War along the Amur 1682-1689:
Russians on the Eve of war

Positive Manchu policy toward the Russians had to await the stabilization of the Ch'ing dynasty's power inside China. With relative ease and speed the Manchus had entered China in 1644, but at least a generation passed before they succeeded in extending their control throughout the former Ming domains and beyond.

The financial and personnel drain on Manchu resources during the struggle for total control of China was sufficient to prevent the Ch'ing court from developing its northern defenses and opening an anti-Russian front in the Amur Valley. The Manchus then faced two problems to the north. First, the security of the dynasty's territorial base in Manchuria must be maintained, as was impressed upon them by their difficulties with the Chinese rebels. They therefore prevented Chinese colonization of Manchuria until the end of the nineteenth century and made efforts to secure their homeland from Russian incursions. Second, as the new occupants of the dragon throne, the Manchus needed a free hand in Central Asia, particularly in Mongolia and Sinkiang, because Central Asian nomad invasions and raids were a constant threat to any dynastic power in China. As the Russians in southern Siberia maintained close contract with the Mongols and were in a position to intervene in Central Asian affairs at will, Peking needed Russia's neutrality in Central Asian politics and recognition of her own primary role in the region.

Moscow could not be dealt with within the framework of traditional East Asian diplomacy. There existed the unfeasibility of combining the question of trade, which Moscow wanted, with the question of Russian withdrawal from the Amur, which Peking wanted. As early as the 1670's the Manchus indicated that they were prepared to exchange commercial privileges for Russian evacuation of the Cossack settlements along the northern frontier, but since Moscow could not control the Amur Cossacks at that time, it had to insist on treating the problems of trade and frontier separately.

The Russians were aware of Manchu intentions at least as early as March 1681. The Manchus demanded to know why a Russian fort had been built on the Zeya River, at a location used as a portage by Manchu officials when collecting tribute from subject tribes. In August an official arrived from the capital with an imperial edict that constituted an ultimatum for Russian withdrawal from the Zeya. The Cossacks returned to Nerchinsk with their report at the beginning of October 1681. These events marked the beginning of Russian efforts to create some kind of defense in the Amur Valley.

In 1682 the Russian position grew worse. The beginning of the construction of the Manchu base at Aigun prevented the Cossacks from sailing down the Amur in search of food and tribute. The Manchus also made a minor attack on a detachment of Albazinian Cossacks, captured some prisoners, and destroyed a series of small Russian ostrogs (define as a ford) along the Burya, Khamunua, Zeya, and Selima rivers.

Moscow's apparent determination to defend the Amur against Manchu attack could not overcome the multitude of problems involved in building a military machine in the face of the scarcity of able-bodied men in Siberia and the impossibly long command and logistic lines. The apparent lack of interest shown by other Siberian voevodas in the Amur crisis made any success even more improbable. By the time of the Ch'ing attack on Albazin in 1685, neither population nor military supplies had increased sufficiently to allow for more than a brave but vain Russian resistance.

Albazin: 1685-1686

After the completion of last-minute preparations Ch'ing forces attacked Albazin in the early summer of 1685.

On June 23, 1685, Pengcum led three-thousand soldiers in an attack on Albazin. First he read to the Russian defenders the emperor's edict demanding their surrender. During the surrender negotiations at least six hundred and probably almost all of the Russians requested permission to return to Nerchinsk. K'ang-hsi, the emperor of Munchuria, received the news of the victory on July 5, 1685, during an imperial progress in Manchuria.

On August 20, 1685, the emperor extended his clemency policy to the four helpless prisoners by abrogating their death sentences and sending them home with a final communication to the Russian authorities, which requested the return of a certain fugitives and demanded that the Russians never again invade China's frontiers.

On July 10, 1685, Shortly after Albazinian refugees arrived at Nerchinsk, they petitioned the voevoda, Vlasov, for permission to return to Albazin to harvest the crops they had sown in the spring and to reestablish the settlement. The voevoda permitted 669 men to return to Albazin, under Tolbuzin's leadership, arming them with five cannon, powder, lead, and other supplies, and assigning eight newly-con????ed soldiers to accompany them. Albazinians arrived at their former home on August 27 and proceeded to harvest the grain. With Albazin reestablished, Vlasov pursued a policy of extending Russian influence and control to its pre-1685 limits. On March 7, 1686, Tolbuzin sent a fore of three hundred men down the Amur to the Khumar River to collect yasak. Upon receipt of the report on the Russian presence, the emperor decided to initiate military action immediately. Langtan was instructed personally by K'ang-hsi to try to persuade the Russians to surrender peacefully; failing this, he was to threaten the Russians with death. He was further instructed that after the capture of Albazin the Manchu forces were to march on Nerchinsk to put a final end to the source of the difficulties on the Amur.

K'ang-hsi was anxious that the impending negotiations with the Russians begin under the most favorable circumstances. The Russian survivors of the siege were notified that the Manchu troops were evacuating the area because of the arrival of the tsar's envoy to discuss peace. In this way K'ang-hsi hoped to avoid a third Albazin crisis. Vlasov learned of the Manchu departure in October 1687, and the new ambassador received a letter from Peking in January 1688 confirming the news. The military phase of the Amur confrontation between Russia and the Manchu Empire was now ended. It remained to seek a final solution at the peace table. The Russians claimed the Amur by right of colonization, a principle generally accepted in the West; the Manchus claimed it by virtue of their suzerainty over certain native tribes, a principle valid in the East Asian international system. Whereas the Ch'ing dynasty was prepared to grant Russia sufficient trading rights to take the persistent edge off Russian commercial hunger, it demanded in return Russian neutrality in Central Asia. Between the time of his appointment in 1686 and the opening of the Manchu-Russian conference at Nerchinsk in August 1689, Golovin received three sets of instructions. The ambassador was given maximal and minimal positions regarding the delimitation of the frontier. He was to begin by demanding that the Amur be made the border between the two empires. Yet if necessary, he was permitted to accept Albazin as the frontier, with the settlement remaining in Russian hands and the Russians retaining trading privileges throughout the Northern Manchurian river system.

The Manchu emperor issued his own instructions on May 30, 1688. According to them, Nerchinsk was the original camping-ground of the Mao-ming-an tribe, a Manchu tributary. Albazin was another tributary to the Ch'ing. Consequently, those areas were neither Russian nor uninhabited; they rightly belonged to the Manchus. The Amur River was even more important, however, than the immediate disposition of Nerchinsk and Albazin. As the upper and lower reaches of the Amur and all its tributaries were considered Manchu territory, "we cannot abandon them to Russia".

First, the Amur and its tributaries were of strategic importance to the Manchus because they constituted one great river system providing access directly into the heart of Manchuria to the south and the Pacific to the East.

The final delineation of the frontier was a compromise more favorable to the Manchus than to the Russians. As K'ang-hsi authorized in his second set of instructions to Songgotu, the Russians kept Nerchinsk, and the frontier was drawn between it and Albazin. The inclusion of a clause dealing with the handling of fugitives and criminals in the future implied that Sino-Russian contact would increase. The treaty also made careful provision for the conduct of trade, stipulating that either empire's subjects were permitted to cross the frontier and carry on commerce provided they held proper passports. This point was a Manchu concession to the Russian.

The frontier was delimited, and the problem of fugitives was settled, and the Russians were forced to withdraw from their advance positions. Manchu control of the Albazin region meant strategically that they controlled Russian access to the Amur River system. Nerchinsk became the chief emporium on the Russian side. The distance from Moscow to Peking was over 5,900 miles, and the trip there and back lasted no fewer than three years.

The Treaty of the Bura and Kyakhta.

Almost simultaneous succession crises in the Ch'sing and Romanov dynasties increased the need for stability along the Sino-Russian frontier in the third decade of the eighteenth century. The new Ch'ing emperor, Yung-cheng, and the new tsarina, Catherine I, were both deeply involved in retaining their thrones and in achieving success on the international stage in those areas of primary importance to each: Yung-cheng in Central Asia and Catherine in Europe. In Russia Sava Vladislavich was named an ambassador on June 18, 1725. Vladislavich had some questions on frontier problems and insisted on meeting to conclude a frontier agreement at the Bura River near Selenginsk on June 14, 1727. The Manchu delegation to the frontier sessions of the Sino-Russian conference consisted of Tulishen, Tsereng, and Lungkodo.

On the day that he signed the frontier agreement, Vladislavich sent a report to the Senate and the College of Foreign Affairs giving his explanation of the agreement's speedy conclusion.

The Treaty of the Bura was a detailed de????ion of the frontier agreed upon by the frontier commissions, but the line itself had to be drawn and marked with frontier stones to a greater degree of exactitude than was possible on paper, given the knowledge available to the negotiators. Joint Sino-Russian frontier survey commissions were therefore formed to define the frontier's precise location at all important points. The first commission completed its work on October 12, 1727, when it exchanged documents describing in detail the frontier between the Kyakhta and Shabindobagom rivers. The second commission exchanged protocols defining the frontier between the Kyakhta and Argun rivers on October 27.

Appended to each protocol was a register of the precise definitions of the boundary, area by area, and sixty-three "beacons" were set up as border stones at vital points, with a de????ion of the border inscribed on each in Russian and Chinese. A neutral strip of land, "according to the comfort of local conditions", extended on either side of each marker. The way was now open for concluding the definitive Sino-Russian treaty itself, covering political and economic as well as frontier affairs

The Treaty of the Bura, the instrument that Peking required before it would sign any other agreements with Russia, was itself incorporated into the Treaty of Kyakhta. The Treaty of Kyakhta consisted of eleven articles, ranging over all aspects of the Sino-Russian relationship. Articles I and XI declared eternal peace and friendship between the two empires and discussed the language and ratification of the instrument. The other nine articles, constituting the Sino-Russian settlement itself, dealt with six specific problems: demarcation of the frontier (III, VII), exchange of fugitives (II), commercial relations (IV), a Russian religious establishment in Peking (V), forms of diplomatic intercourse (VI, IX), and settlement of future disputes (VIII, X). Article II delineated the entire frontier on the basis of the Treaty of the Bura, with the exception of the territory along the Ob River, east of the Gorbitsa, which according to agreement would be demarcated in the future "by ambassadors or by correspondence". The heart of the settlement was the commercial system, which according to the preamble to Article IV was specifically established in return for the frontier and fugitive settlements, that is, for Russian neutrality in Central Asia.

Two regular Sino-Russian frontier commercial emporia were to be crated, one at Kyakhta on the Selenga River, the other at a spot near Nerchinsk. Probably the most important element in the development of Sino-Russian stability was the "cultural neutrality" of the institutions of the Kyakhta treaty system. The Treaty of Kyakhta obviated the inevitability of conflict by creating institutions that in and of themselves lacked cultural implications and avoided precisely those forms of contact in which intellectual or institutional conflict had already taken place. Questions of titles and form were avoided by instituting correspondence between officials other than the tsar and the emperor. Russian caravans in Peking were not required to perform tribute ceremonials. The treaty itself provided specific punishments for certain crimes.