ABSTRACT
In 1901 the newly built 15,200-ton, ironclad battleship, Asahi, soon to be the pride of the Imperial Japanese navy, slipped down the Clyde from John Brown’s yard at Clydebank. It eventually fought with distinction in the Russo-Japanese War. I am not suggesting that Glasgow or its shipbuilders were the cause of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, far less of the RussoJapanese War. But shipbuilding in Glasgow was one element in a pattern of cooperation which developed between Britain and Japan and contributed with other factors to the creation of the Alliance.
