships were repaired and refitted to intercept the Russian fleet.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Japanese Combined Fleet, which had originally consisted of six battleships, was now down to four battleships and one second class battleship (two had been lost to mines), but still retained its cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats. The Russian Second Pacific Squadron contained eight battleships, including four new battleships of the , as well as cruisers, destroyers and other auxiliaries for a total of 38 ships.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: By the end of May, the Second Pacific Squadron was on the last leg of its journey to Vladivostok, taking the shorter, riskier route between Korea and Japan, and travelling at night to avoid discovery. Unfortunately for the Russians, while in compliance with the rules of war, the two trailing hospital ships had continued to burn their lights, which were spotted by the Japanese armed merchant cruiser "Shinano Maru". Wireless communication was used to inform Togo's headquarters, where the Combined Fleet was immediately ordered to sortie. Still receiving reports from scouting forces, the Japanese were able to position their fleet to "cross the "T"" of the Russian fleet. The Japanese engaged the Russians in the Tsushima Straits on 27–28 May 1905. The Russian fleet was virtually annihilated, losing eight battleships, numerous smaller vessels, and more than 5,000 men, while the Japanese lost three torpedo boats and 116 men. Only three Russian vessels escaped to Vladivostok, while six others were interned in neutral ports. After the Battle of Tsushima, a combined Japanese Army and Navy operation occupied Sakhalin Island to force the Russians into suing for peace.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Military leaders and senior tsarist officials agreed before the war that Russia was a much stronger nation and had little to fear from the Empire of Japan. The fanatical zeal of the Japanese infantrymen astonished the Russians, who were dismayed by the apathy, backwardness, and defeatism of their own soldiers. The defeats of the Army and Navy shook Russian confidence. Throughout 1905, the Imperial Russian government was rocked by revolution. The population was against escalation of the war. The empire was certainly capable of sending more troops but this would make little difference in the outcome due to the poor state of the economy, the embarrassing defeats of the Russian Army and Navy by the Japanese, and the relative unimportance to Russia of the disputed land made the war extremely unpopular. Tsar Nicholas II elected to negotiate peace so he could concentrate on internal matters after the disaster of Bloody Sunday on 9 January 1905.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Both sides accepted the offer of United States President Theodore Roosevelt to mediate. Meetings were held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Sergei Witte leading the Russian delegation and Baron Komura leading the Japanese delegation. The Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on 5 September 1905 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Witte became Russian Prime Minister the same year.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: After courting the Japanese, Roosevelt decided to support the Tsar's refusal to pay indemnities, a move that policymakers in Tokyo interpreted as signifying that the United States had more than a passing interest in Asian affairs. Russia recognized Korea as part of the Japanese sphere of influence and agreed to evacuate Manchuria. Japan would annex Korea in 1910 (Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910), with scant protest from other powers. From 1910 forward, the Japanese adopted a strategy of using the Korean Peninsula as a gateway to the Asian continent and making Korea's economy subordinate to Japanese economic interests.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Russia also signed over its 25-year leasehold rights to Port Arthur, including the naval base and the peninsula around it, and ceded the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Japan. Sakhalin would be taken back by the Soviet Union following the defeat of the Japanese in World War II.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Roosevelt earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. George E. Mowry concludes that Roosevelt handled the arbitration well, doing an "excellent job of balancing Russian and Japanese power in the Orient, where the supremacy of either constituted a threat to growing America". As Japan had won every battle on land and sea and as the Japanese people did not understand that the costs of the war had pushed their nation to the verge of bankruptcy, the Japanese public was enraged by the Treaty of Portsmouth as many Japanese had expected the war to end with Russia ceding the Russian Far East to Japan and for Russia to pay an indemnity. The United States was widely blamed in Japan for the Treaty of Portsmouth with Roosevelt having allegedly "cheated" Japan out of its rightful claims at the peace conference. On 5 September 1905 the Hibiya incendiary incident - as the anti-American riots were euphemistically described - erupted in Tokyo and lasted for three days, forcing the government to declare martial law.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Sources do not agree on a precise number of deaths from the war because of a lack of body counts for confirmation. The number of Japanese Army dead in combat or died of wounds is put at around 59,000 with around 27,000 additional casualties from disease, and between 6,000 and 12,000 wounded. Estimates of Russian Army dead range from around 34,000 to around 53,000 men with a further 9,000–19,000 dying of disease and around 75,000 captured. The total number of dead for both sides is generally stated as around 130,000 to 170,000. China suffered 20,000 civilian deaths, and financially the loss amounted to over 69 million taels' worth of silver.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: During many of the battles at sea, several thousand soldiers being transported drowned after their ships went down. There was no consensus about what to do with transported soldiers at sea, and as a result, many of the ships failed or refused to rescue soldiers that were left shipwrecked. This led to the creation of the second Geneva Convention in 1906, which gave protection and care for shipwrecked soldiers in armed conflict.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: This was the first major military victory in the modern era of an Asian power over a European nation. Russia's defeat was met with shock in the West and across the Far East. Japan's prestige rose greatly as it came to be seen as a modern nation. Concurrently, Russia lost virtually its entire Pacific and Baltic fleets, and also much international esteem. This was particularly true in the eyes of Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I. Russia was France's and Serbia's ally, and that loss of prestige had a significant effect on Germany's future when planning for war with France, and in supporting Austria-Hungary's war with Serbia.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In the absence of Russian competition, and with the distraction of European nations during World War I, combined with the Great Depression that followed, the Japanese military began efforts to dominate China and the rest of Asia, which eventually led to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War theatres of World War II.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Though there had been popular support for the war among the Russian public following the Japanese attack at Port Arthur in 1904, that popular support soon turned to discontent after suffering multiple defeats at the hands of the Japanese forces. For many Russians, the immediate shock of unexpected humiliation at the hands of Japan caused the conflict to be viewed as a metaphor for the shortcomings of the Romanov autocracy. Popular discontent in Russia after the war added more fuel to the already simmering Russian Revolution of 1905, an event Nicholas II had hoped to avoid entirely by taking intransigent negotiating stances prior to coming to the table. Twelve years later, that discontent boiled over into the February Revolution of 1917. In Poland, which Russia partitioned in the late 18th century, and where Russian rule already caused two major uprisings, the population was so restless that an army of 250,000–300,000—larger than the one facing the Japanese—had to be stationed to put down the unrest. Some political leaders of the Polish insurrection movement (in particular, Józef Piłsudski) sent emissaries to Japan to collaborate on sabotage and intelligence gathering within the Russian Empire and even plan a Japanese-aided uprising.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In Russia, the defeat of 1905 led in the short term to a reform of the Russian military that allowed it to face Germany in World War I. However, the revolts at home following the war planted seeds that presaged the Russian Revolution of 1917. This was because Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, which included only limited reforms such as the Duma and failed to address the societal problems of Russia at the time.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Japan had become the rising Asian power and had proven that its military could combat the major powers in Europe with success. Most Western powers were stunned that the Japanese not only prevailed but decisively defeated Russia. In the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had also portrayed a sense of readiness in taking a more active and leading role in Asian affairs, which in turn had led to widespread nationalism throughout the region.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Although the war had ended in a victory for Japan, Japanese public opinion was shocked by the very restrained peace terms which were negotiated at the war's end. Widespread discontent spread through the populace upon the announcement of the treaty terms, causing the Hibiya incendiary incident. Riots erupted in major cities in Japan following the incident, including demonstrations in front of the US Legation in Tokyo. Two specific requirements, expected after such a costly victory, were especially lacking: territorial gains and monetary reparations to Japan. The peace accord led to feelings of distrust, as the Japanese had intended to retain all of Sakhalin Island, but were forced to settle for half of it after being pressured by the United States, with President Roosevelt opting to support Nicholas II's stance on not ceding territory or paying reparations. The Japanese had wanted reparations to help families recover from lost fathers and sons as well as heavy taxation by the government to finance the war. Without them, they were at a loss. The outcome of the Portsmouth peace negotiations, mediated by the U.S., was received by the general Japanese population with disbelief on September 5th and 6th when all the major newspapers reported the content of the signed treaty in lengthy editorials.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: As a result, the wartime government, the First Katsura Cabinet, which remained in power for the longest period (1,681 days) in the history of Japanese democracy to date, declared Martial Law to suppress the riots on September 6th (one day after the official signing in Portsmouth, NH). After over 2,000 people were arrested, the Martial Law was lifted on November 29th, but the Cabinet resigned on December 22nd, after ratifying the treaty on October 10th, as if taking the responsibility for a lost war.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The effects and impact of the Russo-Japanese War introduced a number of characteristics that came to define 20th-century politics and warfare. Many of the innovations brought by the Industrial Revolution, such as rapid-firing artillery and machine guns, as well as more accurate rifles, were first tested on a mass scale then. Military operations on both sea and land showed that modern warfare had undergone a considerable change since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Most army commanders had previously envisioned using these weapon systems to dominate the battlefield on an operational and tactical level but, as events played out, the technological advances forever altered the conditions of war too.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The advanced weaponry led to massive casualty counts. Neither Japan nor Russia had prepared for the number of deaths that would occur in this new kind of warfare, or had the resources to compensate for such losses. This also left its impression on society at large, with the emergence of transnational and nongovernmental organizations, like the Red Cross, becoming prominent after the war. The consequent identification of common problems and challenges began the slow process that came to dominate much of the 20th century.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: It has also been argued that the conflict had characteristics of what was later to be described as "total war". These included the mass mobilization of troops into battle and the need for so extensive a supply of equipment, armaments, and supplies that both domestic support and foreign aid were required. It is also argued that domestic response in Russia to the inefficiencies of the tsarist government set in motion the eventual dissolution of the Romanov dynasty.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: To the Western powers, Japan's victory demonstrated the emergence of a new Asian regional power. With the Russian defeat, some scholars have argued that the war had set in motion a change in the global world order with the emergence of Japan as not only a regional power, but rather, the main Asian power. Rather more than the possibilities of diplomatic partnership were emerging, however. The US and Australian reaction to the changed balance of power brought by the war was mixed with fears of a Yellow Peril eventually shifting from China to Japan. American figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Lothrop Stoddard saw the victory as a challenge to western supremacy. This was reflected in Austria, where Baron Christian von Ehrenfels interpreted the challenge in racial as well as cultural terms, arguing that "the absolute necessity of a radical sexual reform for the continued existence of the western races of men has ... been raised from the level of discussion to the level of a scientifically proven fact". To stop the Japanese "Yellow Peril" would require drastic changes to society and sexuality in the West.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Certainly the Japanese success increased self-confidence among anti-colonial nationalists in colonised Asian countries – Vietnamese, Indonesians, Indians and Filipinos – and to those in declining countries like the Ottoman Empire and Persia in immediate danger of being absorbed by the Western powers. It also encouraged the Chinese who, despite having been at war with the Japanese only a decade before, still considered Westerners the greater threat. As Sun Yat-sen commented, "We regarded that Russian defeat by Japan as the defeat of the West by the East. We regarded the Japanese victory as our own victory". Even in far-off Tibet the war was a subject of conversation when Sven Hedin visited the Panchen Lama in February 1907. While for Jawaharlal Nehru, then only an aspiring politician in British India, "Japan's victory lessened the feeling of inferiority from which most of us suffered. A great European power had been defeated, thus Asia could still defeat Europe as it had done in the past." And in the Ottoman Empire too, the Committee of Union and Progress embraced Japan as a role model.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In Europe, subject populations were similarly encouraged. James Joyce's novel "Ulysses", set in Dublin in 1904, contains hopeful Irish allusions as to the outcome of the war. And in partitioned Poland the artist Józef Mehoffer chose 1905 to paint his "Europa Jubilans" (Europe rejoicing), which portrays an aproned maid taking her ease on a sofa against a background of Eastern artefacts. Painted following demonstrations against the war and Russian cultural suppression, and in the year of Russia's defeat, its subtly coded message looks forward to a time when the Tsarist masters will be defeated in Europe as they had been in Asia.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The significance of the war for oppressed classes as well as subject populations was clear too to Socialist thinkers.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: It was this realisation of the universal significance of the war that underlines the historical importance of the conflict and its outcome.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Russia had lost two of its three fleets. Only its Black Sea Fleet remained, and this was the result of an earlier treaty that had prevented the fleet from leaving the Black Sea. Japan became the sixth-most powerful naval force by combined tonnage, while the Russian Navy declined to one barely stronger than that of Austria–Hungary. The actual costs of the war were large enough to affect the Russian economy and, despite grain exports, the nation developed an external balance of payments deficit. The cost of military re-equipment and re-expansion after 1905 pushed the economy further into deficit, although the size of the deficit was obscured.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Japanese were on the offensive for most of the war and used massed infantry assaults against defensive positions, which would later become the standard of all European armies during World War I. The battles of the Russo-Japanese War, in which machine guns and artillery took a heavy toll on Russian and Japanese troops, were a precursor to the trench warfare of World War I. A German military advisor sent to Japan, Jakob Meckel, had a tremendous impact on the development of the Japanese military training, tactics, strategy, and organization. His reforms were credited with Japan's overwhelming victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. However, his over-reliance on infantry in offensive campaigns also led to a large number of Japanese casualties.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Military and economic exhaustion affected both countries. Japanese historians regard this war as a turning point for Japan, and a key to understanding the reasons why Japan may have failed militarily and politically later. After the war, acrimony was felt at every level of Japanese society and it became the consensus within Japan that their nation had been treated as the defeated power during the peace conference. As time went on, this feeling, coupled with the sense of "arrogance" at becoming a Great Power, grew and added to growing Japanese hostility towards the West, and fuelled Japan's military and imperial ambitions. Furthermore, Japan's substantiated interests in Korea and Liaodong led to the creation of a Kwantung Army, which became an autonomous and increasingly powerful regional force. Only five years after the war, Japan "de jure" annexed Korea as part of its colonial empire. Two decades after that, the Kwantung Army staged an incident that led to the invasion of Manchuria in the Mukden Incident; the Kwantung Army eventually came to be heavily involved in the state's politics and administration, leading to a series of localized conflicts with Chinese regional warlords that finally extended into the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. As a result, most Chinese historians consider the Russo-Japanese War as a key development in Japan's spiral into militarism in the 1920s–30s.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Following the victory of the Battle of Tsushima, Japan's erstwhile British ally presented a lock of Admiral Nelson's hair to the Imperial Japanese Navy, judging its performance then as on a par with Britain's victory at Trafalgar in 1805. It is still on display at Kyouiku Sankoukan, a public museum maintained by the Japan Self-Defence Force. Nevertheless, there was a consequent shift in British strategic thinking, resulting in enlargement of its naval docks at Auckland, New Zealand; Bombay, British India; Fremantle and Sydney, Australia; Simon's Town, Cape Colony; Singapore and British Hong Kong. The naval war confirmed the direction of the British Admiralty's thinking in tactical terms even as it undermined its strategic grasp of a changing world. Tactical orthodoxy, for example, assumed that a naval battle would imitate the conditions of stationary combat and that ships would engage in one long line sailing on parallel courses; but more flexible tactical thinking would now be required as a firing ship and its target manoeuvred independently.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Military and civilian observers from every major power closely followed the course of the war. Most were able to report on events from the perspective of embedded positions within the land and naval forces of both Russia and Japan. These military attachés and other observers prepared first-hand accounts of the war and analytical papers. In-depth observer narratives of the war and more narrowly focused professional journal articles were written soon after the war; these post-war reports conclusively illustrated the battlefield destructiveness of this conflict. This was the first time the tactics of entrenched positions for infantry defended with machine guns and artillery became vitally important. Both would become dominant factors in World War I. Even though entrenched positions had already been a significant part of both the Franco-Prussian War and the American Civil War, it is now apparent that the high casualty counts, and the tactical lessons readily available to observer nations, were completely disregarded in preparations for war in Europe, and during much of the course of World War I.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In 1904–1905, Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton was the military attaché of the British Indian Army serving with the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria. As one of the several military attachés from Western countries, he was the first to arrive in Japan after the start of the war.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: He therefore would be recognized as the dean of multi-national attachés and observers in this conflict, although out-ranked by British field marshal, William Gustavus Nicholson, 1st Baron Nicholson, who was later to become chief of the Imperial General Staff.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Despite its gold reserves of 106.3 million pounds, Russia's pre-war financial situation was not enviable. The country had large budget deficits year after year, and was largely dependent on borrowed money.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Russia's war effort was funded primarily by France, in a series of loans totalling 800 million francs (£30.4 million); another loan in the amount of 600 million francs was agreed upon, but later cancelled. These loans were extended within a climate of mass bribing of the French press (made necessary by Russia's precarious economic and social situation and poor military performance). Although initially reluctant to participate in the war, the French government and major banks were co-operative since it became clear that Russian and French economic interests were tied. In addition to French money, Russia secured a loan in the amount of 500 million marks (£24.5 million) from Germany, who also financed Japan's war effort.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Japan's pre-war gold reserves were a modest £11.7 million; a major portion of the total cost of the war was covered by money borrowed from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. During his canvassing expedition in London, the Japanese vice-governor of the Bank of Japan Takahashi Korekiyo met Jacob Schiff, an American banker and head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Schiff, in response to Russia's anti-Jewish pogroms and sympathetic to Japan's cause, extended a critical series of loans to the Empire of Japan, in the amount of 200 million US dollars (£41.2 million). He also raised loans from the Rothschild family in Britain. Japan's total war expenditure was 2,150 million yen, of which 38%, or 820 million yen, was raised overseas.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The Russo-Japanese War was covered by dozens of foreign journalists who sent back sketches that were turned into lithographs and other reproducible forms. Propaganda images were circulated by both sides, often in the form of postcards and based on insulting racial stereotypes. These were produced not only by the combatants but by those from European countries who supported one or the other side or had a commercial or colonial stake in the area. War photographs were also popular, appearing in both the press and in book form.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: In Russia, the war was covered by anonymous satirical graphic luboks for sale in markets, recording the war for the domestic audience. Around 300 were made before their creation was banned by the Russian government. Their Japanese equivalents were woodblock prints. These had been common during the Sino-Japanese war a decade earlier and celebrations of the new conflict tended to repeat the same imagery and situations. But by this time in Japan postcards had become the most common form of communication and they soon replaced prints as a medium for topographical imagery and war reportage. In some ways, however, they were still dependent on the print for their pictorial conventions, not least in issuing the cards in series that assembled into a composite scene or design, either as diptychs, triptychs or even more ambitious formats. However, captioning swiftly moved from the calligraphic side inscription to a printed title below, and not just in Japanese but in English and other European languages. There was a lively sense that these images served not only as mementoes but also as propaganda statements.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: War artists were to be found on the Russian side and even figured among the casualties. Vasily Vereshchagin went down with the "Petropavlovsk", Admiral Makarov's flagship, when it was sunk by mines. However, his last work, a picture of a council of war presided over by the admiral, was recovered almost undamaged. Another artist, Mykola Samokysh, first came to notice for his reports during the war and the paintings worked up from his diary sketch-books. Other depictions appeared after the event. The two by the Georgian naïve painter Niko Pirosmani from 1906 must have been dependent on newspaper reports since he was not present. Then, in 1914 at the outset of World War I, Yury Repin made an episode during the Battle of Yalu River the subject of a broad heroic canvas.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: On either side, there were lyrics lamenting the necessity of fighting in a foreign land, far from home. One of the earliest of several Russian songs still performed today was the waltz "Amur's Waves" ("Amurskie volny"), which evokes the melancholy of standing watch on the motherland far east frontier.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Two others grew out of incidents during the war. "On the Hills of Manchuria" ("Na sopkah Manchzhurii"; 1906) is another waltz composed by Ilya Shatrov, a decorated military musician whose regiment suffered badly in the Battle of Mukden. Originally only the music was published, and the words by Stepan Petrov were added later.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The second song, "Variag", commemorates the Battle of Chemulpo Bay in which that cruiser and the gunboat "Korietz" steamed out to confront an encircling Japanese squadron rather than surrender. That act of heroism was first celebrated in a German song by Rudolf Greintz in 1907, which was quickly translated into Russian and sung to a martial accompaniment. These lyrics mourned the fallen lying in their graves and threatened revenge.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov also reacted to the war by composing the satirical opera "The Golden Cockerel", completed in 1907. Although it was ostensibly based on a verse fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin written in 1834, the authorities quickly realised its true target and immediately banned it from performance. The opera was premiered in 1909, after Rimsky-Korsakov's death, and even then with modifications required by the censors.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Some Japanese poetry dealing with the war still has a high profile. General Nogi Maresuke's "Outside the Goldland fortress" was learned by generations of schoolchildren and valued for its bleak stoicism. The army surgeon Mori Ōgai kept a verse diary which tackled such themes as racism, strategic mistakes and the ambiguities of victory which can now be appreciated in historical hindsight. Nowadays too there is growing appreciation of Yosano Akiko's parting poem to her brother as he left for the war, which includes the critical lines.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Even the Emperor Meiji himself entered the poetic lists, writing in answer to all the lamentations about death in a foreign land that the patriotic soul returns to the homeland.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: European treatments were similarly varied. Jane H. Oakley attempted an epic treatment of the conflict in 86 cantos. The French poet Blaise Cendrars was later to represent himself as on a Russian train on its way to Manchuria at the time in his "La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France" (1913) and energetically evoked the results of the war along the way:


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Much later, the Scottish poet Douglas Dunn devoted an epistolary poem in verse to the naval war in "The Donkey's Ears: Politovsky's Letters Home" (2000). This follows the voyage of the Russian Imperial Navy flagship "Kniaz" to its sinking at the Battle of Tsushima.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Fictional coverage of the war in English began even before it was over. An early example was Allen Upward's "The International Spy". Set in both Russia and Japan, it ends with the Dogger Bank incident involving the Baltic Fleet. The political thinking displayed there is typical of the time. There is great admiration for the Japanese, who were British allies. Russia is in turmoil, but the main impetus towards war is not imperialism as such but commercial forces. "Every student of modern history has remarked the fact that all recent wars have been promoted by great combinations of capitalists. The causes which formerly led to war between nation and nation have ceased to operate" (p. 40). The true villain plotting in the background, however, is the German Emperor, seeking to destabilise the European balance of power in his country's favour. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator steals a German submarine and successfully foils a plot to involve the British in the war. The submarine motif reappeared in George Griffith's science fiction novel, "The Stolen Submarine" (1904), although in this case it is a French super-submarine which its developer sells to the Russians for use against the Japanese in another tale of international intrigue.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Though most English-language fiction of the period took the Japanese side, the Rev. W. W. Walker's Canadian novella, "Alter Ego", is an exception. It features a Canadian volunteer in the Russian army who, on his return, agrees to talk about his experiences to an isolated upcountry community and relates his part in the Battle of Mukden. Though this incident only occupies two of the book's six chapters, it is used to illustrate the main message there, that war is "anti-Christian and barbarous, except in a defensive sense" (Ch.3).


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Various aspects of the war were also common in contemporary children's fiction. Categorised as Boys' Own adventure stories, they offer few insights into the conflict, being generally based on news articles and sharing without any reflection in the contemporary culture of imperialism. Among these, Herbert Strang was responsible for two novels: "Kobo" told from the Japanese side, and "Brown of Moukden" viewed from the Russian side. Three more were written by the prolific American author, Edward Stratemeyer: "Under the Mikado's Flag", "At the Fall of Port Arthur", and "Under Togo for Japan, or Three Young Americans on Land and Sea" (1906). Two other English-language stories begin with the action at Port Arthur and follow the events thereafter: "A Soldier of Japan: a tale of the Russo-Japanese War" by Captain Frederick Sadleir Brereton, and "The North Pacific" by Willis Boyd Allen (1855–1938). Two more also involve young men fighting in the Japanese navy: Americans in "For the Mikado" by Kirk Munroe, and a temporarily disgraced English officer in "Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun" by Harry Collingwood, the pen-name of William Joseph Cosens Lancaster (1851–1922), whose speciality was naval fiction.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Another literary genre affected by the outcome of the war was invasion literature, either fuelled by racialist fears or generated by the international power struggle. Shunrō Oshikawa's novel "The Submarine Battleship" ("Kaitei Gunkan") was published in 1900 before the actual fighting began but shared the imperial tensions that produced it. It is the story of an armoured ram-armed submarine involved in a Russo-Japanese conflict. Three other novels appeared in 1908 and are thought of as significant now because of their prophetic dimension. American author Arthur Wellesley Kipling (1885–1947) prefaced his "The New Dominion – A Tale of Tomorrow's Wars" with a note counselling future vigilance. The scenario there is an attack by German and Japanese allies which the US and British navies victoriously fend off. In Germany itself an air attack on the American fleet is described by Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff (1871–1935), writing under the name Parabellum, in his novel "Banzai!". Published in Berlin in 1908, it was translated into English the following year. An Australian author using the pseudonym Charles H. Kirmess first serialised his "The Commonwealth Crisis" and then revised it for book publication as "The Australian Crisis" in 1909. It is set in 1912 and told from the standpoint of 1922, following a military invasion of Australia's Northern Territory and colonisation by Japanese settlers.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Most Russian fictional accounts of the war had a documentary element. Alexey Novikov-Priboy served in the Baltic Fleet and wrote about the conflict on his return, but his early work was suppressed. It was not until the changed political climate under Soviet rule that he began writing his historical epic "Tsushima", based on his own experiences on board the battleship as well as on testimonies of fellow sailors and government archives. The first part was published in 1932, the second in 1935, and the whole novel was later awarded the Stalin Prize. It describes the heroism of Russian sailors and certain officers whose defeat, in accordance with the new Soviet thinking, was due to the criminal negligence of the Imperial Naval command. A German novel by Frank Thiess, originally published as "Tsushima" in 1936 (and later translated as "The Voyage of Forgotten Men"), covered the same journey round the world to defeat.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: Later there appeared a first-hand account of the siege of Port Arthur by Alexander Stepanov (1892–1965). He had been present there as the 12-year-old son of a battery commander and his novel, "Port Arthur: a historical narrative" (1944), is based on his own diaries and his father's notes. The work is considered one of the best historical novels of the Soviet period. A later novel in which the war appears is Valentin Pikul's "The Three Ages of Okini-San" (1981). Centred on the life of Vladimir Kokovtsov, who rose through the ranks to admiral of the Russian fleet, it covers the period from the Russo-Japanese War through to the February and October Revolutions. A much later Russian genre novel uses the period of the war as background. This is Boris Akunin's "The Diamond Chariot" (2003), in the first part of which the detective Erast Fandorin is charged with protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage.


