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Manchuria - History

Like the Mongols, that wide region has had many periods of great power and longer intervals of disintegrated rest . It is during those quiescent unhistorical periods of disintegration that the people has been known under the generic names of Sishun, Sooshun or Nujun. A man of strong character would appear, who, after establishing himself chief over a few tents or villages, was succeeded by a son and grandson worthy of him. These could, by sharp swords and good laws, extend the bounds of the incipient state. A dynastic title was then assumed, which soon became the designation for the whole people. This change of title among both Mongolic and Tungusic peoples, has given rise to much error; for the "Huns," "Turks," and "Mongols" differed only as the Han, Tang, and Sung of China differ. They are but dynastic titles of the same people, just as if the English were described as the people of York, Leicester, Tudor or Hanover, according to the dynastic family which happened to rule. The same is true of the Tungusic people which occupied, for scores of centuries, those extensive regions known as Manchuria.

Manchuria was long an agglomeration of petty Tartar or Manchu principalities, lying to the northeast of China Proper and east of Mongolia. The beginning of Manchurian history is lost in antiquity; and much of the early history of this vast district is an uncertain legend. Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia were given up to savage tribes, and the rivalries between them resulting in a constant, unorganized warfare was all the story that these wild regions boasted.

Ten or twelve centuries before Christ, the whole of Manchuria is said to have been inhabited by savages, who did not till the ground, and ate their meat raw. In summer they lived on the hill-sides, and in winter dug themselves pits in the ground. They wore only a rag before and behind, and protected themselves against the winter's cold by smearing themselves over with lard. They were divided into clans. Those in the north and east were always independent, but Fengt'ien or Liao-tung was then, as it has always been, the scene of perpetual triangular warfare between its indigenous inhabitants, the Coreans, and the Chinese, its situation and fertility making it a kind of Chinese Lombardy or Belgium.

At one time it appears that the Koreans spread over the country in great numbers, but the Mongol and Tungus tribes were the most powerful and persisted the longest. Manchuria belonged to the Kingdom of Mohe (1st and 2nd century), followed by the Kingdom of Goguryeo ( 2nd century - 668AD). The Kingdom of Balhae was ruling from 698AD to 926AD, this kingdom was actually based on the remains of the Mohe Kingdom. Between the 10th and 11th centuries Manchuria was the theatre of active warfare. Rival dynasties were attempting to rule the country, and hostilities were carried on also with the Sung Dynasty, then reigning in China proper. In 926AD the country of the Kingdom Balhae was conquered by the Khitans. The Khitans on their turn were conquered in 1125AD by the Jurchens. Their Kingdom was crushed by the Mongols in 1234AD.

In 1260 Manchuria took its place in history, with a thrilling chapter. Genghis-Khan, the great Asiatic prototype of Alexander the Great, dreaming his dream of a world empire, absorbed Manchuria in the great conquests that he made. Under his successors, Manchuria became a part of the Chinese empire and the Mongols rose steadily in power.

The area was welded into one kingdom during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a Manchu chieftain named Nurhachu and his successors, who, pushing south and west from their ultimate capital, Mukden, overthrew the great Ming dynasty and seated themselves on the throne of China at Peking in the year 1644, under the name of Ta Ch'ing Ch'ao ("The Great Pure Dynasty"). Since the establishment of the Manchu dynasty this field for Chinese enterprise and expansion was very much curtailed. Manchuria became the "Forbidden Country" and the government allowed nobody to enter, save those sent from China to gather wild ginseng or falcon feathers. This prohibition lasted for about a century, when the law was relaxed and a large Chinese immigration resulted.

The Great Wall was built to protect the Eighteen Provinces forever from invading hordes from the north, whether Mongol or Manchu. By the 19th Century, Manchuriawas divided for administrative purposes into three provinces called by the Chinese "The Three Eastern Provinces," [ Tung-san-sheng ] lay east of the eastern end of the Great Wall. Of the three eastern provinces, two, Heilungkiang and Kirin, may be dismissed with few words. The chief interest in them attaches to the Amur (or Heilungkiang, Black Dragon River) and the Sungari and their degree of navigability, and to the great wheat production of Kirin and the flouring mills established by the Russians at Harbin. This town is important as the junction between the ralF" way north from Port Arthur, Talien (Dairen or Dalny), Newchwang and Moukden, and the Russian main line from Irkutsk and Lake Baikal to Vladivostock.

The southern province, Fêng-tien, also known as Shengching / Sheng-king (Holy Court) from its capital Mukden, waa the most important, and contained, probably, nine-tenths of the total population of Manchuria; of this population it was estimated that less than a fourth, and possibly not more than a tenth, consisted of the original stock of the conquering Manchus, the great majority being immigrants from Shantung and Chihli, and their descendants. The western part of this province was made up of the plain of the Liao and the valleys of its tributaries, and grew wheat and durra for food, and beans from which were made an esculent and illuminating oil, and bean-cake shipped to restore exhausted fertility to the fields of Japan and of Kwangtung. The eastern part is mountainous and hostile to the husbandman and the soldier, and its principal products of value were opium and silk.

The 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan, ending the Sino-Japanse War, offered Russia the opportunity of securing the railway concession in North Manchuria. The possession of the southern extremity of the Liao-tung peninsula, containing Port Arthur, Talien-wan and other ports with the adjacent waters and islands, were leased to Russia in 1898. Russian forces entered on the occupation of a large part of Manchuria in 1900.

By the year 1900, probably not more than ten percent of the 17,000,000 inhabitants of the three provinces of Manchuria were Manchus. When the Manchus conquered the Chinese the great mass of the conquerors remained in China, where they were required to garrison their newly-acquired territory. The remainder of the seventeen millions of Manchuria were the descendants of Chinese who had already settled in Southern Manchuria during the Ming dynasty, and of immigrants from the northern provinces of China.

The Manchu language, unlike the Chinese, had no antiquity to boast of, and by the end of the 19th Century was to all intents and purposes a thing of the past. In the remote corners of the provinces of Kirin and Hei-lung-chiang, where Tartar tribes kept themselves isolated and beyond the tide of Chinese immigration, it was still spoken, and proclamations in Chinese and Manchu were met with; but, with this exception, Northern Chinese was the language of Manchuria.

Japan stepped into the arena and demanded, on August 12, 1903, inter alia, a mutual undertaking to respect the integrity of China and Korea, and the reciprocal recognition of Japan's preponderating influence in Korea and Russia's special interest in Manchuria. Throughout the negotiation, Russia was willing to concede to Japan the recognition of her preponderance in Korea, but she insisted on Japan's recognition of Manchuria as being outside her sphere of influence, and refused to give the pledge, even to the very last moments of the negotiations, to respect the integrity of China in Manchuria.

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) that ensued resulted, in addition to the transfer to Japan of the lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan, and of the southern section of the Russian Manchurian Railway from Changchun to Port Arthur, in putting an effective check on the Russian advance in Manchuria. The Russo-Japanese War was fought chiefly in South Manchuria, and gave into the possession of the victorious Japanese, subject to agreement with China, the Kwantung Territory and the southern portion of the Manchurian Railway, from Changchun to Dairen and Port Arthur, and all the property pertaining thereto, including extensive, partially developed mines. A treaty, concluded May, 1915, between Japan and China extended the lease of the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Manchuria Railway Lines to 99 years.