1900 Amur anti-Chinese pogroms

1900 Amur anti-Chinese pogroms; Gengzi Russian disaster
	Part of the Russian invasion of Manchuria
	; In the Blagoveshchensk massacre, a Qing civilian was tied for execution.
Date	17–21 July [O.S. 4–8 July] 1900
Location	Blagoveshchensk and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River
Result	More than 3,000 Qing subjects killed; loss of residency for Chinese living in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River
Territorial; changes	Qing China loses control over the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River
Belligerents
Russian Empire	Qing dynasty; Boxers
Commanders and leaders
Aleksey Kuropatkin; Nikolay Grodekov [ru]	Shoushan [zh]; Yang Fengxiang [zh]; Chong Kunshan; Wang Liangchen
Strength
36,000 Russian soldiers and Cossacks	22,000 civilians
Casualties and losses
none[citation needed]	198 officials died; 7,000 Chinese citizens died

The 1900 Amur anti-Chinese pogroms (Chinese: 庚子俄難) were a series of ethnic killings (pogroms) and reprisals undertaken by the Russian Empire against subjects of the Qing dynasty of various ethnicities, including Manchu, Daur, and Han peoples. They took place in Blagoveshchensk and in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River in the Amur region, during the same time as the Boxer Rebellion in China. The events ultimately resulted in thousands of deaths, the loss of residency for Chinese subjects living in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River, and increased Russian control over the region. The Russian justification for the pogroms were attacks made on Russian infrastructure outside Blagoveshchensk by Chinese Boxers, which was then responded by Russian force. The pogroms themselves occurred in 17–21 July [O.S. 4–8 July] 1900.

Name

The name for the killings and reprisals that occurred in Amur is not standardized, and has been referred to by different names over time. The most common Chinese name for the pogroms is the Gengzi Russian disaster (traditional Chinese: 庚子俄難; simplified Chinese: 庚子俄难; pinyin: Gēngzǐ é nán), but the two most major events in Blagoveshchensk and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River are referred to as the Blagoveshchensk massacre (traditional Chinese: 海蘭泡慘案; simplified Chinese: 海兰泡惨案; pinyin: Hǎilánpào cǎn'àn) and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River massacre (traditional Chinese: 江東六十四屯慘案; simplified Chinese: 江东六十四屯惨案; pinyin: Jiāngdōng liùshísì tún cǎn'àn) respectively.^[2]

The Russian name of the pogroms in Blagoveshchensk is referred to as the Chinese pogrom in Blagoveshchensk (Russian: китайский погром в Благовещенске), while the killings and reprisals that took place in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River are referred to as the Battle on the Amur (Russian: бои на Амуре).^[3]

Background

Blagoveshchensk was founded on the territory ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Aigun in 1858.

Process

Blagoveshchensk

Sixty-Four Villages East of the River

Lieutenant-General Konstantin Gribskiy ordered the expulsion of all Qing subjects who remained north of the river.^[4] This included the residents of the villages, and Chinese traders and workers who lived in Blagoveshchensk proper, where they numbered anywhere between one-sixth and one-half of the local population of 30,000.^[4]^[5] They were taken by the local police and driven into the river to be drowned. Those who could swim were shot by the Russian forces.^[6] There were 1,266 households, including 900 Daurs and 4,500 Manchus in the area until the massacre.^[7] Many Manchu villages were burned by Cossacks in the massacre according to Victor Zatsepine.^[8]

Legacy

Andrew Higgins of The New York Times wrote that Chinese and Russian officials tended to not bring up the incidents during periods of good China–Russia relations or Sino-Soviet relations, while the incident was brought up after the Sino-Soviet split with people still alive who had been in the pogroms being interviewed by Chinese officials. Higgins stated that in 2020 Chinese and Russian officials purposefully avoided dealing with the incident.^[8]

Notes

^ a descendant of Yuan Chonghuan

References

^ Sun, Rongtu; Xu, Xilian (1974). 瑷珲县志 [Annals of Aihui County] (in Chinese). Taipei: Cheng Wen Publishing Co., Ltd. pp. 209–210.
^ Gao, Yongsheng; Li, Lingbao (March 2004). "庚子俄难"时限的再界定与思考 [Redefinition and Reflection on the Dates of the "Gengzi Russian Disaster"]. History of Heilongjiang (in Chinese): 35–36. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1004-020X.2004.03.015. ISSN 1004-020X.
^ Piskunov, Sergey (12 December 2001). Rumyantsev, Vyacheslav (ed.). "Боксерское" восстание в Китае в 1898 - 1901 ["Boxer" Uprising in China in 1898–1901]. hrono.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 8 March 2003. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
^ ^a ^b Paine, S. C. M. (1996). Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-1-56324-724-8. Retrieved 8 May 2019.^{[pages needed]}
^ Yan, Jiaqi (28 February 2005). 中俄邊界問題的十個事實──回應俄羅斯駐中國大使館公使銜參贊岡察洛夫等人文章 [Ten facts about the Sino-Russian border problem: In reply to the essays by Russian Minister-Counselor to China Sergey Goncharov and other people]. Twenty-First Century (in Chinese) (35) (Online ed.). Archived from the original on 14 April 2005. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
^ Maxwell, Neville (2007). "How the Sino-Russian Boundary Conflict Was Finally Settled: From Nerchinsk 1689 to Vladivostok 2005 via Zhenbao Island 1969" (PDF). In Iwashita, Akihiro (ed.). Eager Eyes Fixed on Eurasia. Vol. 2: Russia and Its Eastern Edge. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University. pp. 47–72. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
^ Military Scientific Committee of the General Staff (1886). Сборникъ географическихъ, топографическихъ и статистическихъ матеріаловъ по Азіи [Collection of Geographic, Topographic and Statistical Materials on Asia] (in Russian). Vol. XXXI. Saint Petersburg: Military Printing House (in the General Staff Building). p. 185.
^ ^a ^b Higgins, Andrew (26 March 2020). "On Russia-China Border, Selective Memory of Massacre Works for Both Sides". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 March 2020.