title: Russo-Japanese War

text: The main historical novel dealing with the war from the Japanese side is Shiba Ryōtarō's "Clouds Above the Hill", published serially in several volumes between 1968 and 1972, and translated in English in 2013. The closely researched story spans the decade from the Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War and went on to become the nation's favourite book.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Chiwetel Umeadi Ejiofor ( ; born 10 July 1977) is a British actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, an NAACP Image Award, and nominations for an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: After enrolling at the National Youth Theatre in 1995 and attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, at age 19 and three months into his course, Ejiofor was cast by Steven Spielberg to play a supporting role in the film "Amistad" (1997) as James Covey.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor portrayed the characters Okwe in "Dirty Pretty Things" (2002), Lola in "Kinky Boots", Victor Sweet in "Four Brothers", The Operative in "Serenity" (all 2005), Luke in "Children of Men" (2006), Thabo Mbeki in "Endgame", Adrian Helmsley in Roland Emmerich's "2012" (both 2009), Darryl Peabody in "Salt" (2010), Solomon Northup in "12 Years a Slave" (2013), Vincent Kapoor in Ridley Scott's "The Martian" (2015), Karl Mordo in "Doctor Strange" (2016) and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (2022), and Trywell Kamkwamba in "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" (2019). He voiced Dr. Watson in "Sherlock Gnomes" (2018) and Scar in the 2019 remake of "The Lion King" and featured in the fantasy film "". For "12 Years a Slave", he received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations, along with the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for a 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his performance on "Dancing on the Edge". In 2022, he played the lead role in the Showtime science fiction television series "The Man Who Fell to Earth".


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He was elevated to Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 Birthday Honours.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor was born on 10 July 1977 in Forest Gate, east London, to middle-class Nigerian parents of Igbo descent. His father, Arinze, was a doctor, and his mother, Obiajulu, was a pharmacist. His younger sister, Zain, is a CNN correspondent. His other sister Kandi is a GP doctor.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 1988, when Ejiofor was 11, during a family trip to Nigeria for a wedding, he and his father were driving to Lagos after the celebrations when their car was involved in a head-on crash with a lorry. His father was killed, and Ejiofor was badly injured, receiving scars that are still visible on his forehead.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor began acting in school plays at his junior school, Dulwich Prep London (known at the time as 'Dulwich College Preparatory School'), where he played the gravedigger in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet". He continued acting at his senior school, Dulwich College and joined the National Youth Theatre. He got into the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art but left after his first year, after being cast in Steven Spielberg's film "Amistad". He played the title role in "Othello" at the Bloomsbury Theatre in September 1995, and again at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, in 1996, when he starred opposite Rachael Stirling as Desdemona.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor made his film debut in the television film "Deadly Voyage" (1996). He went on to become a stage actor in London. In Steven Spielberg's "Amistad", he gave support to Djimon Hounsou's Cinque as interpreter Ensign James Covey. In 1999, he appeared in the British film "". In 2000, he starred in "Blue/Orange" at the Royal National Theatre (Cottesloe stage), and later at the Duchess Theatre. That same year, his performance as Romeo in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" was nominated for the Ian Charleson Award. Ejiofor was awarded the Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer at the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards in 2000. For his performance in "Blue/Orange", Ejiofor received the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer in 2000 and a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2001.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor had his first leading film role playing Nicky Burkett in Jeremy Cameron's "It Was an Accident" (2000). In 2002, he starred in "Dirty Pretty Things", for which he won a British Independent Film Award for best actor. In the following year, he was part of the ensemble cast of "Love Actually", starred in a BBC adaptation of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" and also starred on the BBC series "Trust". Also in 2003, he starred in the lead role of Augustus in the radio production of Rita Dove's poetic drama "The Darker Face of the Earth", which premiered on the BBC World Service on 23 August of that year, marking the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. He starred alongside Hilary Swank in "Red Dust" (2004), portraying the fictional politician Alex Mpondo of post-apartheid South Africa.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: He played the central role of Prince Alamayou in Peter Spafford's radio play "I Was a Stranger", broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 May 2004, and he played the god Dionysus, alongside Paul Scofield's Cadmus and Diana Rigg's Agave, in Andrew Rissik's play, "Dionysus", based upon Euripides' "Bacchae", also broadcast by the BBC. He also received acclaim for his performance as a complex antagonist The Operative in the film "Serenity" (2005). Ejiofor played a revolutionary in the film "Children of Men" (2006). His singing and acting performance in "Kinky Boots" received a Golden Globe Award and British Independent Film Award nomination. He was also nominated for the BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award in 2006, which recognises emerging British film talent. Ejiofor's performance in "" received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film in 2007.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2007, Ejiofor starred opposite Don Cheadle in "Talk to Me", a film based on the true story of Ralph "Petey" Greene (played by Cheadle), an African-American radio personality in the 1960s and 1970s. He performed on stage in "The Seagull" at the Royal Court Theatre from 18 January to 17 March 2007, then later that year reprised his role as Othello at the Donmar Warehouse, alongside Kelly Reilly as Desdemona and Ewan McGregor as Iago. The production received favourable reviews, with particularly strong praise for Ejiofor. "Chiwetel Ejiofor produces one of the most memorable performances of Othello in recent years". He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance. He also narrated the BBC television film "Partition: The Day India Burned" (2007), which was based on the Partition of India. He starred as Mike Terry in the 2008 cult film "Redbelt" that received favourable reviews.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. In the same year, he made his directorial debut in the short film "Slapper", which he also wrote, based on an idea by editor/director Yusuf Pirhasan. Ejiofor appeared alongside John Cusack in the film "2012" (2009). The film went on to gross over $700 million, and is among the list of highest-grossing films of all time and placing 5th of top films of 2009. He played CIA officer Darryl Peabody in "Salt" (2010), and the Golden Globe Award-nominated leading role of band creator Louis Lester on the BBC Two drama series "Dancing on the Edge" (2013), which played on Starz in the United States.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2013, Ejiofor took on the role of Solomon Northup in "12 Years a Slave". The film was based on Northup's memoir, edited in 1968 by historians Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, of Northup's experience as a free black man in New York, who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. On casting, director Steve McQueen said:Chiwetel Ejiofor was always going to be Solomon Northup for me. I was looking for someone that had that genteelness, that kind of humanity. Knowing that humanity was going to be tested under certain duress and circumstances, I needed a person who could actually keep hold of that, even through periods of extraordinary trying and extraordinary situations where it would be tested to its absolute limit. He was the only person.At the Toronto International Film Festival, Ejiofor said he briefly hesitated about playing Northup. "You wait all your life for a great script to come through the door. You're hassling your agent and all that, and then it comes and you read it and your first reaction surprises you. Your first reaction being, 'Can I do this?'" He accepted the role about 24 hours later. As part of his preparation, Ejiofor learned to play the violin, collected slave stories, maintained a slave's edge up hairstyle, and engaged in some of the physical labour that Northup did like picking cotton. Since he had not worked with McQueen before, Ejiofor also observed the working dynamic between the director and co-star Michael Fassbender, who worked with McQueen on "Hunger" (2008) and "Shame" (2011). On playing Northup, Ejiofor did feel a responsibility, not being American, to get the story of Solomon Northup as current he could, adding "I've been very grateful to show the film to his descendants and see them be so proud of it."


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: "12 Years a Slave" opened to wide acclaim, with many critics citing Ejiofor's performance and declaring him an almost-certain Academy Award nominee for Best Actor. From Owen Gleiberman at "Entertainment Weekly": "It is Chiwetel Ejiofor's extraordinary performance that holds the movie together, and that allows us to watch it without blinking. He plays Solomon with a powerful inner strength, yet he never soft-pedals the silent nightmare that is Solomon's daily existence." From Christopher Orr at "The Atlantic": "Ejiofor has given notable performances in the past ("Dirty Pretty Things", "Serenity", "Talk to Me"), but this is by far his most essential role to date. Stoic, watchful, compromising himself just enough to stay alive, he is the point of stillness and decency around which spin the madnesses of the film." In his "The Hollywood Reporter" review, Todd McCarthy wrote, "Ejiofor is terrific in a demanding character who's put through the wringer physically, mentally and emotionally." On 16 January 2014, Ejiofor was officially nominated for Best Actor for the 86th Academy Awards on 2 March.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: As of September 2013, Ejiofor was slated to portray Patrice Lumumba in a film adaptation of Aimé Césaire's "A Season in the Congo", a role in which he had performed on stage at the Young Vic. Joe Wright, who directed the play, was to also direct the film.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: It was announced in June 2014 that Ejiofor would play real-life drug dealer Thomas McFadden in film based on the book "Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail", written by McFadden and Australian journalist Rusty Young. In 2016, Ejiofor co-starred with his friend Benedict Cumberbatch and played Karl Mordo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film "Doctor Strange". That same year, it was announced that he would play Peter in the upcoming film "Mary Magdalene", written by Helen Edmundson and directed by Garth Davis.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: On 1 November 2017, he was officially chosen for the role of Scar for the computer animated remake, "The Lion King" (2019) directed by Jon Favreau. Played by Jeremy Irons in the 1994 animated film, Ejiofor described Scar as more "psychologically possessed" and "brutalized" than in the original. Ejiofor stated, "especially with Scar, whether it's a vocal quality that allows for a certain confidence or a certain aggression, to always know that at the end of it you're playing somebody who has the capacity to turn everything on its head in a split second with outrageous acts of violence – that can completely change the temperature of a scene." He also said that "[Scar and Mufasa's] relationship is completely destroyed and brutalized by Scar's way of thinking. He's possessed with this disease of his own ego and his own want." Favreau said of casting Ejiofor, "[He] is just a fantastic actor, who brings us a bit of the mid-Atlantic cadence and a new take on the character. He brings that feeling of a Shakespearean villain to bear because of his background as an actor. It's wonderful when you have somebody as experienced and seasoned as Chiwetel; he just breathes such wonderful life into this character." Ejiofor narrated the 2019 documentary film "The Elephant Queen".


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2019, Ejiofor made his feature directorial debut with "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", adapted from the memoir of the same name from William Kamkwamba, about a boy who built a wind-powered water pump in Malawi. In 2022, Ejiofor returned to the role of Mordo for the sequel film "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness".


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2015, Ejiofor was honoured with a Global Promise Award by The GEANCO Foundation, a non-profit welfare organisation in West Africa, for his charity work in Nigeria.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: On 12 September 2016, Ejiofor, as well as Cate Blanchett, Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Capaldi, Douglas Booth, Neil Gaiman, Keira Knightley, Juliet Stevenson, Kit Harington and Stanley Tucci, featured in a video from the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR to help raise awareness of the global refugee crisis. The video, titled "What They Took With Them", has the actors reading a poem, written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of real refugees, and is part of UNHCR's #WithRefugees campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities, and education. Ejiofor is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: Ejiofor is the recipient of several awards, including numerous nominations in the Best Actor category for his role as Solomon Northup in the 2013 biographical drama film "12 Years a Slave", of which he won the AACTA International, BAFTA, BET, Black Reel awards, in addition to several critical accolades. His other acclaimed roles include: as Othello in a 2007 Donmar Warehouse production of the play of the same name, which won him the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor; as geologist Adrian Helmsley in the 2009 apocalyptic disaster blockbuster "2012", which garnered worldwide commercial success, with a box-office growth of over 769 million dollars (the fifth-highest of any film that year and the highest for its week of release), which earned him nominations for a Black Reel and NAACP Image Award; as Louis Lester in the BBC miniseries "Dancing on the Edge" (2013), for which he was nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Satellite award for outstanding lead actor in a miniseries or movie, and won a ; as the narrator of the 2018 Apple TV+ documentary film "The Elephant Queen", for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator; and as the director and screenwriter of the 2019 British drama film "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", which saw him receive nominations for the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Screenwriter, two British Independent Film Awards (Best Supporting Actor and Best Debut Director), the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize―winning the latter two.


