Even if it isn’t the most well-known war in the west, overshadowed by the events of a decade later, the Russo-Japanese war nevertheless led to the abortive 1905 revolution in Russia, the takeover of Korea by Japan, gave Theodore Roosevelt a Nobel Peace Prize, and laid some of the groundwork for the worldwide complications of WW1. I only wish there were a decent documentary about it on Youtube – aside from this short, stuffy clip, all I can find are insufferable animated explainers.
Hey! I actually found this contemporary wax cylinder recreation of the capture of port Arthur during the russo-japanese war http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?nq=1&query_type=call_number&query=4750 There was actually a lot of media buzz in the US about the war at the time