Outer Manchuria Russian Manchuria | |
|---|---|
 Outer Manchuria, north and east of the China-Russia border, shown in light red. | |
| Country |  Russia (since 1860)[1] |
| Federal subjects | |
| Named after | Manchuria |
| Area | |
• Total | 910,000 km2 (350,000 sq mi) |
| Demonym | Outer Manchurian |
Outer Manchuria,[3][4][1][2][5] sometimes calledRussian Manchuria, refers to a region inNortheast Asia that is now part of theRussian Far East[1] but historically formed part ofManchuria (until the mid-19th century). While Manchuria now more normatively refers toNortheast China, it originally included areas consisting ofPriamurye between the left bank ofAmur River and theStanovoy Range to the north, andPrimorskaya which covered the area in the right bank of bothUssuri River and the lower Amur River to thePacific Coast. The region was ruled by a series ofChinese dynasties and theMongol Empire, but control of the area was ceded to theRussian Empire byQing China during theAmur Annexation in the 1858Treaty of Aigun and 1860Treaty of Peking,[6] with the terms "Outer Manchuria" and "Russian Manchuria" arising after the Russian annexation.
Prior to its annexation by Russia, Outer Manchuria was predominantly inhabited by variousTungusic peoples who were categorized by the Han Chinese as "Wild Jurchens". TheEvenks,[1] who speak a closely relatedTungusic language toManchu, make up a significant part of the indigenous population today. When the region was a part of the Qing dynasty, a small population ofHan Chinese men migrated to Outer Manchuria and married the local Tungusic women. Their mixed descendants would emerge as a distinct ethnic group known as theTaz people.
"Manchuria" was coined in the 19th century to refer to the northeastern part of the Qing Empire, the traditional homeland of theManchu people. After theAmur Annexation by theRussian Empire, the ceded areas were known as "Outer Manchuria" or "Russian Manchuria".[1][7][8][9][10][11][better source needed] (Russian:Приаму́рье,romanized: Priamurye;[note 1]simplified Chinese:外满洲;traditional Chinese:外滿洲;pinyin:Wài Mǎnzhōu orsimplified Chinese:外东北;traditional Chinese:外東北;pinyin:Wài Dōngběi;lit. 'outer northeast').
Outer Manchuria comprises the modern-day Russian areas ofPrimorsky Krai, southernKhabarovsk Krai, theJewish Autonomous Oblast, theAmur Oblast and the island ofSakhalin.[9][12]: 338 (map)
In the 7th century, theTang dynasty built administrative and military outposts on the Amur and inSuchan. The region was later controlled by theParhae, a Korean-Manchu polity, during which time Korean communities were established in the region.[13]
The northern part of the area was disputed by Qing China and the Russian Empire, in the midst of the Russia'sFar East expansion, between 1643 and 1689. TheTreaty of Nerchinsk signed in 1689 after a series of conflicts, defined the Sino–Russian border as theStanovoy Mountains and theArgun River. When the Qing sent officials to erect boundary markers, the markers were set up far to the south of the agreed limits, ignoring some 23,000 square miles of territory.[12]: 38
In 1809, the Japanese government sent explorerMamiya Rinzō to Sakhalin and the region of the Amur to determine the extent of Russian influence and penetration.[12]: 334
Chang estimates that there were ten thousand Chinese and four to five thousand Koreans in the region during the 19th century. There might have been more than this number as well. The Qing had sent many of its political prisoners and criminals to exile in Manchuria beginning in 1644. This included all of the ethnic groups in China including Koreans.[14] Perhaps, the Han dynasties prior to the Qing did so as well.[13]: 74–77 [15]
To preserve theManchu character of Manchuria, the Qing dynasty discouragedHan Chinese settlement in Manchuria; nevertheless, there was significant Han Chinese migration into areas south of the Amur and west of the Ussuri.[12]: 332 By the mid-19th century, there were very few subjects of the Qing Empire living in the areas north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri,[12]: 333 and Qing authority in the area was seen as tenuous by the Russians.[12]: 336 Despite warnings, Qing authorities remained indecisive about how to respond to the Russian presence.[12]: 338–339 In 1856, the Russian military entered the area north of the Amur on a pretext of defending the area from France and the UK;[12]: 341 Russian settlers founded new towns and cut down forests in the region,[12]: 341 and the Russian government created a new maritime province,Primorskaya Oblast, including Sakhalin, the mouth of the Amur, and Kamchatka with its capital atNikolayevsk-on-Amur.[12]: 341 After losing theOpium Wars, Qing China was forced to sign a series of treaties that gave away territories and ports to various Western powers as well as to Russia and Japan; these were collectively known by the Chinese side[16] as theUnequal Treaties. Starting with the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and, in the wake of theSecond Opium War, the Treaty of Peking in 1860, the Sino–Russian border was realigned in Russia's favour along theAmur andUssuri rivers. As a result, China lost the region[12]: 348 that came to be known as Outer Manchuria or Russian Manchuria (an area of 350,000 square miles (910,000 km2)[2]) and access to theSea of Japan.[17][18][19] In the wake of these events, the Qing government changed course and encouraged Han Chinese migration to Manchuria (Chuang Guandong).[1][12]: 348
After 1860, Russian historians began to intentionally erase the histories and contributions of the Chinese and Koreans to the Russian Far East.[13]: 73–75 [20] The Russian historian, Semyon D. Anosov wrote, “In the 17th century, the Manchu-Tungus tribes living in the region were conquered by China and deported. Since then, the region has been deserted.”[21] Kim Syn Khva, a Soviet Korean historian and author ofEssays on the History of the Soviet Koreans [очерки по историй Советских корейтсев], wrote, "The first Korean migrants appeared in the southern Ussuri region when secretly 13 families came here fleeing Korea from unbearable poverty and famine" in 1863.[22]However, the historian, Jon K. Chang found Western sources, most notably Ernst G. Ravenstein'sThe Russians on the Amur and J.M. Tronson'sPersonal Narrative of a Voyage to Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, Tartary, and Various Parts of Coast of China: In H.M.S. Barracouta,[23] which detailed Chinese, Korean and Manchu settlements from Ternei to Vladivostok and Poset before 1863 (see small map below).
Both Ravenstein (1856-60) and Tronson (1854-56) explored the Russian Far East before 1860. Ravenstein's account notes the differences between Koreans and Chinese versus the Manchus in the region. The former prepared and sold trepangs according to Ravenstein. They (Chinese and Koreans) also raised crops and cattle and lived in small villages and settlements among their co-ethnics. Ravenstein was a German geographer, cartographer and ethnographer of some note. Tronson's account called all of the East Asians whether Chinese, Korean, Manchu or Tungusic peoples "Mantchu-Tartars." Chang also interviewed an elderly Soviet Korean grandmother in 2008, named Soon-Ok Li. Ms. Li stated that, "No one came from Korea. We have always lived inVondo [the Korean name for the Russian Far East]. Even my grandparents [Ms. Li was born in 1928] were born here."[13]
In 2016,Victor L. Larin, [ru] the director of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East inVladivostok, said that the fact that Russia had built the city "is a historical fact that cannot be rewritten", and that the notion that Vladivostok was ever a Chinese town is a "myth" based on a misreading of evidence that a few Chinese sometimes came to the area to fish and collectsea cucumbers.[24]
In 2024,Sergey Radchenko, a professor atJohns Hopkins SAIS known for his writings on Sino-Russian relations,[25] stated, "China fully recognizes Russia's sovereignty over these territories" (referring to the Russian Far East). He also called Taiwanese PresidentLai Ching-te "seriously misguided" for suggesting that China take back their "lost territories" rather than invade Taiwan.[26] The same yearMaria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for theRussian Foreign Ministry, said that "the mutual renunciation of territorial claims by Moscow and Beijing had been enshrined in the July 16, 2001, Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, with Moscow and Beijing putting border issues to bed once and for all by signing the Additional Agreement on the Eastern part of the Russia-China Border on October 14, 2004, and ratifying the document later. This position was confirmed in a number of other joint documents that China and Russia adopted at various levels, including at the highest one."[27]
Despite the potential for territorial claims coextensive with the Qing dynasty, Chinese leaders as of 2014 had not suggested that Mongolia and part of Outer or Russian Manchuria would be a legitimate objective.[10] In April 2023, US diplomatJohn Bolton speculated that China is "undoubtedly eyeing this vast territory, which potentially contains incalculable mineral wealth", referring toAsian Russia generally, further noting that "[s]ignificant portions of this region were under Chinese sovereignty until the 1860 Treaty of Peking".[5] However, two American historians, Jon K. Chang and Bruce A. Elleman, disagree with Larin, Radchenko and other Russian historians. Chang and Elleman note that in 1919 and 1920,Lev M. Karakhan, the Soviet deputy minister (also called "commissar") of foreign affairs, issued two legally binding "declarations" called theKarakhan Manifestos in which he promised to return to China all territories taken in Siberia and Manchuria during the Tsarist period and to return the Chinese Eastern Railway and other concessions. He signed his name on both documents as deputy minister of foreign affairs. To date, China has never renounced the offer of the two Karakhan Manifestos. During 1991 and 2004, there were border-treaties between Russia and China. The Karakhan Manifestos are not border treaties. They are unilateral, but legally binding offers of the return of territory to China.[28][29] Here are three excerpts from the first Karakhan Manifesto (I) according to the translated, English version published by Allen S. Whiting:
We bring help not only to our own labouring classes, but to the Chinese people too, and we once more remind them of what they have been told ever since the great October revolution of 1917, but which was perhaps concealed from them by the venal press of America, Europe, and Japan. ...
But the Chinese people, the Chinese workers and peasants, could not even learn the truth, could not find out the reason for this invasion by the American, European, and Japanese robbers of Manchuria and Siberia. ...
The Soviet Government has renounced the conquests made by the Tsarist Government which deprived China of Manchuria and other areas. ... The Soviet Government is well aware ... that the return to the Chinese people of what was taken from them requires first of all putting an end to the robber invasion of Manchuria and Siberia. The Karakhan Manifestos I and II are similar. Both promise to return "the conquests made by the Tsarist Government which deprived China of Manchuria and other areas."
— Whiting,Soviet Policies, pp. 269–271[30]
Today, there are reminders of the ancient Manchu domination in English-languagetoponyms: for example, theSikhote-Alin, the great coastal range; theKhanka Lake; the Amur and Ussuri rivers; theGreater Khingan,Lesser Khingan and other small mountain ranges; and theShantar Islands.
In 1973, the Soviet Union renamed several locations in the region that bore names of Chinese origin. Names affected includedPartizansk for Suchan;Dalnegorsk for Tetyukhe;Rudnaya Pristan for Tetyukhe‐Pristan;Dalnerechensk for Iman;Sibirtsevo for Mankovka; Gurskoye for Khungari; Cherenshany for Sinan cha; Rudny for Lifudzin; and Uglekamensk for Severny Suchan.[16][31]
On 14 February 2023, theMinistry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China relabelled eight cities and areas inside Russia in the region with Chinese names.[32][33] The eight names are Boli forKhabarovsk, Hailanpao forBlagoveshchensk, Haishenwai (Haishenwei) forVladivostok, Kuye forSakhalin, Miaojie forNikolayevsk-on-Amur, Nibuchu forNerchinsk, Outer Khingan (Outer Xing'an[34]) forStanovoy Range, and Shuangchengzi forUssuriysk.[35]
In the mid-19th century, the Qing government gave over (so-called) Outer Manchuria, where mostly non-Manchu Tungusic people dwelled, to the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Aigun (Aigun tiaoyue, 1858) and the (First) Convention of Peking (Beijing tiaoyue, 1860). ... The Convention of Peking, one of several unequal treaties, moreover assigned the parts in the East of the Ussuri River (Wusulijiang) to Russia. Outer Manchuria, also called Russian Manchuria was never claimed to be part of a Chinese nation-state. Today it belongs to the Russian Federation, is no longer referred to as Outer Manchuria, and is considered to be part of Siberia. Consequently, the name Manchuria refers only to Inner Manchuria today. In the following, I will refer to Inner Manchuria as Manchuria.
For these services Moscow exacted a staggering territorial price: a broad swath of territory in so-called Outer Manchuria along the Pacific coast, including the port city now called Vladivostok. In a stroke, Russia had gained a major new naval base, a foothold in the Sea of Japan, and 350,000 square miles of territory once considered Chinese.
New Russian leaders may or may not look to the West rather than Beijing, and might be so weak that the Russian Federation's fragmentation, especially east of the Urals, isn't inconceivable. Beijing is undoubtedly eyeing this vast territory, which potentially contains incalculable mineral wealth. Significant portions of this region were under Chinese sovereignty until the 1860 Treaty of Peking transferred 'outer Manchuria', including extensive Pacific coast lands, to Moscow.
Amoor, Territory of, a name applied to Russian Manchooria, or the region of Southeastern Siberia acquired from the Chinese and Japanese by the Russians since 1858. It is bounded on the N. by Siberia proper, on the E. by the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan, the coast being Russian as far S. as the river Toomen, which divides it from Corea (the island of Saghalin being now included); on the W. by Chinese Manchooria, the rivers Oosooree, Argoon, Soongaree, and Amoor forming (for the most part) the boundary; and on the N.W. by the government of Transbaikalia. Its area, 905,462 square miles, is over four times that of France. It is divided into the provinces of Amoor and Primorsk.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)