What this meant in practical terms was that, though everyone had their pet theories and doctrines regarding warfare as it would be at the tail end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, given the rapid technological change in the 19th century it was all pretty much up in the air. There had been a long period of post-Napoleonic… not exactly “peace” per se, but the shying away of Great Powers from engaging in largescale warfare with one another.
So, the First Sino-Japanese War took place at a really interesting time in global history because it was, in some since at least akin to the Russo-Japanese War a decade after it, the “testing phase” of about a century of “armed peace” at the end of the 19th century.
