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Northeast Eurasia as Historical Center: Exploration of a Joint Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Nianshen Song
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Summary

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In this paper I use a transborder lens to investigate the region encompassed by the Russian Far East, northeast China, eastern Mongolia, northern Korea, and the Sea of Japan. We need to transcend the framework of nation-states and restore the region's historical agency in a broader geographic, geopolitical, and economic context. We also need to view the socioeconomic development of the area in terms of a protracted process in which various indigenous groups played crucial roles. Recognizing the historical dynamic of this region helps to reconceptualize its present and future development.

Keywords

Northeast EurasiaRussian Far Eastthe greater Amur River regionHunchunGreater Tumen Initiative (GTI)
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 44 , November 2015 , e1
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

References

Notes

1 Andrew C. Kuchins, “Russia and the CIS in 2013: Russia's Pivot to Asia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 54, No. 1, A Survey of Asia in 2013 (January/February 2014), pp. 129-137.

2 The first recognition of the importance of the region in Anglophone literature came in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. See, for example, Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East (New York: Routledge, 1995); Mark J. Valencia, ed., The Russian Far East in Transition: Opportunities for Regional Economic Cooperation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Tsuneo Akaha, ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East: Changing Ties with Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 1997); Peggy Falkenheim Meyer, “The Russian Far East's Economic Integration with Northeast Asia: Problems and Prospects,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 209-224. Also mention literature on Tumen zone from 1992?

3 For example, the Association for Asian Studies, the world's leading academic organization in Asian studies, doesn't list Russia or the Russian Far East within its research umbrella.

4 For example, see Alan Woods, Russia's Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East 1581-1991, (New York: Bloomsbury Academy, 2011) and Sue Davis, The Russian Far East: The Last Frontier? (New York: Routledge, 2003).

5 I use this term to refer to an area that roughly includes the eastern part of northeast China (Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces, and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia), the southern part of the Russian Far East (Amur Oblast, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Primorsky Krai, and southern Khabarovsk Krai), the eastern part of Mongolia, and the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula.

6 According to the 2002 census (http://www.perepis2002.ru/index.html?id=87), the populations of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk are 594,701 and 583,072 respectively. The population of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the third largest city in RFE, was 271,600. Source: Russian Census of 2002.

7 Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontier of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). See also Joseph Fletcher, “Ch'ing Inner Asia,” in Denis Crispin Twitchett and John King Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 10, Part 1 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 35-106. However, in a new book Evelyn Rawski argues that “[f]rom the perspective of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries … the primary Inner Asian influences come from northeast Asia.” Evelyn Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia: CrossBorder Perspectives, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) p.2.

8 For example, Yan Congjian, a Chinese writer in the Ming dynasty, defines the Tartars (Mongols) as “Northern Barbarians (di)” and the Jurchen as “Northeastern barbarians (dongbei yi).” See Zhou yu zhou zi lu, (Beijing: zhong hua shu ju, 1993). Korean texts before the 20th century refer to the Jurchen/Manchu people in its northern border as “barbarians (ho).” Ancient Japanese texts use the term “Emishi” or “Ezo” for aboriginal people living in northern Honshu and Hokkaido, a term which is composed of two characters for “shrimp” and “barbarian.”

9 James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

10 During the heyday of Russia's eastward expansion, Russian intellectuals frequently envisaged the Amur River region as “Russia's very own Mississippi.” See Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.10.

11 Alan Wood, Russia's Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East, 1581 - 1991 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), p. 31.

12 Michele Manson, Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the Periphery and the Modern Nation-State (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

13 Jin Yufu, Dongbei tongshi (东北通史) (Chongqing: Wushi Niandai Press, 1943); Xue Hong and Li Shutian, eds., Zhongguo dongbei tongshi (中国东北通史) (Changchun: Jilin Wenshi Press, 1991).

14 Andre Schmid, “Looking North toward Manchuria,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 219-240; Andre Schmid,”Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch'aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1 (February 1997), pp. 26-46.

15 John J. Stephan, The Russian Far East: A History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 2.

16 Owen Lattimore, Manchuria: Cradle of Conflict (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

17 For example, Takeshi Hamashita's study of the Ryukyu kingdom located at the intersection of the East China Sea and South China Sea, incorporated world system theory. See “The Ryukyu maritime network from the fourteenth to eighteenth century,” in Takeshi Hamashita Takeshi, “China, East Asia, and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives” (London: Routledge, 2008.)

18 Stephan, The Russian Far East, pp. 14-19.

19 Nihon shoki (日本書紀), Vol. 26.

20 Fan Ye, Book of Later Han (后汉书), Vol. 85, Treatise on the Dongyi, “Wo.”

21 Yonson Ahn, “The Contested Heritage of Koguryo/Gaogouli and China-Korea Conflict,” (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yonson-Ahn/2631/article.html) Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (accessed on May 6, 2015).

22 See Timothy Brook, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008).

23 See Geoff Wade, “The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 78, No. 1 (288) (2005), pp. 37-58; Tansen Sen, “The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia, 1200-1450,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2006), pp. 421-453.

24 Li Jiancai, Ming dai dong bei (明代东北) (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Press, 1986), pp. 17-19. The size of his expedition varied each time. For example, in 1411, he employed 25 giant boats with more than 1000 staff and crew; the final expedition (1432) mobilized 50 giant boats with a crew exceeding 2000 .

25 Yishiha, “yong ning si ji (永寧寺記)” and “chong xiu yong ning si ji (重修永寧寺記).”

26 Li Jiancai, Ming dai dongbei, p. 19. Also see Agui, qing ding man zhou yuan liu kao (欽定滿 洲源流考), Vol.1.

27 Gertraude Roth Li, “State Building before 1644”, in Willard J. Peterson (ed.), Cambridge History of China, Vol. 9, Part 1: The Ch'ing Dynasty to 1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,) pp. 9-72

28 Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 129-130.

29 See Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

30 Wood, Russia's Frozen Frontier, p. 32.

31 Brook, Vermeer's Hat, pp. 43-46.

32 See Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999); Mark Elliot, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

33 The only exception was Fumingga, a member of the Hanjun banner who was the commander of Jilin from 1866 to 1870.

34 Peter Perdue, “Boundaries and Trade in the Early Modern World: Negotiations at Nerchinsk and Beijing,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Spring 2010), pp.341-356.

35 Wang Hui, Xiandai zhongguo sixiang de xingqi (现代中国思想的兴起) (Beijing: SDX Joint Press, 2004), p. 690.

36 Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 31-58.

37 By “modernity” I mean the global sociopolitical transformation associated with Western-oriented capitalism, colonialism, industrialism and nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

38 See Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001).

39 Hai Zhao, Manchurian Atlas: Competitive Geopolitics, Planned Industrialization and the Rise of Heavy Industrial State in Northeast China, 1918-1954 (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2015).

40 See Mun Young Cho, The Specter of “the People”: Urban Poverty in Northeast China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

41 Yi Baozhong, chaoxian yimin yu dongbei shuitian kaifa ( ((Changchun: Chuangchun Press, 1999).

42 Hunchun shi difangzhi bianzhuan weiyuanhui, Hunchun Shi Zhi ((Chuangchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 2000), pp.11-18.

43 Adapted from Huang Jinfu, “Chuyi jindai maoyi zhongzhen, Hunchun (刍议近代贸易重 镇——珲春),” in Yanbian Institute of Historical Studies, ed., Yanbian Lishi Yanjiu (延边历史研 究), Vol. 3 (Yanji: Yanbian Institute of Historical Studies, 1988), pp. 22-23

44 Ibid.

45 Ge Xiufeng, “Hunchun zaoqi duiwai maoyi(珲 春早期对外贸易),” in Wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, Yanbian Committee of the CCPCC, ed., Xiri Yanbian Jingji, Yanbian Wenshi Ziliao, Vol. 7 (昔 日延边经济：延边文史资料第七集), (Yanji: Yanbian Renmin Press, 1995), p. 212. Also see Tōkanfu Rinji Kantō Hashutsujo Zanmu Seirijo, Kantō sangyō chōsasho (昔 日延边经济：延边文史资料第七集), Shōgyō, pp. 23-26, pp. 112-114.

46 Chōsengun Shireibu. Kantō oyobi Konshun (間島及琿春), 1921, pp.55-56.

47 Japan did this by lowering the import tax for Japanese goods. See Hunchun shi zhi, p.400 and p.461. See also Setsurei Tsurushima, Tomankō chiiki kaihatsu (豆満江地域開発), (Suita-shi : Kansai Daigaku Shuppanbu, 2000), p.176.

48 Hunchun shi zhi, pp.455-461.

49 Greater Tumen Initiative (http://www.tumenprogramme.org/) (accessed on May 6, 2015).

50 See the interview with Deng Kai (http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2007-10/18/content_6903527.htm), CCP secretary of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in 2007 by the Xinhua News Agency.

51 For example, see Shen Yue, “Tumenjiang quyu guoji hezuo: libi yinsu yu jianyi (图们江区 域国际合作:利弊因素与建议),” Jingying guanli zhe, 2013, Issue 27.

52 Zhenxing dongbei wang (http://chinaneast.xinhuanet.com/2009-11/17/content_18251163.htm).

53 Central People's Government of People's Republic of China, official website (http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2012/content_2131970.htm) (accessed on May 6, 2015).

54 Takeshi Hamashita, “The Future of Northeast Asia,” in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 320.