Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda River and the Tukuringra- Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact geographical extent varies depending on the definition: in the narrow sense, the area constituted by three Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning as well as the eastern Inner Mongolian prefectures of Hulunbuir, Hinggan, Tongliao, and Chifeng; in a broader sense, historical Manchuria includes those regions plus the Amur river basin, parts of which were ceded to the Russian Empire by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty during the Amur Annexation of 1858–1860. The parts of Manchuria ceded to Russia are collectively known as Outer Manchuria or Russian Manchuria, which include present-day Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai, and the eastern edge of Zabaykalsky Krai.

The name ''Manchuria'' is an exonym (derived from the endonym "Manchu") of Japanese origin. The history of "Manchuria" (''Manzhou'') as a toponym in China is disputed, with some scholars believing it was never used while others believe it was by the late 19th century. The area was historically referred to by various names in the Qing dynasty such as ''Guandong'' (East of the Pass) or the ''Three Provinces'' referring to Fengtian, Heilongjiang, and Jilin. ''Manchuria'' as a geographical term was first used in the 18th or 19th centuries by the Japanese before spreading to Europe. The term was promoted by the Empire of Japan in support for the existence of its puppet state, Manchukuo. Although the toponym is still used, some scholars treat the term with caution or avoid it altogether due to its association with Japanese colonialism. The term is deprecated in China due to its association with Japanese imperialism and ethnic connotations. As a result, areas once considered part of Manchuria are simply referred to as the ''Northeast''. The ''Three Provinces'' and the ''Northeast'' were also in concurrent use among the Japanese along with ''Manchuria'' until the Mukden incident of 1931.

The area is home to many ethnic groups, including the Manchus, Mongols, Koreans, Nanai, Nivkhs, and Ulchs. Many of the early ancient Koreanic kingdoms were established in the area. It is the ancestral homeland to the Tungusic-speaking Jurchens and their descendants, the Manchus.

Boundaries

Manchuria is now most often associated with the three Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. The former Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo further included the prefectures of Chengde (now in Hebei), and Hulunbuir, Hinggan, Tongliao, and Chifeng (now in Inner Mongolia). The region of the Qing dynasty referenced as Manchuria originally further included Primorskiy Kray, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the southern parts of Amur Oblast and Khabarovskiy Kray, and a corner of Zabaykalʼskiy Kray. These districts were acknowledged as Qing territory by the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk but ceded to the Russian Empire due to the Amur Annexation in the unequal 1858 Treaty of Aigun and 1860 Convention of Beijing (the People's Republic of China indirectly questioned the legitimacy of these treaties in the 1960s, but has more recently signed agreements such as the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, which affirm the current status quo; a minor exchange nonetheless occurred in 2004 at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers). Various senses of Greater Manchuria sometimes further include Sakhalin Island, which despite its lack of mention in treaties was shown as Qing territory on period Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and French maps of the area.

The drainage basin of the Amur River apart to the east towards Mongolia roughly corresponds to the geographical area of the historic land of the Manchu people. The northern boundary was marked by mountains.

Names

Manchuria

Origins

The geographical term "Manchuria" was first used in the 18th or 19th century by the Japanese. "Manchuria" – variations of which arrived in European languages through Dutch – is a calque of Latin of the Japanese placename ''Manshū'' "Region of the Manchus"), which dates from the 18th century.

According to the American researcher Mark C. Elliott, the term ''Manshū'' first appeared as a placename in Katsuragawa Hoshū's 1794 work ''Hokusa Bunryaku'' in two maps, "Ashia zenzu" and "Chikyū hankyū sōzu", which were also created by Katsuragawa. According to Junko Miyawaki-Okada, Japanese geographer Takahashi Kageyasu was the first to use the term ''Manshū'' as a toponym in 1809 in the ''Nippon Henkai Ryakuzu'', and it was from that work that Westerners adopted the name.
.
. By the 1830s, various Indo-European forms of ''Manshū'' could be found. However, according to Li Narangoa, the term was introduced to Japan in the 18th century through European maps following Jesuits, Jesuit conventions.

''Manshū'' then increasingly appeared on maps by Japanese cartographers such as Kondi Jūzō, Takahashi Kageyasu, Baba Sadayoshi, and Yamada Ren. Their maps were brought to Europe by Philipp Franz von Siebold.Elliot 2000
, p. 628. According to Japanese scholar Nakami Tatsuo, Siebold was the one who brought the usage of the term ''Manchuria'' to Europeans after borrowing it from the Japanese, who were the first to use it in a geographic manner in the 18th century.

China

The history of the use of "Manchuria" as a toponym in China is uncertain. According to one stream of thought, it was not used by the Manchus or the Chinese.Nakami Tatsuo. "Qing China's Northeast Crescent: The Great Game." ''The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, Volume 2.'' David Wolff et al., eds. Brill, 2005
p. 514.
''"The use of the term 'Manchuria' as a place-name had begun with the Japanese in the eighteenth century, and it was later introduced to Europe by Philipp Franz von Siebold" 796–1866 The name ''Manchu'' was given to the Jurchen people by Hong Taiji in 1635 as a new name for their ethnic group. However neither the name ''Manchu'' or the Chinese rendering of ''Manshū'' as ''Manzhou'' ever acquired geographical connotations, while in Japanese, both ''Manchuria'' and ''Manchu'' are rendered as ''Manshū''. According to Nakami Tatsuo, ''Manzhou'' was used to refer to Manchu people or one of their states rather than a region: "Originally, ''Manzhou'' was the name of the Manchu people or of their state; it was not the name of a region. In fact, neither Manchus nor Han Chinese have ever called China's Northeast 'Manzhou'." Even advocates of an independent Manchuria such as Inaba Iwakichi acknowledged this.Mark C. Elliott. ''The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China.'' Stanford University Press, 2001
p. 63.
''"...the name 'Manchu' was officially adopted in 1635 as the name for all Jurchen people."'' In 1912, British diplomat and sinologist Herbert Giles stated in ''China and the Manchus'' that "'Manchuria' is unknown to the Chinese or to the Manchus themselves as a geographical expression". According to Owen Latimore, during his travels in China during the late 1920s, he found "no single Chinese name for Manchuria as a unit". Historical geographer Philippe Forêt concurred, noting that there is no word for ''Manchuria'' in either Chinese or Manchu languages.

Another perspective delineated by scholars such as Mark C. Elliott and Li Narangoa argues that Manchu consciousness of their homeland as a unique place contributed to the creation of Manchuria as a distinct geographical entity, and that "Manchuria" (''Manzhou'') was used as a toponym by the Chinese. According to Elliott, the Manchu imperial lineage believed that their original homeland was the Changbai Mountains. The Qing court endeavored to create a regional identity focused on the Changbai Mountains, which gradually became a symbol of Manchu identity. However, it is uncertain whether that notion was shared among ordinary Manchus, and there is evidence that part of that effort was to combat widespread acculturation among Manchus, resulting in the loss of their language. As part of this effort, Jesuits were commissioned to create maps that enhanced Manchu conceptualization of their homeland, which Elliot believes to have been the original impetus to label the region as Manchuria in European and Japanese maps. In 1877, ''Manzhou'' was used as a toponym in an essay by Gong Chai, a scholar from Ningbo. The description of ''Manzhou'' located it to the northeast of Beijing and identified it as the birthplace of the dynasty. ''Manzhou'' was used as a place name again 20 years later by Qing officials. ''Manzhou'' began to appear on Chinese maps in the first decade of the 1900s. Maps that used ''Manzhou'' were in the minority during the early Republican period but the name remained in common use among the Chinese Communist Party into the 1930s. Names for the region were relatively fluid before the Mukden Incident of 1931, after which alternative names in Japanese were discarded for ''Manshū'', and ''Dongbei'' (Northeast) and ''Dongsansheng'' (Three Eastern Provinces) became the orthodox names for the Chinese. According to Mark Gamsa, ''Manzhou'' was not widely used among the Chinese but the People's Republic of China disapproved of it regardless. By the 1950s, ''Manzhou'' had virtually disappeared as a toponym although some still used it out of habit.

Japan

The term ''Manchuria'' has been described as "controversial" or "troublesome" by several scholars including Mark C. Elliott, Norman Smith, and Mariko Asano Tamanoi. The historian Norman Smith wrote that "The term 'Manchuria' is controversial" based on reasons outlined by Mariko Asano Tamanoi in the "Introduction" of ''Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire'' (2005). According to Tamanoi, "'Manchuria' is a product of Japanese imperialism, and to call the area Manzhou is to accept uncritically a Japanese colonial legacy." Japan used the name "Manchuria" to convey the idea of a contested region distinct from China while China insisted on its ownership of the region by rejecting the name "Manchuria". Japanese colonists who returned to Japan from Manchukuo in the post-war period used terms such as ''Manshu'' (Manchuria), ''Man-mō'' (Manchuria-Mongolia), and ''Mō-man'' (Mongolia-Manchuria) almost interchangeably. Hyphenated terms such as ''Man-sēn'' (Manchuria and Korea) and ''Man-mō'' (Manchuria-Mongolia) emerged in Japanese media and traveler writings during the first three decades of the 20th century, implying that these regions were extensions of each other. Tamanoi notes that the name "Manchuria" cannot be found on Chinese maps and acknowledged that she "should use the term in quotation marks" even though she did not.Tamanoi 2000
, p. 249.

Historian Bill Sewell denies that ''Manchuria'' is "a genuine geographic term", claiming the Japanese never viewed Manchuria as a discrete entity and it was Europeans who first started using the name Manchuria to refer to the location. Others such as Forêt described ''Manchuria'' as a solely geographical term without indicating a political connection and used it in that capacity despite acknowledging its imperialistic overtones. The historian Gavan McCormack agreed with Robert H. G. Lee's statement that "The term Manchuria or Man-chou is a modern creation used mainly by westerners and Japanese", with McCormack writing that the term Manchuria is imperialistic in nature and has no "precise meaning" since the Japanese deliberately promoted the use of "Manchuria" as a geographic name to promote its separation from China at the time they were setting up their puppet state of Manchukuo. In the 1920s, Japanese media still presented Manchuria as part of China, albeit as a distinct region, and sometimes called it the "Garden of China". However, in 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was founded covering not only the northeastern three provinces but also parts of eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1933, the Bureau of Information and the Publicity Department of Foreign Affairs of the Manchukuo Government published a ''Handbook of Information of Manchukuo'' stating that Manchuria did not belong to China, had its own history and traditions, and was the home of the Manchus and Mongols. Elliot notes that one scholar considered the use of "Manchuria" as not only inaccurate but giving approval to Japanese colonialism.

Nurgan

During the Ming dynasty the area in which the Jurchens lived was referred to as Nurgan.

Three Provinces

During the Qing dynasty, the region was known as the "three eastern provinces" (; Manchu, ''Dergi Ilan Golo''), which referred to Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Fengtian since 1683 when Jilin and Heilongjiang were separated.Søren Clausen and Stig Thøgersen. ''The Making of a Chinese City: History and Historiography in Harbin.'' M. E. Sharpe, 1995
p. 7.
''"In 1653 Jilin became an independent administrative unit, and in 1683 Heilongjiang was separated from Jilin. From then on, the three districts of Fengtian (roughly equivalent to present-day Liaoning), Jilin, and Heilongjiang became known as the "Three Eastern Provinces" (''San dong sheng'') although Jilin and Heilongjiang had not functioned as provinces in the full sense of the word until 1907–08."'' However, Jilin and Heilongjiang did not receive the full function of provinces until 1907. The Japanese also used the name "Three Eastern Provinces" (''Tōsanshō'') during the 1920s and 1930s along with ''Manshū''. However, after the Manchurian Incident of 1931, ''Tōsanshō'' was completely replaced by ''Manshū'' in Japanese usage while the ''Three Provinces'' and ''Northeast'' became the orthodox name for the same region in Chinese usage.

Guandong

Manchuria has been referred to as ''Guandong'' (), which literally means "east of the pass", and similarly ''Guanwai'' (), a reference to Shanhai Pass in Qinhuangdao in today's Hebei, at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China. This usage is seen in the expression '' Chuǎng Guāndōng'' (literally "Rushing into Guandong") referring to the mass migration of Han Chinese to Manchuria in the 19th and 20th centuries. The name Guandong later came to be used more narrowly for the area of the Kwantung Leased Territory on the Liaodong Peninsula. It is not to be confused with the southern province of Guangdong.

Northeast Region

The term "Manchuria" is deprecated among people of the People's Republic of China (PRC) due to its association with Japanese imperialism, the puppet state of Manchukuo of the Empire of Japan, and Manchurian nationalism. Official state documents use the term Northeast Region (东北; Dōngběi) to describe the region, and an inhabitant of the Northeast is a "Northeasterner" (). It is usually restricted to the "Three East Provinces" or "Three Northeast Provinces", excluding northeastern Inner Mongolia. The ''Northeast'' (''Tōhoku'') was also used as a name for Manchuria by the Japanese during the 1920s and 1930s.

Northeast China is predominantly occupied by Han Chinese due to internal Chinese migrations and Sinicization of the Manchus, especially during the Qing dynasty. It is considered the original homeland of several historical groups besides the Manchus, including the Yemaek the Xianbei, the Shiwei, and the Khitans. The area is also home to many Mongols and Hui.

Geography and climate

Manchuria consists mainly of the northern side of the funnel-shaped North China Craton, a large area of tilled and overlaid Precambrian rocks spanning . The North China Craton was an independent continent before the Triassic period and is known to have been the northernmost piece of land in the world during the Carboniferous. The Greater Khingan in the west is a Jurassic mountain range formed by the collision of the North China Craton with the Siberian Craton, which marked the final stage of the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea.

No part of Manchuria was glaciated during the Quaternary, but the surface geology of most of the lower-lying and more fertile parts of Manchuria consists of very deep layers of loess, which have been formed by the wind-borne movement of dust and till particles formed in glaciated parts of the Himalayas, Kunlun Mountains and Tian Shan, as well as the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts. Soils are mostly fertile mollisols and fluvents except in the more mountainous parts where they have poorly developed orthents, as well as in the extreme north where permafrost occurs and orthels dominate.

The climate of Manchuria has extreme seasonal contrasts, ranging from humid, almost tropical heat in summer to windy, dry, Arctic cold in winter. This pattern occurs because the position of Manchuria on the boundary between the great Eurasian continental landmass and the huge Pacific Ocean causes complete monsoonal wind reversal.

In summer, when the land heats faster than the ocean, low-pressure forms over Asia and warm, moist south to southeasterly winds bring heavy, thundery rain, yielding annual rainfall ranging from , or less in the west, to over in the Changbai Mountains. Temperatures in summer are very warm to hot, with July average maxima ranging from in the south to in the extreme north.

In winter, however, the vast Siberian High causes very cold, north-to-northwesterly winds that bring temperatures as low as in the extreme south and in the north where the zone of discontinuous permafrost reaches northern Heilongjiang. However, because the winds from Siberia are exceedingly dry, snow falls only on a few days every winter, and it is never heavy. This explains why corresponding latitudes of North America were fully glaciated during glacial periods of the Quaternary while Manchuria, though even colder, always remained too dry to form glaciers – a state of affairs enhanced by stronger westerly winds from the surface of the ice sheet in Europe.

History

Early history

Manchuria was the homeland of several ethnic groups, including Manchu, Mongols, Koreans, Nanai, Nivkhs, Ulchs, Hui, possibly Turkic peoples, and ethnic Han Chinese in southern Manchuria. Various ethnic groups and their respective kingdoms, including the Sushen, Donghu, Xianbei, Wuhuan