Manchuria

• 1. Introduction

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  Manchuria is a region of Northeast Asia, and in 1912 a British diplomat and sinologist named Herbert Giles claimed that neither the Chinese nor the Manchus recognized the word as a place name. That is a strange charge to level at a region with armies, railways, and treaties attached to it. Today most people link Manchuria with three Chinese provinces: Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. Depending on who draws the map, it also reaches into eastern Inner Mongolia and into the Russian Far East. This documentary asks where a name that nobody at home used actually came from. It asks why many scholars still hesitate to say it. It asks how a land with brutal Siberian winters managed to stay free of glaciers. And it asks how the ancestral homeland of the Manchus ended up pulled between Russia, Japan, and rival Chinese armies.

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• 2. A Name From Maps

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  The earliest appearance of Manshū as a place name, according to the American researcher Mark C. Elliott, is on two maps by Katsuragawa Hoshū. They sit inside his 1794 work Hokusa Bunryaku and carry the titles Ashia zenzu and Chikyū hankyū sōzu. Junko Miyawaki-Okada credits someone else. She points to the Japanese geographer Takahashi Kageyasu, who used the word as a toponym in his 1809 Nippon Henkai Ryakuzu, and says Westerners took the name from that work. Li Narangoa suggests a third route, in which the term reached Japan in the 18th century through European maps that followed Jesuit conventions.

  Other Japanese mapmakers soon repeated it, among them Kondi Jūzō, Baba Sadayoshi, and Yamada Ren. Their maps traveled to Europe in the luggage of Philipp Franz von Siebold. Forms of the word reached European languages by way of Dutch, and by the 1830s several Indo-European versions were in circulation.

  Back in Asia, the word had a thin pedigree. Hong Taiji gave the Jurchen people the name Manchu in 1635. According to the scholar Nakami Tatsuo, Manzhou always meant the people or their state and never a region. He put it bluntly: "In fact, neither Manchus nor Han Chinese have ever called China's Northeast 'Manzhou'." The historical geographer Philippe Forêt agreed that neither Chinese nor Manchu has a word for Manchuria.

  Elliott and Li Narangoa tell a more layered story. They argue that the Manchu imperial lineage saw the Changbai Mountains as its original home, and that the Qing court worked to build a regional identity around them. Part of that effort aimed at slowing acculturation, which was already eroding the Manchu language. Jesuits were commissioned to draw maps that sharpened the idea of a homeland, and Elliott thinks those maps inspired the European and Japanese label. In 1877 a scholar from Ningbo named Gong Chai used Manzhou in an essay for a place northeast of Beijing, the birthplace of the dynasty. Qing officials used it again about 20 years later, and Chinese maps began to show it in the first decade of the 1900s.

  Japan's use of the word carried a heavier charge. Mariko Asano Tamanoi wrote that "'Manchuria' is a product of Japanese imperialism, and to call the area Manzhou is to accept uncritically a Japanese colonial legacy." Gavan McCormack argued that Japan promoted the name on purpose, to suggest a region separate from China as it prepared to set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. Japanese media in the 1920s had still called the region a part of China, sometimes nicknaming it the "Garden of China". After Manchukuo was founded in 1932, an official handbook published in 1933 said Manchuria did not belong to China at all. By the 1950s, Manzhou had virtually vanished as a Chinese place name, though a few people kept using it out of habit.

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• 3. Names East of the Pass

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  During the Ming dynasty, the land where the Jurchens lived was called Nurgan. The Qing dynasty preferred another label, the three eastern provinces, which in Manchu was Dergi Ilan Golo. The phrase covered Fengtian, Jilin, and Heilongjiang, and it dates from 1683, when Jilin and Heilongjiang were separated. Even so, those two did not receive the full functions of provinces until 1907.

  The Shanhai Pass in Qinhuangdao, at the eastern end of the Great Wall, supplied another pair of names. Guandong means east of the pass, and Guanwai means outside it. The phrase Chuǎng Guāndōng, literally "Rushing into Guandong", described the mass movement of Han Chinese into the region in the 19th and 20th centuries. Later, Guandong narrowed to mean the Kwantung Leased Territory on the Liaodong Peninsula. It should not be confused with the southern province of Guangdong.

  The Japanese used Tōsanshō, their version of the three provinces, alongside Manshū through the 1920s. They also called the region Tōhoku, meaning the Northeast. The Mukden Incident of 1931 ended that variety. Afterward, Tōsanshō was completely replaced by Manshū in Japanese usage. On the Chinese side, Dongsansheng and Dongbei became the orthodox names.

  The People's Republic of China now treats the word Manchuria as deprecated, because of its ties to Japanese imperialism, to Manchukuo, and to Manchurian nationalism. Official documents speak of the Northeast Region, and a resident is a Dōngběirén, a Northeasterner. The label usually covers only the three provinces and leaves out the Inner Mongolian districts. Behind that plain label lies a land that was once the homeland of the Yemaek and the Shiwei.

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• 4. Dust, Monsoon, and Cold

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  The Greater Khingan range in the west is Jurassic in age. It formed when the North China Craton collided with the Siberian Craton, the last stage in the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea. Manchuria sits mainly on the northern side of the funnel-shaped North China Craton, a broad area of Precambrian rock. That craton was an independent continent before the Triassic period, and during the Carboniferous it was the northernmost land on Earth.

  The fertile lowlands rest on very deep layers of loess. Wind carried this dust from glaciated parts of the Himalayas, the Kunlun Mountains, and the Tian Shan, as well as from the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. Most soils are fertile mollisols and fluvents. Poorly developed orthents appear in the mountains, and the extreme north has permafrost soils.

  The climate swings between humid, almost tropical summer heat and windy, dry Arctic winter cold. Manchuria lies where the great Eurasian landmass meets the Pacific, so the monsoon winds reverse completely between seasons. In summer, low pressure over Asia draws in warm, moist air from the south and southeast. Annual rainfall runs from 400 mm or less in the west to over 1150 mm in the Changbai Mountains. July average maxima range from 31 C in the south to 24 C in the extreme north.

  In winter the vast Siberian High sends cold winds from the north and northwest. The zone of discontinuous permafrost reaches northern Heilongjiang. Yet those Siberian winds are exceedingly dry, so snow falls on only a few days each winter and never heavily. That dryness explains a paradox. Corresponding latitudes of North America were buried under ice during the Quaternary glaciations, while colder Manchuria never grew glaciers at all.

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• 5. Kingdoms and Khans

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  Goguryeo, which lasted from 37 BCE to 688 CE, was one of several Koreanic kingdoms that took root in Manchuria. Gojoseon, which existed before 108 BCE, and Buyeo, from the 2nd century BCE to 494 CE, were others. Peoples such as the Sushen, Donghu, Xianbei, Wuhuan, Mohe, Khitan, and Jurchens each rose to power there. Chinese dynasties held parts of the region at various times, including the Qin, Han, Cao Wei, Western Jin, and Tang. In the northwest, the First Turkic Khaganate of 552-603 and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate of 581-630 held territory. The early economy mixed hunting, fishing, livestock, and agriculture.

  The Liao dynasty, founded by the Khitan in 916 and lasting until 1125, became the first state to control all of Manchuria. Its tributaries, the Tungusic Jurchens, overthrew it in the early 12th century and founded the Jin dynasty, which ran from 1115 to 1234. When the Mongol Yuan dynasty ruled China from 1271 to 1368, Manchuria was administered as Liaoyang province. In 1375 a Mongol official named Naghachu invaded Liaodong, but he surrendered to the Ming dynasty in 1387. The Ming then tightened its grip under the Yongle Emperor, setting up the Nurgan Regional Military Commission, which operated from 1409 to 1435.

  A Jianzhou Jurchen chieftain named Nurhaci, who lived from 1558 to 1626, began uniting the Jurchen tribes in the 1580s. He founded the Later Jin dynasty in 1616, which later became known as the Qing. In 1640 the Qing defeated an Evenk-Daur federation led by the Evenki chief Bombogor and beheaded him. Qing armies massacred and deported Evenkis and absorbed the survivors into the Banners.

  In 1644, peasant rebels sacked Beijing, the Ming capital. The Jurchens, now called Manchus, allied with the Ming general Wu Sangui, seized Beijing, and overthrew the short-lived Shun dynasty. The Manchu conquest of China involved the deaths of over 25 million people. Afterward the Qing often called their state China, or Dulimbai Gurun in Manchu. The Qing shilu applied that term to lands including Manchuria in roughly two-thirds of cases. The Qing stated explicitly in the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk that the lands in Manchuria belonged to China.

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• 6. The Palisade and the Plow

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  In 1668 the Qing forbade Han people from moving into Manchuria, and in 1681 they erected the Willow Palisade, a barrier of trees and ditches, to mark the limit of settlement. Only bannermen, including Han bannermen, were allowed to settle in Jilin and Heilongjiang. But the palisade was lightly guarded, poorly maintained, and easy to cross. Han farmers from North China kept arriving anyway.

  Manchu landlords wanted Han peasants to rent their land and grow grain, so most migrants were not evicted. In the 18th century Han farmers worked 500,000 hectares of privately owned land and 203,583 hectares belonging to courier stations, noble estates, and Banner lands. The Qing itself resettled Han refugees suffering from famine, floods, and drought. It also moved Han farmers to the Liao River area to restore land to cultivation. The Qianlong Emperor, who reigned from 1735 to 1796, issued edicts banning migration from 1740 to 1776, yet he let drought-stricken peasants move in.

