Manchuria

Manchuria, also known by its official name of Dongbei Pingyuan (in Traditional Chinese, 東北平原; in simplified Chinese, 东北平原; pinyin, Dōngběi Píngyuán; literally, 'Northeast China Plain') is a historical region located in northeast China with an area of 801,600 km². It includes the Chinese provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin, as well as the eastern part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Its capital is Shenyang (formerly Mukden).

Depending on the context, Manchuria can refer either to the region entirely within China, or to a larger region divided between China and Russia. The region that is entirely within China is known as Northeast China in China, although "Manchuria" is a term widely used outside of China to designate the geographical and historical region. Part of the former Manchu territory is now under Mongolian sovereignty and the northeastern part under Russian territory. This region is the homeland of the Xianbei, Khitan, and Jurchen peoples, who built several states earlier.

Toponymy

“Manchuria” is a translation of the Japanese word Manshū, dating from the 19th century. The name Manju (Manzhou) was invented and given to the Jurchen by Hong Taiji in 1635 as a new name for their ethnic group. However, the name "Manchuria" was never used by the Manchus or the Qing dynasty itself to refer to their homeland.

According to the Japanese scholar Junko Miyawaki-Okada, the Japanese geographer Takahashi Kageyasu was the first to use the term ""满洲" (Manshū) as a place name in 1809 in the Nippon Henkai Ryakuzu, and it was from that work that Westerners adopted the name. According to Mark C. Elliott, the work of Katsuragawa Hoshu of 1794, Hokusa bunryaku, was where "满洲" (Manshū) first appeared as a place name found on two maps included in the work Ashia zenzu and Chikyū hankyū sōzu that were also created by Katsuragawa.

According to Nakami Tatsuo, Philip Franz von Siebold was the one who brought the use of the term Manchuria to Europeans after borrowing it from the Japanese, who were the first to use it geographically in the 17th century XVIII, although neither Manchu nor Chinese had a term in their own language equivalent to "Manchuria" as a place name, as it has imperialist connotations. According to Bill Sewell, it was the Europeans who first began using the name Manchuria to refer to that location and that it is "not a true geographical term".

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 the Japanese," and McCormack adds that the term Manchuria is imperialist in nature and has no 'precise meaning', since the Japanese deliberately promoted the use of "Manchuria" as a geographical name to promote their separation from China at the time they were preparing his puppet state of Manchukuo.

One of the first European maps to use the toponymous “Manchuria”Mandchouria(John Tallis, 1851). Previously it was common to use the term "Chinese Tatar" in the West to refer to Manchuria and Mongolia.

In 18th century Europe, the region later known as "Manchuria" was then commonly referred to as the " Chinese tartary. However, the term "Manchuria" (Mantchourie, in French) began to appear at the end of the century, although French missionaries used it as early as 1800. French-based geographers Conrad Malte-Brun and Edme Mentelle promoted the use of the term. together with "Mongolia", "Kalmykia", etc., as more precise terms than Tartary, in his work on the geography of the world published in 1804.

During the Qing Dynasty, the area of Manchuria was known as the "Three Eastern Provinces" (Traditional Chinese, 東三省; simplified Chinese, 东三省; pinyin, Dōngsānshěng) since 1683, when Jilin and Heilongjiang they were separated although it was not until 1907 that they became royal provinces. The area of Manchuria was then made into three provinces by the later Qing government in 1907. Since then, the phrase "three provinces of the Northeast" was officially used by the Qing government in China to refer to this region, and the office of Viceroy of the Three Northeastern Provinces was established to take charge of these provinces. After the 1911 revolution, which led to the fall of the Qing dynasty, the name of the Manchu region became known as "the Northeast" in the official documents of the newly founded Republic of China, instead of " the three provinces of the Northeast».

In modern Chinese, an inhabitant of "Northeast", or Northeast China, is a "Northeast" (simplified Chinese, 东北人; pinyin, Dōngběi rén). The "Northeast" is a term that expresses the entire region, encompassing its history, culture, traditions, dialects, gastronomy, etc., as well as the "three eastern provinces" or "three northeastern provinces". In China, the term "Manchuria" (Traditional Chinese 滿洲; Simplified Chinese 满洲; pinyin, Mǎnzhōu) is rarely used today, and the term is often negatively associated with the Japanese imperial legacy in the puppet state of Manchukuo (Traditional Chinese 滿洲國; Simplified Chinese 满洲国; pinyin, Mǎnzhōuguó).

Manchuria has historically also been referred to as Guandong (Traditional Chinese, 關東; in simplified Chinese, 关东; pinyin, Guāndōng), literally meaning "east of the pass", in reference to the Shanhai Pass in Qinhuangdao in present-day Hebei Province, at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China. This usage is seen in the expression Chuǎng Guāndōng (literally "running to Guangdong"), which refers to the mass migration of Han Chinese to Manchuria in the 19th and 20th centuries. An alternative name, Guangwai (關外; 关外; Guānwài; “out of the pass”), was also used to name the region. The name Guangdong later came to be used for the narrower area of the Kuantung on the Liaodong Peninsula. Not to be confused with the southern province of Guangdong.

Geography

Manchuria lies primarily in the northern part of the funnel-shaped North China craton, a broad zone of crushed and overlying Precambrian rocks spanning 100 million hectares. It is a mountainous region, crossed by the valleys of the Sungari and Liao rivers, which are fed by the rivers of the same respective names. Its subsoil is rich in iron, zinc, coal, lead, copper, silver and gold.

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 Khingan Mountains in the west are a Jurassic mountain range formed by the collision of the North China Craton with the Siberia Craton, which marked the final stage in the formation of the supercontinent Pangea.

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 have been formed by the movement of dust and till particles formed in glaciated parts of the Himalayas, Kunlun Shan, and Tien Shan, as well as the deserts of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. The soils are mostly fertile molisol and fluvents except in the more mountainous parts where orthents are poorly developed, as well as in the far north, where permafrost occurs and gelisol dominates.

Climate

Manchuria's climate has extreme seasonal contrasts, ranging from humid, almost tropical heat in the summer to harsh winters characterized by cold, dry arctic winds. This pattern is because Manchuria's position at the boundary between the large Eurasian landmass and the vast Pacific Ocean causes a full reverse monsoon wind.

In summer, when the land warms faster than the ocean, low pressure blows hot, humid easterly southerly winds over Asia that bring heavy storm rain, producing annual rainfall ranging from 400mm or less, in the west, to more than 1,150 mm in the Changbai Mountains. Temperatures in summer are very hot and in July average maximum temperatures range from 31° C in the south to 24° C in the extreme north. Except in In the far north, near the Amur River, high humidity causes significant discomfort at this time of year.

In contrast, in winters, the immense anticyclone of Siberia causes very cold winds, from north to northwest that bring temperatures as low as -5° C in the extreme south and -30° C in the north, where the zone of Discontinuous permafrost reaches northern Heilongjiang. However, due to the winds coming from Siberia the climate is extremely dry, snow falls only for a few days each winter and it is never heavy. This explains why corresponding North American latitudes were fully glaciated during the Quaternary glacial periods while Manchuria, though even colder, always remained too dry to form glaciers, a state ameliorated by strong surface westerly winds. ice sheet in Europe.

Manchurian Outreach

Manchuria can refer to any of several regions of various sizes. These are, from smallest to largest:

• Northeast China (Manchuria): Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning Provinces.
• Internal Manchuria: It is part of the current Inner Mongolia (Hulun Buir, Hinggan, Tongliao and Ulanhad divisions);
• La Manchuria Exterior (Russian Manchuria): Amur and Ussuri river area, the Stanovoi Mountains area and the Japan Sea. In Russian administrative terms, it occupies the Krai de Primorie, south of the Khabárovsk Krai, the Hebrew Autonomous Opt and Amur Opt. These territories were part of the domain of Qing Dynasty, in accordance with the Treaty of Nérchinsk of 1689, but were granted to Russia by the Treaty of Aigun (1858).

History

Manchuria was the ancestral homeland and place of origin of different ethnic groups among which the Koreans, Manchus, Mongolians, Turks, Japanese and Tungus peoples stand out.

In ancient times, it was home to warlike nomadic tribes such as the Turkic Khanate and the Eastern Turkic Khanate. China began its territorial control from the Han dynasty, but over time the Chinese limited themselves to having garrisons in the south of the region. Later, the Tungus created the kingdom of Pohai, which was destroyed by the Khitan Mongols, who created the Liao empire. Other tribes, such as the Jurchen, vassals of the Tungus, founded their kingdom Chin in 1115 and allied with the Chinese of the Song dynasty, who crushed the Khitan in 1127, before attacking the Chinese later. who had helped them.

The Mongols, ruled by Ogodei (son of Genghis Khan), wiped out the Manchurian kingdoms in 1234, paving the way for Chinese domination, but in 1368 the Chinese Ming dynasty re-established dominance in the region. However, the Jurchen began to get stronger while the Ming weakened. Since then, these tribes would be known as Manchus. At the end of the 16th century hostilities against the Chinese began, which finally ended with the fall of the Ming, starting with the suicide of its last emperor.

In 1644, the Manchus founded the Qing dynasty, which ruled until 1911 and tried to stop Chinese emigration to Manchuria until the late 18th century , emigration due in part to the existing resources in the region.

Its border with Russia was modified several times in 1689, 1858 and 1860, being in this last date when it was established between the Amur and Ussuri rivers. By the 19th century, the Chinese population outnumbered the native Manchu population.

Russian Orthodox Church in Harbin, 1900.

Since 1894 it was a region disputed by both the Russian Empire and the Japanese Empire, a situation that caused the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, won by the latter. The region was occupied by Japan in 1931, being renamed Manchukuo, and proclaimed as a new independent state —although in reality it functioned as a Japanese protectorate. The last Chinese emperor Puyi, to give the new country a certain legitimacy before the entire world, was invested as Emperor of Manchukuo under the name Kang De. Later, the Soviet Union, in the battle of Lake Hasan, on August 11, 1938, managed to defeat the Imperial Japanese Army, managing to recover the eastern part of Manchuria. In 1939 there was a decisive confrontation in the undeclared border war between the Empire of Japan and the Soviet Union, known as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, in which Marshal Georgy Zhúkov, commanding Soviet and Mongolian troops, managed to defeat the Japanese army, guarding the Soviet and Mongolian borders against Japanese aggression. On August 8, 1945, the battle of Manchuria or the so-called "Operation August Storm" took place by the Soviets, in which Soviet Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, commanding Soviet and Mongolian troops, achieved victory over the forces japanese.

With this he consolidated the recovery of Soviet sovereignty over Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, ended the Japanese claims to the Russian city of Vladivostok and obtained the guarantee of Mongolian sovereignty over its territory. Between 1945 and 1946 the territory was under Soviet military occupation. After the war, in 1948, the former Chinese Manchuria region became an integral part of the People's Republic of China, and in 1959, the region was divided between Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin.