In the "century of humiliation" that President Xi Jinping often evokes for his goal of turning China into a great power, one particular episode resonates: The defeat of China's navy by Japan in 1894.

The Battle of Yalu in the Yellow Sea was a mortifying defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War, a conflict that China's leaders assumed they would win against a smaller, if recently modernized opponent.

China had better, newer guns. But its navy was furnished with shells that were either filled with cement or porcelain, or were simply the wrong caliber, S.C.M. Paine writes in "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy." To blame? Ordnance officials on the take.