Ch 16 - The End of Asian Isolation

A Bear in the Woods

In the early 17th century, Russia's Romanov dynasty encouraged the exploration and colonization of eastern Siberia. Clashes with the newly established Qing dynasty in the Amur River basin led to the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which recognized the expanding Russian Empire as a state on equal footing with China, an accomplishment no other European power had achieved.

Having recently emerged from a period of chaotic internal disorders, foreign invasions, and a rapid succession of rulers, Russia was a shattered, disoriented and impoverished nation unsure of itself. Military campaigns against European powers had left much of central and southwestern Russia in ruins. Whole populations had fled many areas of the country leaving the land fallow. The Russian government was in disarray. In February 1613, the zemsky sobor, "assembly of the land," elected Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, the poorly educated 16-year-old son of Feodor Romanov, as the new leader of the Russian people. Mikhail was crowned first tsar of the Romanov Dynasty on July 21, 1613. Few expected a new tsar (the fourth in eight years) to bring an end to the turmoil, but Mikhail's election reflected a resolution of political conflicts that permitted a new coalition government to address the challenging problem of reconstruction.

It took the Romanov government over a decade to suppress internal uprisings, restore economic and social order and establish itself politically. Despite a rise in foreign trade and manufacturing, economic reconstruction was slow, particularly in agriculture. Russia needed new sources for revenue, growth and expansion. The British representative of London's Moscow Company had been interested in the Ob River in Siberia as early as 1611. When he asked for general business privileges for English merchants in Russia, he also asked for specific permission for British subjects to travel to Persia on the Volga River and to seek a route to China and India through the Ob. The Russian government refused the request, but offered instead to ask Siberian military governors to provide information about the proposed route.

On April 6, 1617, military commanders from Tomsk under the direction of Ivashko Petlin were sent on a mission to China. After following the Great Wall for ten days, the Petlin mission arrived in Beijing, "a very great city, white as snow, around which it took four days to travel." The Russians had no political or diplomatic authority, yet they were housed in the "Great Embassy Courtyard," traditional lodging for tribute missions to Beijing. When court officials questioned Petlin as to the purpose of his visit he explained he had been sent to China by the Russian tsar "to make inquiry as to the kingdom of China and to see the tsar (the Chinese emperor)." Although the issue of tribute was raised on many occassions during his visit, Petlin's inability to present "gifts" from the tsar to the Qing emperor as China's "tribute system" demanded prevented him from obtaining an imperial audience.

IIvashko Petlin's expedition to Beijing provided Russia with its first eyewitness account of China plus one curious political by-product:  a formal invitation written in the form of a letter from the Chinese emperor to the Russian tsar to trade with China. Petlin returned to Moscow with the letter, but its contents remained totally unknown until 1675, when the Russians finally found someone who could translate its contents. The letter described China's tribute system and appeared to be a clear expression of the communications and tributary relationship between "the exalted station of the Chinese emperor and the inferior one of the tsar." It also noted China's custom of never sending ambassadors abroad and the inability of its merchants to travel to foreign markets.

While European nations were expanding into East Asia by sea, Russia began to push eastward across the barren Siberian landscape in a drive to expand its continental frontiers. By 1620, tales and rumors of Siberia's vast wealth in fur, timber and precious metals had drawn Russian merchants and explorers far east of the Ural Mountains, across the Kazakh Uplands and the Irtysh River valley into the Yenisey River basin. The profitability of this eastward expansion prompted Tsar Mikhail Romanov to send expeditions further into Siberia to explore the land of Buryatskaya, which included the Angara River valley, the valleys of the Eastern Sayan Mountains and the Lake Baikal basin. The first expedition not only discovered a land with vast herds of horses, cows, sheep and camels and rich crops of barley and buckwheat, but that the Buryats, Mongol descendants of the legendary "Blue Wolf People," were eager to trade.

