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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

Lewis H. Siegelbaum
Affiliation:
La Trobe University

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?

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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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, 2257, 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

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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

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24 Borzunov, Proletariat Sibiri, p. 119 quoting from papers of administration for construction of Mid-Siberian Railway.Google Scholar

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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. 612.Google Scholar

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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

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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

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37 Zoloto i Platina (Gold and Platinum), XII (1906), 239.Google Scholar Cf. Gerrare, Greater Russia, p. 124.Google Scholar

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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

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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. 68113.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.

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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

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67 Frederic, Coleman, Japan Moves North (London, 1918), p. 51.Google Scholar

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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

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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), 2634.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. 912;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, 191402 1917) (Moscow, 1971), p. 42.Google Scholar

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82 Den' (The Day), No. 283, 14 October 1916, p. 3.

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