  By 1800 Han Chinese were the majority in the urban areas of Manchuria. One observer put their share at 80 to 90 percent of the population in garrisons and towns. They settled the route linking Jinzhou, Fengtian, Tieling, Changchun, Hulun, and Ningguta. At the start of the Daoguang Emperor's reign in 1820, the Qing sold formerly Manchu-only land along the Sungari to Han buyers to raise revenue. According to Abbé Huc, Han Chinese filled most of Manchuria's towns by the 1840s.

  Han migration was only half of the change. In the late 18th century, Manchus in Beijing were sent to Manchuria to ease the burden on the court, but they tried by every means to return. Aside from 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and their families, plus a military colony set up in the 1850s, the region was left without Manchus. By 1900-15 million of Manchuria's 17 million inhabitants were Han Chinese.

  Owen Lattimore visited Jilin in January 1930 and studied the town of Wulakai, where Manchu and Chinese bannermen lived together. The Chinese bannermen there had become effectively Manjurified and could no longer be told apart from the Manchus. Lattimore noted that the Han civilian population was in the process of absorbing and mixing with them.

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• 7. Railways, Treaties, and Plague

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  The year 1858 brought the Treaty of Aigun, in which a weakening Qing dynasty ceded Manchuria north of the Amur to Russia. The Treaty of Peking in 1860 handed over another large slice east of the Ussuri River. Together these treaties split the region into a Russian half, called Outer Manchuria or Russian Manchuria, and a Chinese remainder. The Qing also lost its access to the Sea of Japan.

  To counter the growing influence of Meiji-era Japan, the Qing granted Russia the right to build railways, including the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1896. Harbin, the largest city in the north, held 300,000 people by 1921, and 100,000 of them were Russians. Japan then displaced Russia in the southern half after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Most of the southern branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway passed to Japan and became the South Manchurian Railway. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Japanese influence reached into Outer Manchuria, but Soviet control returned by 1925.

  Manchuria mattered because of its coal, fertile soil, and various minerals. For Japan before World War II it was an essential source of raw materials. Without it, the source argues, Japan probably could not have planned its conquest of Southeast Asia or risked attacking the United States and the British Empire in 1941.

  In 1910-1911 a major epidemic, the Manchurian plague, swept the region. It was likely caused by inexperienced hunting of marmots, many of which were diseased. Cheap railway transport helped it spread, as did harsh winters that forced hunters to shelter in close quarters. The response needed coordination among Chinese, Russian, and Japanese authorities. After the outbreak was controlled, international disease experts met at an International Plague Conference in Shenyang to learn its lessons.

  Japan pressed for more in 1915, forcing China to cede economic privileges in Manchuria. They included concessions in Anshan, a city that would take on a very different industrial role decades later.

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• 8. War, Revolution, and Oil

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  Zhang Zuolin made himself a powerful warlord with influence over most of Manchuria around the time of World War I. His autonomous rule nominally acknowledged the Republic of China, and Japan co-opted him while keeping its semi-colonial economic privileges. The economy grew tremendously under him, helped by immigration from other parts of China. After his defeat in the Northern Expedition he retreated to Manchuria, where Japanese army officers assassinated him on the 2nd of June 1928 in the Huanggutun Incident. The officers wanted Japan to take direct control, but the Japanese government did not back the plan. His son Zhang Xueliang took over and directed public funds toward Chinese industrial enterprises.

  The Mukden incident of 1931 and the Japanese invasion that followed led to the creation of Manchukuo. Japan declared Manchuria an independent state and installed the deposed Qing emperor Puyi as puppet emperor. The territory was run brutally, with arrests, organized riots, and a systematic campaign of terror against local people. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese settlers arrived, and Japan used Manchukuo as a base to invade the rest of China.

  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Joseph Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's surrender. The United States and United Kingdom agreed the Soviet Union could pursue its claimed interests in Manchuria. The Soviet Union declared war in August and invaded. Its forces stayed until the spring of 1946. China's Nationalist government then took control, and the Chinese Communist Party soon began fighting it for the region. The communists won the Liaoshen Campaign. With Soviet encouragement, Manchuria became a staging ground for their victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Ambiguities in the old treaties left disputes over several islands, and on the 1st of February 1952 the United Nations passed resolution 505 denouncing Soviet actions. The Kuomintang government in Taiwan had brought the complaint.

  After the People's Republic was founded, Manchuria became central to China's socialist industrialization. Strongly shaped by the Soviet model, policy favored heavy-industry state-owned enterprises such as Angang in Anshan. The Daqing oil field made the region the center of China's oil industry beginning in the 1960s. During the Third Front Construction it also supplied staff for new industrial bases in China's interior.

  The Sino-Soviet split led to a border conflict that eventually ended in agreement. In 2004 Russia agreed to transfer Yinlong Island and half of Heixiazi Island to China, and the deal was finalized in 2008. It closed a long dispute over the very river borders that the treaties of 1858 and 1860 had drawn.

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