Far from the centers of imperial power, Russian authority in Siberia was enforced by the Cossacks, military troops whose behavior was at times little better than that of armed thugs. In a series of incursions between 1625 and 1627, Russian Cossacks swept into Bratskaya and built a number of small fortresses to protect expeditions further into eastern Siberia. Raids against Buryat settlements in 1628 terrorized the local population to such a degree that many abandoned their villages and resettled further south in territory under the control of the Manchu Chinese. Not even Siberia's vast wealth and the fact that fur pelts could be traded for Mongolian gold and silver could ease the inhospitable climate or the Russian's desperate need for food. The Cossacks expropriated large parcels of prime farmland from the Buryats and gave it to Russian settlers, many of whom were exiles from western Russia, some of whom were criminals.

Cossack horsemen pioneered the Russian push into eastern Siberia and opened many of the trails later used by early settlers. In 1632, the Cossack Peter Beketov of Krasnoyarsk and a group of Russian colonists established the settlement of Yakutsk on the Lena River. Yakutsk became the forward base of operations for the hunters and explorers who advanced Russian exploration eastward over the next few decades. Russian explorers, frequently accompanied by Cossacks, pushed deep into the vast Siberian wilderness in their search for gold, copper and silver, fertile land for agriculture, rich animal furs, timber, and new subjects for taxing. The Cossack Ivan Moskvitin arrived in Yakutsk in 1641 with news that his two year long expedition had reached the Sea of Okhotsk by land and discovered the mouth of a great river - the Amur. That same year, Maxim Perofilliev returned to Yakutsk after discovering the Shilka and Zeya River basins. He also reported meetings with a Mongol people related to the Manchus who told him of their visits to lands along the Amur River, a region of fertile grain fields and rich mineral resources. No one mentioned the fact that the inhabitants of this distant land lived under the umbrella of China's sphere of influence.

In 1643, the military commander of Yakutsk, perpetually in need of outside sources of grain, appointed the Cossack officer Vasily Poyarkov to lead an expedition into the Amur River basin to collect information about the rumored riches to be found there. Poyarkov was instructed to learn about relations between local natives and China, to determine whether Chinese officials ever visited the region and, if so, for what purpose. Poyarkov's expedition departed Yakutsk on July 15, 1643;  "Two days down Lena river, four weeks up Aldan river, ten days up Uchur, and five last weeks up Gonom river." After reaching the Stanovoy mountains, the expedition split into two groups. Forty-two men spent the winter in the Stanovoy with supplies, while Poyarkov and ninety men crossed the mountains and continued on to the Zeya River. The two groups rejoined the following spring and moved into the Amur river basin, having lost over half the expedition to the harsh Siberian winter.

Poyarkov's pioneers followed the Amur to its mouth, discovered the existence of the mysterious Sakhalin Island, then turned north along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk to the mouth of the Ulya River. After leaving 20 Cossacks at the Ulya River for the "management of aborigines," the surviving members of the expedition returned to Yakutsk, arriving on June 12, 1646. Vasily Poyarkov provided a first-hand report about the Amur River and its resources and demonstrated that the Aldan-Zeya river route was unsuited to mass Russian immigration to the Amur region, or for transporting grain from the region. The problem of geographic access to the Amur had to be solved before any thought could be given to exploiting the area's rich natural resources. The principal result of this unprecedented Cossack journey was the belief that the "inhabitants of those lands do not belong to anybody ...[therefore] ..."they should belong to the Russian sovereign." This first Russian foray into the Amur River basin produced another, less obvious result. It alienated local inhabitants along the Amur River and warned the Manchus of the Russian approach, enabling the Manchus to take steps to stop the foreign invasion.

By now, Vasily Poyarkov's exploits were big news in eastern Russia. When Erofei Pavlovich Khabarov, a rugged pioneer, asked for permission to head a new expedition into the Amur basin, Yakutsk Governor Dmitry Frantzbeckov granted the request, but refused to finance the trip. Undaunted, Khabarov recruited some 100 hunters and purchased needed supplies out of his own pocket. Departing Yakutsk in May 1649, Khabarov followed the Lena and Olekma rivers south, where local natives showed him a shortcut into the Amur basin. In 1650, before continuing his explorations, Khabarov established a Russian fortress at Albazin on the bank of the Amur River, the site of an earlier settlement of Daurian Prince Albaza. That summer, he led his expedition along the banks of the Amur River, all the while mapping the Amur and its many tributaries, subduing local peoples to the Russian empire and confirming Russian claims to the land.

Khabarov's expedition started down the Amur River on September 7, 1650. The expedition continued past the mouth of the Sungari River and into the territory of the Achans. The local inhabitants, mostly fishermen, appeared friendly at first, unable to comprehend that this was not merely a local raid on their territory, but the forerunner of a concerted Russian attempt to colonize the Amur River basin. In October, a force of between 800 and 1,000 Manchus conducted a night raid against the Russians at the village of Wu-cha-la, killing ten and wounding seventy-eight. Superior weapons and tactics won the fight however, and 676 Manchu fighters were killed before they withdrew from the battle. The fighting marked but a first step in the developing Manchu response to Russian incursions in the Amur River basin.

The Manchus won a victory of sorts. The mere presence of Manchu troops in the area restricted Russian movement and prevented the Cossacks from venturing too far into hostile territory. It also forced the Russians to adopt a new strategy that focused more on colonization. Erofei Khabarov realized that the Manchu attack was no isolated incident and that Russia could not consolidate its position in the region without a large, well-supplied military force. In the summer of 1653, a 3,000-man Cossack army unit arrived in the Amur region to enforce Russian authority, to persuade the locals to cultivate the land for army supplies and, not incidentally, to reinforce Moscow's interest in Amur territory. The army also brought iron ploughs and seeds of Russian grain to begin a new life on the virgin lands of the Far East. According to Khabarov, "There will be rich fields... and this be a place of greater Beauty and plenty than in all Siberia."

Until the 1650s, the expansion of Russian power across Siberia met little resistance. Without interference from foreign interests, Russian explorers made a number of remarkable discoveries between 1640 and 1689, including the rugged volcanic Kamchatka Peninsula, the barren wastelands of the Chukchi Peninsula and the mountainous coastal regions extending from the Sea of Okhotsk to the East Sea, all of which was brought to the attention of the Russian government. The Amur River valley presented a far more complex situation however, since south of the river the great Qing Empire was reaching the height of its power and its many domains included, even if only marginally, the lands occupied by natives of the Amur River basin. Any repetition of the tactics employed by Poyarkov and Khabarov, though successful in Siberia, would only force the Manchus to strengthen their resolve to protect their subjects and interests in the area.

The Cossack Onufri Stepanov replaced Khabarov in the Amur basin and was joined a few months later by the Cossack leader Peter Beketov, the founder of Yakutsk. Between 1656 and 1658, the Russians continued their occasional raids along the Amur River, looting local villages and collecting tribute from the natives. They gradually reinforced their presence along the Amur as far as Kumarsk, a fortress established earlier by Khabarov just below the mouth of the Sungari River. In 1658, Peter Beketov established the Russian fortress of Nerchinsk at the mouth of the Nerch River. As trade increased and the conflicts between Buryats and Russians eased, Russian peasants, hunters, fishermen, and artisans began migrating to the area.

The Manchus continued to resist Russian advances in the Amur basin. In June 1658, Onufrei Stepanov and a detachment of 270 Cossacks from the Albazin fortress rode into a Chinese ambush and, despite a heroic fight, were annihilated. The Manchus burned Albazin, overran Russian lands and took a number of prisoners from among the local population. On June 30, a much larger Manchu force attacked the Russian fortress at Kumarsk. Capitalizing on their victories, Chinese troops successfully cleared the Amur basin of all Russians as far upriver as Nerchinsk. The loss of Kumarsk was a blow to Russian plans for the region and they were reluctant to return to the area. The apparent lack of activity in the Amur basin lulled the Manchus into inaction and set the stage for a Russian return in force with ideas of establishing a more permanent settlement.

Russia's hand in the Amur basin was further strengthened by an influx of outlaws into the area. As Moscow's central authority became stronger, officials were dispatched to the Far East to ensure a steady flow of taxes to the treasury. In response, many Cossack rebels simply packed up and moved further east, some of whom settled along the north bank of the Amur River in territory claimed by the Chinese. In late 1665, a group of Polish exiles in Ilimsk murdered the local military governor, fled into the Amur basin to avoid punishment and moved into the remains of Albazin, destroyed during the Chinese attacks in 1658. The rebels organized a small colony and began clearing ground to plant grain. The settlement prospered as a gathering place for Russian adventurers and outlaws and eventually became an administrative center in the region.

The Manchus never followed up their initial success against the Russians. Instead, due to a lack of proper planning and the subsequent shortage of supplies to support a large army, they withdrew from the area. Their inability to completely destroy the Russian presence in the region, including the settlement at Nerchinsk, and their failure to establish military garrisons in the area gave Russia the time and the opportunity to reestablish its authority in the Amur River basin. The Manchus had only recently taken China (1644) and it would take at least a generation before they managed to extend their control throughout the former domain of the Ming dynasty.

Early in their reign, the Manchus faced two major problems in the north. They had to maintain the security of their territorial base in Manchuria and, as the new occupants of the Dragon Throne, they needed a free hand to defend their northern frontier against the constant threat of invasion from nomads in Mongolia and Sinkiang Province. The tremendous drain of resources during the Manchu struggle for total control of China prevented the Qing court from developing its northern defenses and opening an anti-Russian front in the Amur River basin. These difficulties also prevented the Chinese from colonizing Manchuria until the end of the nineteenth century and made it difficult to secure their homeland from further Russian incursions. Since the Manchus could not force Russia out of the area, Beijing decided it needed to obtain Russia's neutrality in Central Asian politics and formal recognition of China's predominant role in the region.

The Manchus dealt with European traders in the south by restricting their access to Chinese soil and imposing strict trade regulations and economic controls. Across the open landscape of the Amur River basin however, there was no feasible way to combine the question of trade, which Moscow wanted, with a Russian withdrawal from the Amur basin, which Beijing wanted. As early as the 1670s, Beijing hinted they were prepared to offer Moscow commercial privileges in exchange for a complete evacuation of Russian settlements along the northern frontier. Since Moscow had no control over the Cossacks in the Amur region at the time, Beijing had to insist on treating trade and frontier issues separately.

The Russians became aware of Manchu intentions in the Amur region as early as March 1681, when Qing officials demanded to know why a Russian fortress had been built on the Zeya River at a portage site used by government officials collecting tribute from subject tribes. In August that year, a Manchu official arrived from Beijing carrying an imperial edict that constituted an ultimatum for the withdrawal of all Russians from the Zeya River. Russia's position in the region grew worse the following year when the Manchus began construction of a military base at Aigun, which prevented Cossack troops from sailing down the Amur River in search of food and tribute. The Chinese also launched a minor raid against the settlers and a detachment of Russian troops at Albazin, captured a few prisoners and destroyed a series of small Russian outposts along the Burya, Khamunua, Zeya, and Selima rivers.

Despite its intentions to defend the area, Moscow could not overcome the multitude of problems involved in building a strong military presence in the Amur region. The scarcity of able-bodied men in Siberia, the impossibly long command and supply lines and the apparent lack of interest shown by other Siberian military commanders made success all the more improbable. By 1685, the lack of population and military supplies held out little hope for anything but futile resistance against a sudden push by the Chinese.

Following last-minute preparations, Qing forces attacked Albazin in the early summer of 1685. On June 30, 3,000 Chinese troops arrived at the outskirts of Albazin, where the Manchu general read Emperor Shengzu's edict demanding the surrender of the Russian defenders. Well over 600 of Albazin's settlers were released to return to Nerchinsk. News of the sudden victory reached Emperor Shengzu on July 5, during an imperial visit to Manchuria. Just five days later, the Albazin refugees petitioned Nerchinsk's military commander for permission to return to Albazin to harvest the crops planted in the spring and to reestablish the settlement. Commander Vlasov granted permission for 669 men to return to Albazin accompanied by eight newly-conscripted Cossacks armed them with five cannon, powder, lead, and other supplies.

Emperor Shengzu extended clemency to four prisoners taken at Albazin. He commuted their death sentences and ordered them sent home carrying his final communique to Russian authorities with a request to return a number of fugitives and the demand that Russia never again invade China's frontiers. Meanwhile, the former Albazin refugees returned to their settlement on August 27 and began at once to harvest their crops. Following the resettlement of Albazin, Commander Vlasov pursued a policy to extend Russian influence and control back to its pre-1685 limits. On March 7, 1686, an armed force of three hundred men sailed down the Amur to the Khumar River to collect tribute and food. When word of the Russian presence reached Emperor Shengzu, he immediately decided to initiate military action. He personally instructed his commanding general to try and persuade the Russians to surrender peacefully. Should he fail, he was to threaten the Russians with death. Emperor Shengzu further instructed his general to retake Albazin then march his army on Nerchinsk and put an end to the source of trouble on the Amur.

Emperor Shengzu hoped to avoid a third crisis with Albazin and desired the impending negotiations with the Russians begin under the most favorable circumstances. Toward that end the Russians who survived the second siege of Albazin in 1687 were notified that Manchu troops were evacuating the area because of the arrival of the tsar's envoy to discuss peace. The military phase of the Amur confrontation between Russia and the Manchu Empire ended and the diplomatic maneuvering around the peace table began.

The Russian statesman and diplomat Fyodor Alekseyevich Golovin was sent from Moscow on a diplomatic mission to the Amur River region to negotiate the frontiers between Russia and China. Golovin received three sets of instructions between his appointment in 1685 and the opening of the Manchu-Russian diplomatic negotiations. He was given the maximum and minimum Russian positions regarding the demarcation of the frontier and instructed to open negotiations by demanding the border between the two empires be set along the Amur River. If necessary, Golovin was permitted to accept Albazin as the frontier if the settlement remained in Russian hands and the Russian empire retained trading privileges throughout the northern Manchurian river system.

The Manchu negotiators received their instructions from the emperor in 1688. Nerchinsk was the original camping ground of the Mao-ming-an tribe, a Manchu tributary. Albazin was another tributary to the Qing dynasty. Since the areas were neither Russian nor uninhabited, they rightly belonged to the Manchus. The upper and lower reaches of the Amur River and all its tributaries were of strategic importance, more important that than the immediate disposition of Nerchinsk and Albazin. The great river system provided direct access to the heart of Manchuria and to the Pacific Ocean. According to the emperor, "we cannot abandon them to Russia."

During the diplomatic conference in Nerchinsk in August 1689, Russia claimed the Amur basin by right of colonization, a generally accepted principal in the Western international system. China claimed the territory by virtue of its suzerainty over local native tribes, a valid principal within East Asia's international system. The Qing dynasty was willing to grant Russia sufficient trading rights in the region to help satisfy Russia's appetite for commerce, but it demanded absolute Russian neutrality in Central Asia in return. Both sides compromised a little and ultimately reached and signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk.

China's first diplomatic agreement with a western power settled the territorial dispute between Russia and the Qing empire. The treaty drew the border between the two countries along the Stanovoy Range and the Argun River, between Nerchinsk and Albazin. The new frontier border checked Russia's eastward expansion, gave the Manchus strategic control of the Amur River system and denied Russia easy access to the Sea of Okhotsk and eastern markets. The Manchus conceded a number of provisions for the conduct of trade, stipulating that Chinese or Russian subjects carrying the proper passports were permitted to cross the frontier and carry on commerce. The Russians kept Nerchinsk, withdrew from their advance positions along the Amur River and gained the right of passage to Beijing for their trade caravans. Nerchinsk soon became a major trade center on the Russian side of the new frontier. By signing the treaty, Russia avoided a potentially devastating military defeat and secured its claim to the lands east of Lake Baikal. Perhaps more significantly, it earned China's implied recognition of the Russian Empire as a state of equal status with China, an accomplishment no other European power had achieved.