The Creation of the Priamur Governor‐Generalship in 1884 and the Reconfiguration of Asiatic Russia

Abstract

The quarter‐century time lag between Russia's acquisition of the Priamur region (by the Beijing Treaty of 1860) and the introduction of the Priamur Governor‐Generalship (1884) has been attributed to bureaucratic inertia and the government's narrowly military interests in this region. This paper argues that administrative territorial reform in the Far East needed this long period because it was inseparable from a total reshaping of Asiatic Russia that encompassed territorial reforms in Siberia (including West Siberia), the Kazakh Steppe, Central Asia, and the Orenburg region. Through interministerial discussions and unimplemented reform proposals, Russian policy makers acquired a concept of the Russian Far East, composed of not only the new territorial acquisitions but also Zabaikal Oblast, part of the Old Siberia. This meant that the government expected the Russian Far East to become not only a military outpost but also a self‐sustainable economic unit. For this purpose, a vital condition was to exploit the economic activities of Chinese and Korean immigrants and Japanese fishermen. This requirement made the Priamur governor‐general more creative and operative than the Siberian governor‐generals.