Contemporary Chinese Studies. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. xvii, 212 pp. (Figures, maps, illustrations.) US$32.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-7748-3409-4.
Beyond the Amur contributes to the literature on the frontier areas and Russian expansion in the Far East. Unlike previous studies, mostly diplomatic histories of this area, it shows “the emergence of the Amur frontier society” (16) from the late seventeenth century to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 in the frontier zone, in which the Amur River divided Russian and Chinese territory. In this “frontier,” “a large peripheral zone defined by geography and human activity” (7), individuals, social groups, and states interacted. Zatsepine demonstrates that the borders which only first appeared in 1858 (162) in this sparsely populated area were “superficial,” and Chinese and Russian empires failed to keep the respective regions of Manchuria and the Russian Far East separate from each other. The period of peak imperial Russian expansion in the region coincided with the global imperial expansion into the Qing empire (15). “Local, national and international factors” shaped the region (16). Zatsepine argues that changes on one side of the border induced changes on the other and that Chinese and Russian colonization of the area mirrored each other and supplemented local developments. The attempts of both states, Russia and China, to govern in that border region were largely ineffective (17).
The author shows this by discussing local agents of change (9), these being the interactions of ethnically diverse populations of Chinese, Russians, and various indigenous peoples, including the Goldi and Manchus, among others (chapter 2), and especially in trade and extraction of natural resources, such as fur and gold (chapter 3), over which neither China nor Russia had much control. The region’s topography and climate shaped human activity there before the expansion of China and Russia (chapter 1). Russian imperial expansionism was ineffective because there was not much enthusiasm amongst the Russian population to move to the region (chapter 4). Local governments tried to introduce modernization on both sides of the border (chapter 8). However, the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War affected the region (chapter 7). Russia, like other imperial powers at the time, such as Britain and Germany, used military conflict, railway concessions, extraterritorial rights for its citizens, and spheres of influence (161). However, Russian expansion was economically weak despite the Chinese Eastern Railway construction project (chapter 6), in contrast to Chinese migration, which drove the urbanization of the region (chapter 5). The history of the Amur frontier region is different in Chinese and Russian state accounts (163). One example is the Blagoveshchensk massacre (1900), a most tragic instance of border clashes in the region, which continued after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The study is informed by regional and national accounts of the history, geography, politics, economics, and culture of Northeast Asia, published in Russian, Chinese, and English. The author’s approach is threefold and covers “the history of Sino-Russian relations, China’s frontier studies, and regional and local histories” (9). The author uses sources published by the Chinese Eastern Railway; memoirs, such as that by Russian premier minister Sergey Witte, published in Berlin; Russian official sources, such as publications by the Russian Christian Orthodox mission in Peking in the 1920s; and a chronology of the Russo-Japanese war; as well as regional periodicals from the time, such as a Russian émigré periodical published in Harbin, a history of the Russian fur trade published in the 1920s, a Khabarovsk newspaper, and writings by geographers and ethnographers in English, Russian, and Chinese.
Beyond the Amur is an enjoyable read, with stories of informal networks across the border, of the individuals whose life stories usually remain outside official narratives, such as Chinese traders in the Russian territory of the Amur region. We are familiar with the story of Manchuria, of the activity of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was “similar to a colonial government” (105), but not from the angle Zatsepine approaches it. Instead, we see a world of human activities the state was unable to control. This was the world of Chinese and Russian settlers in the area hosting Harbin, a Russian city on Chinese soil (113), and of the relations between the communities living side by side in border areas. It was the world shaped by Russia’s “state-guided industrialization of Siberia and Russia’s peaceful expansion in the Pacific through trade and rail” (100), as well as by American and German businesses in Vladivostok (98). The book includes a chronology of the history of Sino-Russian relations in the Amur region, from Nurhaci’s Manchu dynasty to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, as well as a glossary of Chinese terms, including geographical and personal names. The book will be of interest to historians of border zones and to historians of Russia and China as well as to the general reader.
Anna Belogurova
Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany