The Territorial Terms of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689

Abstract

DESPITE its great importance for the subsequent development of SinoRussian relations, the 1689 treaty between the two empires has not yet been studied exhaustively. In particular this is true of the territorial terms of this document. Gaston Cahen, for instance, deals in detail with the diplomatic and political history of the treaty in his Histoire des relations de la Russie avec la Chine sous Pierre le Grand, 1689-173o (Paris, g191 2), 31-53, but devotes only a few lines to the terms of the treaty. The same applies to F. A. Golder's Russian Expansion on the Pacific, z641-185o (Cleveland, 1914), 63-64, and to B. G. Kurts's valuable little study Russkokitaiskie snosheniya v XVI, XVII i XVIII stoletiyakh (Kharkov, 19g9), 49-54. The territorial terms of the Nerchinsk Treaty, which were to remain in force for something like 160 years, are extremely ambiguous, and an analysis of a number of discrepancies between the Russian translation and the Latin text of the treaty reveals reason for the ambiguity. This small essay deals mainly with one question: What is the exact meaning of Article I of the treaty, particularly of its first part defining the new northern frontier of China? To reply to that question, we must investigate the genesis of the text and compare the Russian and the Chinese interpretations of the text. First, the Latin text: