Article contents
Another ‘Yellow Peril’: Chinese Migrants in the Russian Far East and the Russian Reaction before 1917
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
The description provided by John Foster Fraser, a British journalist wandering through Siberia and Manchuria in the autumn of 1901, is of Khabarovsk, a town of some fifteen thousand people. Such scenes were not peculiar to Khabarovsk at the turn of the century, but could be witnessed in other towns throughout the Russian Far East such as Chita, Blagoveshchensk, Nikol'sk-Ussuriiskii, and Vladivostok. Who were these ‘weak, withered-faced’ Chinese that one was likely to encounter? What were they doing within the boundaries of the Russian Empire? What were the attitudes of the Russian population towards the Chinese and what policies did the provincial and central authorities adopt with respect to them?
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978
References
1 Fraser, John Foster, The Real Siberia (London, 1902), p. 91.Google Scholar
2 The number of books on this subject is too long to list here. See the excellent if necessarily dated bibliography in Malozemoff, A., Russian Far Eastern Policy, 1881–1904 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958), pp. 317–47;Google Scholar also Tang, Peter S. H., Russian and Soviet Policy in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, 1911–1931 (Durham, North Carolina, 1959), pp. 456–72.Google Scholar
3 Eastern Siberia refers to all land east of Lake Baikal, encompassing the Transbaikal, Amur, and Maritime districts plus Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka. The Russian Far East is more restrictive, generally excluding the Transbaikal.
4 See Treadgold, Donald W., The Great Siberian Migration (Princeton, 1957);CrossRefGoogle ScholarHarmon, Tupper, To the Great Ocean: Siberia and the Trans-Siberian Railway (Boston, 1965);Google ScholarAkademiia, SSSR nauk (ed.), Istoriia Sibiri (History of Siberia), 5 vols (Leningrad, 1968), III, 22–57, 207–11, 310–27 and passim.Google Scholar
5 All dates are given according to the Russian calendar which was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar in the nineteenth century and thirteen in the twentieth.
6 Texts of treaties appear in ‘Vladimir’ (Volpicelli, Z.), Russia on the Pacific and the Siberian Railroad (London, 1899), pp. 346–55.Google Scholar
7 See Muraviev's reports in Barsuvko, I. P., Graf Nikolai Nikolaevich Amurskii, 2 vols (Moscow, 1891), II, 150–1, 186–8.Google Scholar
8 For a description of the tribulations of the Amur Cossacks in the early years of their settlement see the account of Bogdanov, R. K. translated in Russia's Eastward Expansion, ed. George, A. Lensen (New York, 1964), pp. 96–103.Google Scholar Details of peasants' difficulties and the flood of 1872 which inundated Cossack settlements are in Nadin, P., ‘Piatidesiatiletie Amurskago Kraia, 1854–1904 gg.’ (Fifty Years of the Amur Region, 1854–1904), Vestnik Evropy, III (1905), 179, 181–4.Google Scholar
9 The Chinese migration into Manchuria is discussed in Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston, 1962), pp. 140–4.Google Scholar Lattimore contends that the policy of encouraging migration which dates from 1878 succeeded only as far as southern Manchuria was concerned because ‘the Chinese economy and society did not have enough inherent vigor to occupy north Manchuria in strength’. However, he fails to take into account that the population of Kirin and Heilungkiang provinces had reached 5.2 million by 1907 and that the frontier economy boomed owing to the abundance of fertile land, furs, minerals, the river traffic, and the growing Russian market. For a more recent study which analyses these factors, see Lee, R. H. G., The Manchurian Frontier in Ch'ing History (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), esp. pp. 78–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Malozemoff, , Russian Far Eastern Policy, p. 11.Google Scholar Ts'ao T'ing-chieh, who spent several months in the Russian territories in 1885, reported to the military governor of Kirin that there were about 20,000 Chinese living in the region between the Ussuri and the Sea of Japan. See Lee, The Manchurian Frontier, p. 90.Google Scholar
11 Lee, , The Manchurian Frontier, pp. 105–11.Google Scholar
12 Arseniev, V. K., Dersu, The Trapper, trans. Malcolm, Burr (New York, 1941), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar
13 One desiatina equals 2.7 acres.
14 Priamur'e: Fakty, tsifry, nabliudeniia (Priamur: Facts, Figures, Observations), ed. Tikton, I. Polner (Moscow, 1909), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar
15 One verst equals 0.66 miles (1.06 kms).
16 Iuvachev, I. P., ‘Bor'ba s Khunkhuzami na Manzhurskoi granitse’ (The Struggle Against the Hunghutzes on the Manchurian Border), Istoricheskii Vestnik, XXXII (1900), 181–3.Google Scholar
17 Eliseev, A. V., ‘Po Iuzhno-Ussuriiskomu Kraiu’ (In the South Ussuri Region), Istoricheskii Vestnik, XLIII (1891), 449.Google Scholar
18 Malozemoff, , Russian Far Eastern Policy, p. 25.Google Scholar
19 Borzunov, V. F., ‘Rabochaia sila na stroitel'stve sibirskoi zheleznodorozhnoi magistrali, 1891–1905 gg.’ (The Work Force in the Construction of the Siberian Mainline Railway, 1891–1905), Istoricheskie zapiski, LXX (1961), 147–8.Google Scholar
20 Borzunov, V. F., Proletariat Sibiri i Dal'nogo Vostoka nakanune pervoi russkoi revoliutsii (The Proletariat of Siberia and the Far East on the Eve of the First Russian Revolution) (Moscow, 1965), p. 23.Google Scholar
21 Borzunov, ‘Rabochaia sila’, pp.158, 160.
22 Charles, Wenyon, Four Thousand Miles Across Siberia (5th edn, London, 1909), pp. 11–12. Wenyon arrived in Vladivostok from Tientsin aboard a steamer containing 1,100 coolies. According to his estimate the steamer was built to hold five hundred ‘uncomfortably crowded’.Google Scholar
23 Litvinov-Falinskii, V. P., Fabrichnoe Zakonodatel'stvo i fabrichnaia inspektsiia v Rossii (Factory Legislation and Factory Inspection in Russia) (St Petersburg, 1900), pp. 9, 120.Google Scholar For the texts of the laws see Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov (Complete Collection of Laws) (St Petersburg, 2nd ser., XXXVI, 1863),Google Scholar and P.S.Z. (St Petersburg, 3rd ser., VI, 1888).Google Scholar
24 Borzunov, Proletariat Sibiri, p. 119 quoting from papers of administration for construction of Mid-Siberian Railway.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., p. 119.
26 Ibid., pp. 104, 119.
27 Ibid., p. 85.
28 Tupper, To the Great Ocean, p. 175.Google Scholar Tupper adds: ‘Their health suffered from temperature changes, and they refused to work during rain. At the slightest hint of a tiger in the vicinity, they stampeded in squealing hysteria and huddled in camp until driven out by the labor contractors' musclemen….’ For more information on varieties of payment and work methods, see the official Otchet po postroike Severno–Ussuriiskoi zheleznoi dorogi, 1894–1897 gg. (Essay on the Building of North–Ussuri Railroad, 1894–1897), (St Petersburg, 1900), pp. 6–12.Google Scholar
29 Borzunov ‘Rabochie Sibirskoi zh.d.’, p. 118.
30 The possibility of a self-perpetuating network of emigrants, such as that described with reference to San Tin village (Hong Kong) in James, L. Watson, Emigration and Chinese Lineage (Berkeley, 1975), is suggested by the frequency with which the two provinces, Shantung and Shansi, are mentioned in the literature as places of origin.Google Scholar See, for example, Weale, B. L. Putnam [ Simpson, B. L.] The Coming Struggle in Eastern Asia (London, 1908), p. 16;Google ScholarFarnsworth, MacNair Harley, The Chinese Abroad, their Position and Protection (Shanghai, 1933), p. 46;Google Scholar and Lee, The Manchurian Frontier, pp. 87–8, 103–4. Simpson cites Laichoufu and Tengchoufu as the two prefectures of Shantung from which emigration to Russia was heaviest.Google Scholar
31 Wirt, Gerrare, Greater Russia, the Continental Empire of the Old World (London, 1903), p. 206.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., pp. 198, 206. See also Arseniev, Dersu, the Trapper, pp. 182–3.Google Scholar
33 Kuropatkin, A. N., The Russian Army and the Japanese War, trans. Capt. Lindsay, A. B. (2 vols, London, 1909), I, 71.Google Scholar
34 For the early development of the gold industry in eastern Siberia see Baranovskii, E. L., ‘Zolotopromyshlennost' v vostochnoi Sibiri’ (The Gold Industry in Eastern Siberia), Vestnik Evropy, VII (1898), 142–57;Google ScholarKhrolenok, S. F., ‘K voprosu o promyshlennom perevorote v zolotodobyvaiushchei promyshlennosti vostochnoi Sibiri, 1860–1900 gg’. (On the Question of an Industrial Revolution in the Goldmining Industry of Eastern Siberia, 1860–1900), in Ekonomicheskoe i obshchestvennopoliticheskoe razvitie Sibiri v 1861–1917 gg. (Novosibirsk, 1965), pp. 97–109.Google Scholar
35 See the sympathetic account of the Zheltuga Republic by Lebedev, A., ‘Zheltuginskaia respublika v Kitae’ (The Zheltuga Republic in China), Russkoe Bogatstvo, IX (1896), pp. 141–71.Google Scholar
36 Romanov, V. F., ‘Dal'nyi Vostok’ (The Far East), in Krivoshein, A. V. (ed.), Aziatskaia Rossiia, 3 vols (St Petersburg, 1914), I, 502.Google Scholar
37 Zoloto i Platina (Gold and Platinum), XII (1906), 239.Google Scholar Cf. Gerrare, Greater Russia, p. 124.Google Scholar
38 Calculated on basis of figures provided in Baranovskii, ‘Zolotoprom. v vost. Sibiri’, pp. 145–6. On changes in 1902 affecting goldmining see The Russian Year-Book for 1911, ed. Howard, Kennard P. (London, n.d.), p. 101.Google Scholar
39 ‘Zoloto Priamur'ia’ (Gold of the Priamur), Zoloto i Platina, II (1914), 37.Google ScholarCf. Aziatskaia Rossiia, I, 502.Google Scholar
40 Sakhanskii, V. A., Ocherk Amurskoi oblasti v sviazi s gruzooborotom proektiruemoi sredne-Amurskoi zh.d. (An Essay on the Amur District in Connection with Freight Transport of the Projected Mid-Amur Railroad) (St Petersburg, 1909), p. 42.Google Scholar An unsubstantiated estimate of sixty per cent is given in Wright, R. L. and Digby, B., Through Siberia, an Empire in the Making (London, 1913), p. 81.Google Scholar
41 ‘Vladimir’, Russia on the Pacific, p. 137.Google Scholar
42 Guide to the Great Siberian Railway, ed. Dmitriev-Mamonov, A. I. and Zdziarski, A. F. (St Petersburg, 1900), p. 468;Google ScholarIstoriia Sibiri, III, 60.Google Scholar
43 Guide to the G.S.R., p. 468.Google Scholar
44 Gerrare, , Greater Siberia, pp. 187, 192.Google Scholar
45 Ibid., p. 215.
46 See fn. 1. Specific incidents are recounted in Fraser, The Real Siberia, p. 198;Google ScholarMaurice, Baring, With the Russians in Manchuria (London, 1905), p. 20.Google Scholar
47 See, for example, Henry, Lansdell, Through Siberia, 3rd edn (London, 1882), pp. 713–14;Google ScholarYoung, Simpson James, Side-Lights on Siberia (London & Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 239–40.Google Scholar
48 Quoted from George, A. Lensen, The Russo-Chinese War (Tallahassee, Florida, 1967), p. 73.Google Scholar
49 As reported by Gribskii to Lev Deutsch, the social democrat who, while serving a term of exile, worked as a journalist. See Lev, G. Deutsch, Sixteen Years in Siberia (London, 1905), p. 331.Google Scholar
50 For a detailed account of the Blagoveshchensk massacre based on official documents, see ‘V.’ ‘Blagoveshchenskaia “Utopia”’ (The Blagoveshchensk Utopia), Vestnik Evropy, VII (1910), 231–41.Google Scholar See also Deutsch, , Sixteen Years, pp. 328–48;Google ScholarLensen, , Russo-Chinese War, pp. 68–113.Google Scholar
51 ‘Khronika’ (Chronicle), Russkoe Bogatstvo, IX (1900), 218–9, 221.Google Scholar
52 Russkoe Bogatstvo, IX (1900), 220, 224;Google ScholarLensen, , Russo-Chinese War p. 278.Google Scholar
53 Gerrare, , Greater Russia, p. 187.Google Scholar
54 Based on Table 3 in Treadgold, Great Siberian Migration, p. 34. Figures are rounded off to nearest thousand.
55 Istoriia Sibiri, II, 308.Google Scholar Does not include returners who actually constituted a higher percentage of migrants in the earlier period (1895–1903).
56 Fridtjof, Nansen, Through Siberia, the Land of the Future, trans. Chater, A. G. (London, 1914), pp. 333, 358;Google ScholarPervaia Vseobshchaia perepis' naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1897, g.: Primorskaia oblast' (First General Census of the Population of the Russian Empire, 1897: Maritime District) (St Petersburg, 1900), pp. 46–7;Google ScholarAziatskaia Rossiia, I, 513.Google Scholar
57 Population in 1907 in Sakhanskii, Ocherk Amurskoi oblasti, p. 17.
58 Putnam, Weale, The Coming Struggle, pp. 40–1.Google Scholar
59 Nansen, , Through Siberia, p. 336.Google Scholar Population figures for 1911 are as follows: Russians—632,534 (74.2%); Chinese and Koreans—156,606 (18.3%); native Siberian peoples—28,092 (3.2%); others (Uralo-Altaic peoples, Europeans, Russian Jews)—37,772 (4.3%). See Derber, P., ‘Demografiia i kolonizatsiia Sovetskogo Dal'nogo Vostoka’ (The Demography and Colonization of the Soviet Far East), Novyi Vostok, VII (1923), 106.Google Scholar Note discrepancy with previously cited total which may be explained by inclusion of troops and exclusion of some non-naturalized Chinese and Koreans in the latter. A figure of 100,000 Chinese in the Russian Far East as of 1912 is given in Aziatskaia Rossiia, p. 530.
60 Putnam, Weale, The Coming Struggle, p. 6.Google Scholar
61 Bestuzhev, I. V., Bor'ba v Rossii po voprosam Vneshnei politiki, 1906–1910 gg. (The Struggle in Russia over Questions of Foreign Policy, 1906–1910) (Moscow, 1961), p. 355. The motion was rejected because of the Bosnian crisis.Google Scholar
62 Sakhanskii, , Ocherk Amurskoi oblasti, p. 110.Google Scholar The rail line referred to by Sakhanskii was being financed by an Anglo-American consortium under J. P. Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
63 Gosudarstvennaia Duma: Stenografichskie otchety (The State Duma: Stenographic Reports), 3rd Duma, session 1, pt 2, sitting 41, 24 March 1908, cols 880–975; sitting 44, 29 March 1908, cols 1318–35; sitting 45, 31 March 1908, cols 1404–82.Google Scholar
64 Ibid., sitting 46, 1 April 1908, cols 1580–2. The stipulation was introduced by the Octobrists and moderate right factions as an amendment. It did not exclude naturalized subjects, and, in fact, approximately two thousand Korean settlers were employed in the construction of the railroad.
65 Voennaia Entsiklopediia (Military Encyclopedia), 17 vols (St Petersburg, 1912), VII, 590.Google Scholar
66 Gos. Duma: Sten. Otchety, 3rd Duma, session 3, sitting 122, 28 May 1910, cols 2646–7. Another law passed in June gave the governor-general of the Priamur special powers to deal with anyone he suspected of espionage. See ibid., sitting 128, 3 June 1910, cols 2901.
67 Frederic, Coleman, Japan Moves North (London, 1918), p. 51.Google Scholar
68 ‘O sovremennom polozhenii zolotogo promysla v Amurskoi oblasti’ (On the Current Situation of the Goldfields in the Amur District), Zoloto i Platina, X (1914), 215;Google ScholarNansen, , Through Siberia, p. 339.Google Scholar
69 Zoloto i Platina, XII (1906), 239–42.Google Scholar
70 Derber, ‘Demografiia i kolonizatsiia,’ p. 110.
71 Rif, A., ‘Zolotopromyshlennost' i bor'ba s zheltym trudom’ (The Gold Industry and the Struggle Against Yellow Labour), Zoloto i Platina, XI–XII (1914), 253.Google Scholar
72 Zoloto i Platina, V (1914), p. 116.Google Scholar
73 ‘Zakonoproekt ob ogranichenii naima rabochikh inostrantsev na gornye promysly’ (Legislation on Limiting the Hiring of Foreign Workers for Mining), Zoloto i Platina, XI-XII (1914), 253;Google ScholarPromyshelnnost' i Torgovlia (Industry and Commerce), II (1914), 111.Google Scholar
74 Zoloto i Platina, V (1914), 116.Google Scholar
75 ‘Nuzhdy Amurskoi zolotopromyshlennosti’, Promyshlennost' i Torgovlia, VII (1914), 372–6.Google Scholar
76 A partial transcript of the meeting appeared in ‘Osoboe mezhduvedomstvennoe Soveshchanie obrazovannoe pri Ministerstve torgovli i promyshlennosti’ (Special Interdepartmental Meeting Organized by the Ministry of Trade and Industry), Zoloto i Platina, XXIII–XXIV (1914), 424.Google Scholar
77 See report of Ozerov, I. Kh. on his discussions with the Ministers of Finance and Trade and Industry in Lenskie priiski: Sbornik Dokumentov (The Lena Mines: A Collection of Documents) ed. Pospelov, P. (Moscow, 1937), p. 365.Google Scholar
78 Ibid., p. 366, 369, 382.
79 See the protocol of the board meeting of the Lena Goldfields Co. on 1 November 1915 and the telegram of V. N. Zhurin to the board dated 16 December 1915 in ibid., pp. 376–9. Zhurin, the field manager, felt that the administration's decision to pay the Chinese 20 per cent less than Russian workers because of their lower productivity was unjustified.
80 For a general discussion of the Chinese in Russia during the war, see ‘Vopros o zheltom trude’ (The Question of Yellow Labour), Izvestiia glavnogo komiteta po snabzheniiu armii (News of the Central Committee on Army Supply), XXV (1916), 26–34.Google Scholar See also on Chinese in the Urals Izvestiia Osobogo Soveshchaniia pa toplivu (News of the Special Council on Fuel), III (1917), 2;Google Scholar in the Donets Basin ‘Doklad o nedostatke rabochikh’ (Report on the Shortage of Workers), XLI S'ezd Gornopromyshlennikov Iuga Rossii, noiabr'-dekabr' 1916 g. (Kharkov, 1916), pp. 9–12;Google ScholarGornopromyshlennoe Delo (The Mining Business), XXXII (1916), 14218;Google ScholarIu, I. Kir'ianov, Rabochie luga Rossii, 1914–fevral' 1917 g. (The Workers of South Russia, 1914–02 1917) (Moscow, 1971), p. 42.Google Scholar
81 Coleman, , Japan Moves North, p. 134.Google Scholar
82 Den' (The Day), No. 283, 14 October 1916, p. 3.
83 Popov, N. A., ‘Uchastie Kitaiskikh internatsional'nykh chastei v zashchite sovetskoi respubliki v period grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918–1920 gody’ (The Participation of the Chinese Internationalist Units in the Defence of the Soviet Republic in the Period of the Civil War, 1918–20), Voprosy Istorii, X (1957), 109–10.Google Scholar
84 For information on the Chinese in the Far Eastern Republic including the issue of repatriation see Persits, M. A., Dal'nevostochnaia Respublika i Kitai (The Far Eastern Republic and China) (Moscow, 1962), p. 66 and passim.Google Scholar According to the Soviet census of 1926, there were 80,986 Chinese subjects living in the R.S.F.S.R.
- 17
- Cited by