title: Chiwetel Ejiofor

text: In 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He was elevated to Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 Birthday Honours.


title: Inflation

text: In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money. The opposite of inflation is deflation, a sustained decrease in the general price level of goods and services. The common measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index. As prices do not all increase at the same rate, the consumer price index (CPI) is often used for this purpose. The employment cost index is also used for wages in the United States.


title: Inflation

text: Most economists agree that high levels of inflation as well as hyperinflation—which have severely disruptive effects on the real economy—are caused by persistent excessive growth in the money supply. Views on low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities. Moderate inflation affects economies in both positive and negative ways. The negative effects would include an increase in the opportunity cost of holding money, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, and if inflation were rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include reducing unemployment due to nominal wage rigidity, allowing the central bank greater freedom in carrying out monetary policy, encouraging loans and investment instead of money hoarding, and avoiding the inefficiencies associated with deflation.


title: Inflation

text: Today, most economists favour a low and steady rate of inflation. Low (as opposed to zero or negative) inflation reduces the severity of economic recessions by enabling the labor market to adjust more quickly in a downturn and reduces the risk that a liquidity trap prevents monetary policy from stabilizing the economy, while avoiding the costs associated with high inflation. The task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is usually given to monetary authorities. Generally, these monetary authorities are the central banks that control monetary policy through the setting of interest rates, by carrying out open market operations and (more rarely) changing commercial bank reserve requirements.


title: Inflation

text: The term originates from the Latin "inflare" (to blow into or inflate) and was initially used in America in 1838 with regard to inflating the currency. The term was used "not in reference to something that happens to prices, but as something that happens to a paper currency". The resulting imbalance between the quantity of money and the amount needed for trade caused prices to increase. Over time, the term "inflation" has evolved to refer to increases in the price level; an increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation to distinguish it from rising prices, which for clarity may be called "price inflation".


title: Inflation

text: Conceptually, inflation refers to the general trend of prices, not changes in any specific price. For example, if people choose to buy more cucumbers than tomatoes, cucumbers consequently become more expensive and tomatoes cheaper. These changes are not related to inflation; they reflect a shift in tastes. Inflation is related to the value of currency itself. When currency was linked with gold, if new gold deposits were found, the price of gold and the value of currency would fall, and consequently, prices of all other goods would become higher.


title: Inflation

text: By the nineteenth century, economists categorised three separate factors that cause a rise or fall in the price of goods: a change in the "value" or production costs of the good, a change in the "price of money" which then was usually a fluctuation in the commodity price of the metallic content in the currency, and "currency depreciation" resulting from an increased supply of currency relative to the quantity of redeemable metal backing the currency. Following the proliferation of private banknote currency printed during the American Civil War, the term "inflation" started to appear as a direct reference to the "currency depreciation" that occurred as the quantity of redeemable banknotes outstripped the quantity of metal available for their redemption. At that time, the term inflation referred to the devaluation of the currency, and not to a rise in the price of goods. This relationship between the over-supply of banknotes and a resulting depreciation in their value was noted by earlier classical economists such as David Hume and David Ricardo, who would go on to examine and debate what effect a currency devaluation (later termed "monetary inflation") has on the price of goods (later termed "price inflation", and eventually just "inflation").


title: Inflation

text: Other economic concepts related to inflation include: deflationa fall in the general price level; disinflationa decrease in the rate of inflation; hyperinflationan out-of-control inflationary spiral; stagflationa combination of inflation, slow economic growth and high unemployment; reflationan attempt to raise the general level of prices to counteract deflationary pressures; and asset price inflationa general rise in the prices of financial assets without a corresponding increase in the prices of goods or services; agflationan advanced increase in the price for food and industrial agricultural crops when compared with the general rise in prices.


title: Inflation

text: More specific forms of inflation refer to sectors whose prices vary semi-independently from the general trend. “House price inflation” applies to changes in the house price index while “energy inflation” is dominated by the costs of oil and gas.


title: Inflation

text: Inflation presupposes the establishment of money, which arose as an unanticipated social construct over a period of perhaps 2500 years as a result of a variety of innovations and advancements. It reached its peak with the advent of coinage in Lydia and Ionia around 630 BC, as well as in China around the same time. This indicates that inflation could not be older than money.


title: Inflation

text: Historically, when commodity money was used, periods of inflation and deflation would alternate depending on the condition of the economy. However, when large prolonged infusions of gold or silver into an economy occurred, this could lead to long periods of inflation.


title: Inflation

text: The adoption of fiat currency by many countries, from the 18th century onwards, made much larger variations in the supply of money possible. Rapid increases in the money supply have taken place a number of times in countries experiencing political crises, producing hyperinflationsepisodes of extreme inflation rates much higher than those observed in earlier periods of commodity money. The hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of Germany is a notable example. Currently, the hyperinflation in Venezuela is the highest in the world, with an annual inflation rate of 833,997% as of October 2018.


title: Inflation

text: Historically, inflations of varying magnitudes have occurred from the price revolution of the 16th century, which was driven by the flood of gold and particularly silver seized and mined by the Spaniards in Latin America, to the largest paper money inflation of all time in Hungary after World War II.


title: Inflation

text: However, since the 1980s, inflation has been held low and stable in countries with independent central banks. This has led to a moderation of the business cycle and a reduction in variation in most macroeconomic indicatorsan event known as the Great Moderation.


title: Inflation

text: Rapid increases in the quantity of money or in the overall money supply have occurred in many different societies throughout history, changing with different forms of money used. For instance, when silver was used as currency, the government could collect silver coins, melt them down, mix them with other metals such as copper or lead and reissue them at the same nominal value, a process known as debasement. At the ascent of Nero as Roman emperor in AD 54, the denarius contained more than 90% silver, but by the 270s hardly any silver was left. By diluting the silver with other metals, the government could issue more coins without increasing the amount of silver used to make them. When the cost of each coin is lowered in this way, the government profits from an increase in seigniorage. This practice would increase the money supply but at the same time the relative value of each coin would be lowered. As the relative value of the coins becomes lower, consumers would need to give more coins in exchange for the same goods and services as before. These goods and services would experience a price increase as the value of each coin is reduced.


title: Inflation

text: Song Dynasty China introduced the practice of printing paper money to create fiat currency. During the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the government spent a great deal of money fighting costly wars, and reacted by printing more money, leading to inflation. Fearing the inflation that plagued the Yuan dynasty, the Ming Dynasty initially rejected the use of paper money, and reverted to using copper coins.


title: Inflation

text: During the Malian king Mansa Musa's hajj to Mecca in 1324, he was reportedly accompanied by a camel train that included thousands of people and nearly a hundred camels. When he passed through Cairo, he spent or gave away so much gold that it depressed its price in Egypt for over a decade, reducing its purchasing power. A contemporary Arab historian remarked about Mansa Musa's visit:


title: Inflation

text: From the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 17th, Western Europe experienced a major inflationary cycle referred to as the "price revolution", with prices on average rising perhaps sixfold over 150 years. This is often attributed to the influx of gold and silver from the New World into Habsburg Spain, with wider availability of silver in previously cash-starved Europe causing widespread inflation. European population rebound from the Black Death began before the arrival of New World metal, and may have began a process of inflation that New World silver compounded later in the 16th century.


title: Inflation

text: Given that there are many possible measures of the price level, there are many possible measures of price inflation. Most frequently, the term "inflation" refers to a rise in a broad price index representing the overall price level for goods and services in the economy. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Personal consumption expenditures price index (PCEPI) and the GDP deflator are some examples of broad price indices. However, "inflation" may also be used to describe a rising price level within a narrower set of assets, goods or services within the economy, such as commodities (including food, fuel, metals), tangible assets (such as real estate), services (such as entertainment and health care), or labor. Although the values of capital assets are often casually said to "inflate," this should not be confused with inflation as a defined term; a more accurate description for an increase in the value of a capital asset is appreciation. The FBI (CCI), the Producer Price Index, and Employment Cost Index (ECI) are examples of narrow price indices used to measure price inflation in particular sectors of the economy. Core inflation is a measure of inflation for a subset of consumer prices that excludes food and energy prices, which rise and fall more than other prices in the short term. The Federal Reserve Board pays particular attention to the core inflation rate to get a better estimate of long-term future inflation trends overall.


title: Inflation

text: The inflation rate is most widely calculated by determining the movement or change in a price index, typically the consumer price index.


title: Inflation

text: The inflation rate is the percentage change of a price index over time. The Retail Prices Index is also a measure of inflation that is commonly used in the United Kingdom. It is broader than the CPI and contains a larger basket of goods and services.


title: Inflation

text: Given the recent high inflation, the RPI is indicative of the experiences of a wide range of household types, particularly low-income households.


title: Inflation

text: To illustrate the method of calculation, in January 2007, the U.S. Consumer Price Index was 202.416, and in January 2008 it was 211.080. The formula for calculating the annual percentage rate inflation in the CPI over the course of the year is: formula_1


title: Inflation

text: The resulting inflation rate for the CPI in this one-year period is 4.28%, meaning the general level of prices for typical U.S. consumers rose by approximately four percent in 2007.


title: Inflation

text: Measuring inflation in an economy requires objective means of differentiating changes in nominal prices on a common set of goods and services, and distinguishing them from those price shifts resulting from changes in value such as volume, quality, or performance. For example, if the price of a can of corn changes from $0.90 to $1.00 over the course of a year, with no change in quality, then this price difference represents inflation. This single price change would not, however, represent general inflation in an overall economy. To measure overall inflation, the price change of a large "basket" of representative goods and services is measured. This is the purpose of a price index, which is the combined price of a "basket" of many goods and services. The combined price is the sum of the weighted prices of items in the "basket". A weighted price is calculated by multiplying the unit price of an item by the number of that item the average consumer purchases. Weighted pricing is a necessary means to measuring the effect of individual unit price changes on the economy's overall inflation. The Consumer Price Index, for example, uses data collected by surveying households to determine what proportion of the typical consumer's overall spending is spent on specific goods and services, and weights the average prices of those items accordingly. Those weighted average prices are combined to calculate the overall price. To better relate price changes over time, indexes typically choose a "base year" price and assign it a value of 100. Index prices in subsequent years are then expressed in relation to the base year price. While comparing inflation measures for various periods one has to take into consideration the base effect as well.


title: Inflation

text: Inflation measures are often modified over time, either for the relative weight of goods in the basket, or in the way in which goods and services from the present are compared with goods and services from the past. Basket weights are updated regularly, usually every year, to adapt to changes in consumer behavior. Sudden changes in consumer behavior can still introduce a weighting bias in inflation measurement. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic it has been shown that the basket of goods and services was no longer representative of consumption during the crisis, as numerous goods and services could no longer be consumed due to government containment measures (“lock-downs”).


title: Inflation

text: Over time, adjustments are also made to the type of goods and services selected to reflect changes in the sorts of goods and services purchased by 'typical consumers'. New products may be introduced, older products disappear, the quality of existing products may change, and consumer preferences can shift. Both the sorts of goods and services which are included in the "basket" and the weighted price used in inflation measures will be changed over time to keep pace with the changing marketplace. Different segments of the population may naturally consume different "baskets" of goods and services and may even experience different inflation rates. It is argued that companies have put more innovation into bringing down prices for wealthy families than for poor families.


title: Inflation

text: Inflation numbers are often seasonally adjusted to differentiate expected cyclical cost shifts. For example, home heating costs are expected to rise in colder months, and seasonal adjustments are often used when measuring for inflation to compensate for cyclical spikes in energy or fuel demand. Inflation numbers may be averaged or otherwise subjected to statistical techniques to remove statistical noise and volatility of individual prices.


title: Inflation

text: When looking at inflation, economic institutions may focus only on certain kinds of prices, or "special indices", such as the core inflation index which is used by central banks to formulate monetary policy.


title: Inflation

text: Most inflation indices are calculated from weighted averages of selected price changes. This necessarily introduces distortion, and can lead to legitimate disputes about what the true inflation rate is. This problem can be overcome by including all available price changes in the calculation, and then choosing the median value. In some other cases, governments may intentionally report false inflation rates; for instance, during the presidency of Cristina Kirchner (2007–2015) the government of Argentina was criticised for manipulating economic data, such as inflation and GDP figures, for political gain and to reduce payments on its inflation-indexed debt.


title: Inflation

text: Inflation expectations or expected inflation is the rate of inflation that is anticipated for some time in the foreseeable future. There are two major approaches to modeling the formation of inflation expectations. Adaptive expectations models them as a weighted average of what was expected one period earlier and the actual rate of inflation that most recently occurred. Rational expectations models them as unbiased, in the sense that the expected inflation rate is not systematically above or systematically below the inflation rate that actually occurs.


title: Inflation

text: Inflation expectations affect the economy in several ways. They are more or less built into nominal interest rates, so that a rise (or fall) in the expected inflation rate will typically result in a rise (or fall) in nominal interest rates, giving a smaller effect if any on real interest rates. In addition, higher expected inflation tends to be built into the rate of wage increases, giving a smaller effect if any on the changes in real wages. Moreover, the response of inflationary expectations to monetary policy can influence the division of the effects of policy between inflation and unemployment (see Monetary policy credibility).


title: Inflation

text: Historically, a great deal of economic literature was concerned with the question of what causes inflation and what effect it has. There were different schools of thought as to the causes of inflation; most historical theories can be divided into two broad areas: *quality* theories of inflation and *quantity* theories of inflation. The quality theory of inflation rests on the expectation of a seller accepting currency to be able to exchange that currency at a later time for goods they desire as a buyer. The quantity theory of inflation rests on the quantity equation of money that relates the money supply, its velocity, and the nominal value of exchanges.


title: Inflation

text: Currently, the quantity theory of money is widely accepted as an accurate model of inflation in the long run. Consequently, there is now broad agreement among economists that in the long run, the inflation rate is essentially dependent on the growth rate of the money supply relative to the growth of the economy. However, in the short and medium term inflation may be affected by supply and demand pressures in the economy, and influenced by the relative elasticity of wages, prices and interest rates.


title: Inflation

text: The question of whether the short-term effects last long enough to be important is the central topic of debate between monetarist and Keynesian economists. In monetarism prices and wages adjust quickly enough to make other factors merely marginal behavior on a general trend-line. In the Keynesian view, prices and wages adjust at different rates, and these differences have enough effects on real output to be "long term" in the view of people in an economy.


title: Inflation

text: Keynesian economics proposes that changes in the money supply do not directly affect prices in the short run, and that visible inflation is the result of demand pressures in the economy expressing themselves in prices.


title: Inflation

text: There are three major sources of inflation, as part of what Robert J. Gordon calls the "triangle model":


title: Inflation

text: Demand-pull theory states that inflation accelerates when aggregate demand increases beyond the ability of the economy to produce (its potential output). Hence, any factor that increases aggregate demand can cause inflation. However, in the long run, aggregate demand can be held above productive capacity only by increasing the quantity of money in circulation faster than the real growth rate of the economy. Another (although much less common) cause can be a rapid decline in the "demand" for money, as happened in Europe during the Black Death, or in the Japanese occupied territories just before the defeat of Japan in 1945.


title: Inflation

text: The effect of money on inflation is most obvious when governments finance spending in a crisis, such as a civil war, by printing money excessively. This sometimes leads to hyperinflation, a condition where prices can double in a month or even daily. The money supply is also thought to play a major role in determining moderate levels of inflation, although there are differences of opinion on how important it is. For example, monetarist economists believe that the link is very strong; Keynesian economists, by contrast, typically emphasize the role of aggregate demand in the economy rather than the money supply in determining inflation. That is, for Keynesians, the money supply is only one determinant of aggregate demand.


title: Inflation

text: Some Keynesian economists also disagree with the notion that central banks fully control the money supply, arguing that central banks have little control, since the money supply adapts to the demand for bank credit issued by commercial banks. This is known as the theory of endogenous money, and has been advocated strongly by post-Keynesians as far back as the 1960s. This position is not universally acceptedbanks create money by making loans, but the aggregate volume of these loans diminishes as real interest rates increase. Thus, central banks can influence the money supply by making money cheaper or more expensive, thus increasing or decreasing its production.


title: Inflation

text: A fundamental concept in inflation analysis is the relationship between inflation and unemployment, called the Phillips curve. This model suggests that there is a trade-off between price stability and employment. Therefore, some level of inflation could be considered desirable to minimize unemployment. The Phillips curve model described the U.S. experience well in the 1960s but failed to describe the stagflation experienced in the 1970s. Thus, modern macroeconomics describes inflation using a Phillips curve that is able to shift due to such matters as supply shocks and structural inflation. The former refers to such events like the 1973 oil crisis, while the latter refers to the price/wage spiral and inflationary expectations implying that inflation is the new normal. Thus, the Phillips curve represents only the demand-pull component of the triangle model.


title: Inflation

text: Another concept of note is the potential output (sometimes called the "natural gross domestic product"), a level of GDP, where the economy is at its optimal level of production given institutional and natural constraints. (This level of output corresponds to the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, NAIRU, or the "natural" rate of unemployment or the full-employment unemployment rate.) If GDP exceeds its potential (and unemployment is below the NAIRU), the theory says that inflation will "accelerate" as suppliers increase their prices and built-in inflation worsens. If GDP falls below its potential level (and unemployment is above the NAIRU), inflation will "decelerate" as suppliers attempt to fill excess capacity, cutting prices and undermining built-in inflation.


title: Inflation

text: However, one problem with this theory for policy-making purposes is that the exact level of potential output (and of the NAIRU) is generally unknown and tends to change over time. Inflation also seems to act in an asymmetric way, rising more quickly than it falls. It can change because of policy: for example, high unemployment under British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher might have led to a rise in the NAIRU (and a fall in potential) because many of the unemployed found themselves as structurally unemployed, unable to find jobs that fit their skills. A rise in structural unemployment implies that a smaller percentage of the labor force can find jobs at the NAIRU, where the economy avoids crossing the threshold into the realm of accelerating inflation.


title: Inflation

text: A connection between inflation and unemployment has been drawn since the emergence of large scale unemployment in the 19th century, and connections continue to be drawn today. However, the unemployment rate generally only affects inflation in the short-term but not the long-term. In the long term, the velocity of money is far more predictive of inflation than low unemployment.


title: Inflation

text: In Marxian economics, the unemployed serve as a reserve army of labor, which restrain wage inflation. In the 20th century, similar concepts in Keynesian economics include the NAIRU (Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) and the Phillips curve.


title: Inflation

text: Keynesian price inelasticity can contribute to inflation when firms consolidate, tending to support monopoly or monopsony conditions anywhere along the supply chain for goods or services. When this occurs, firms can provide greater shareholder value by taking a larger proportion of profits than by investing in providing greater volumes of their outputs.


title: Inflation

text: Examples include the rise in gasoline and other fossil fuel prices in the first quarter of 2022. Shortly after initial energy price shocks caused by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine subsided, oil companies found that supply chain constrictions, already exacerbated by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, supported price inelasticity, i.e., they began lowering prices to match the price of oil when it fell much more slowly than they had increased their prices when costs rose. California's five largest gasoline companies, Chevron Corporation, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, PBF Energy, and Phillips 66, responsible for 96% of transportation fuel sold in the state, all participated in this behavior, reaping first quarter profits much larger than any of their quarterly results in the previous several years. On May 19, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to prevent such "price gouging" by addressing the resulting windfall profits, but it is unlikely to prevail against the minority filibuster challenge in the Senate.


title: Inflation

text: Similarly in the first quarter of 2022, meatpacking giant Tyson Foods relied on downward price inelasticity in packaged chicken and related products to increase their profits to about $500 million, responding to a $1.5 billion increase in their costs with almost $2 billion in price hikes. Tyson's three main competitors, having essentially no ability to compete on lower prices because supply chain constriction would not support an increase in volumes, followed suit. Tyson's quarter was one of their most profitable, expanding their operating margin 38%.


title: Inflation

text: If economic growth matches the growth of the money supply, inflation should not occur when all else is equal. A large variety of factors can affect the rate of both. For example, investment in market production, infrastructure, education, and preventive health care can all grow an economy in greater amounts than the investment spending.


title: Inflation

text: Monetarists believe the most significant factor influencing inflation or deflation is how fast the money supply grows or shrinks. They consider fiscal policy, or government spending and taxation, as ineffective in controlling inflation. The monetarist economist Milton Friedman famously stated, ""Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.""


title: Inflation

text: Monetarists assert that the empirical study of monetary history shows that inflation has always been a monetary phenomenon. The quantity theory of money, simply stated, says that any change in the amount of money in a system will change the price level. This theory begins with the equation of exchange:


title: Inflation

text: In this formula, the general price level is related to the level of real economic activity ("Q"), the quantity of money ("M") and the velocity of money ("V"). The formula is an identity because the velocity of money ("V") is defined to be the ratio of final nominal expenditure (formula_8) to the quantity of money ("M").


title: Inflation

text: Monetarists assume that the velocity of money is unaffected by monetary policy (at least in the long run), and the real value of output is determined in the long run by the productive capacity of the economy. Under these assumptions, the primary driver of the change in the general price level is changes in the quantity of money. With exogenous velocity (that is, velocity being determined externally and not being influenced by monetary policy), the money supply determines the value of nominal output (which equals final expenditure) in the short run.


title: Inflation

text: In practice, velocity is not exogenous in the short run, and so the formula does not necessarily imply a stable short-run relationship between the money supply and nominal output. However, in the long run, changes in velocity are assumed to be determined by the evolution of the payments mechanism. If velocity is relatively unaffected by monetary policy, the long-run rate of increase in prices (the inflation rate) is equal to the long-run growth rate of the money supply plus the exogenous long-run rate of velocity growth minus the long run growth rate of real output.


title: Inflation

text: Rational expectations theory holds that economic actors look rationally into the future when trying to maximize their well-being, and do not respond solely to immediate opportunity costs and pressures. In this view, while generally grounded in monetarism, future expectations and strategies are important for inflation as well.


title: Inflation

text: A core assertion of rational expectations theory is that actors will seek to "head off" central-bank decisions by acting in ways that fulfill predictions of higher inflation. This means that central banks must establish their credibility in fighting inflation, or economic actors will make bets that the central bank will expand the money supply rapidly enough to prevent recession, even at the expense of exacerbating inflation. Thus, if a central bank has a reputation as being "soft" on inflation, when it announces a new policy of fighting inflation with restrictive monetary growth economic agents will not believe that the policy will persist; their inflationary expectations will remain high, and so will inflation. On the other hand, if the central bank has a reputation of being "tough" on inflation, then such a policy announcement will be believed and inflationary expectations will come down rapidly, thus allowing inflation itself to come down rapidly with minimal economic disruption.


title: Inflation

text: The Austrian School stresses that inflation is not uniform over all assets, goods, and services. Inflation depends on differences in markets and on where newly created money and credit enter the economy. Ludwig von Mises said that inflation should refer to an increase in the quantity of money, that is not offset by a corresponding increase in the need for money, and that price inflation will necessarily follow, always leaving a poorer nation.