Manchuria Manchoukuo

MANCHURIA (MANCHOUKUO),* the name of the territory to the north-east of China Proper which, at the time when European powers were beginning to establish trading relations with China, was the land of the Manchus and the home-country of the Manchu dynasty (1644-1911), then on the imperial throne. Although long essentially marginal to China Proper and during much of its history in the occupation of hostile peoples, its for tunes came to be definitely linked with China after the Manchu conquest, and as an integral part of the Chinese Republic, it was from 1907 to 1932 officially known as the "Three Eastern Prov inces" (Fengtien or Shengking, Kirin, and Heilungkiang).

Originally a frontier territory, it has no well defined limits and the international boundary follows in large measure the river courses of the Argun, Amur, Ussuri, Tumen, and Yalu, which offer definite features but do not indicate zones of separation in the geographical sense. The lines of the Argun, Amur, and Ussuri were adopted as the boundary between the Chinese and Russian empires by a series of treaties, of which the first was signed at Nerchinsk in 1689 after the great eastward expansion of Russia across Siberia. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk the Russian boundary advanced to the Argun, by the Treaty of Aigun (1858) to the Amur, and by the Treaty of Peking (186o) to the Ussuri. The northern boundary of Manchuria runs therefore along the very axis of the Amur basin, leaving northern Manchuria especially open to Russian penetration. The Tumen and the Yalu have been recognized as the boundary with Korea from the time of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) onwards. The in ternal boundary with Mongolia in the west is more indefinite and has considerably changed in recent times. With the expansion of Chinese agricultural colonization, Manchuria has extended at the expense of pastoral Mongolia. The present boundary is well to the west of the scarped edge of the Great Khingan in the north and follows the crest in the centre but in the south is still to the east of it, leaving the upper basin of the Liao-ho, although drain ing to Manchuria, within Jehol, the easternmost part of Inner Mongolia. Japanese claims to special privileges in South Man

.By the Japanese the area is now denominated Manchoukuo, but since only Italy, the Vatican, and El Salvador have officially fully recognized, and only Germany and Russia partly recognized the existence of the regime which was set up by the Japanese in 1931-32, the name Manchuria is here given preference.

churia always specifically included Eastern Inner Mongolia, by which was meant that part lying east of the Great Khingan.

The Country.

The core of Manchuria so marked out is a vast gently undulating plain lying between the scarped edge of the Great Khingan in the west and a more tangled mountain country in the east which culminates in the Chang-pai shan over looking the Korean border. The drainage from the highlands converges onto the plain—the Nonni from the Khingan, the Liao from Jehol, and the Sungari from the Chang-pai shan. It has been built up and levelled by their detritus. The plain nar rows quickly both to the north and the south. In the north it is separated from the lowlands along the Amur by the Little Khingan which stretches across from the Great Khingan almost to the East Manchurian Highlands, and even in the gap between them the Sungari penetrates through to the Amur only by a series of gorges. In the south the uplands of Jehol also approach close to the Eastern Highlands but there still remains a lowland corridor (drained by the lower Liao-ho) through to the Gulf of Liaotung, an inner arm of the Yellow sea. Only by a narrow lowland strip guarded by Shan-hai-kwan ("the gateway between the mountains and the sea") does this lowland corridor of South Manchuria communicate with the great Plain of North China. But the East Manchurian Highlands thrust far southward in the terminal peninsula of Liaotung which approaches close to that of Shantung in China Proper. Together these two peninsulas lie athwart the seaward approaches not only to the Manchurian plain but also to Peking, with one interval, for six centuries prior to the summer of 1928 the capital of China. The Manchurian plain, although thus ringed round by hill-masses, is not isolated by them for they are old denuded uplands of no great complexity and of only moderate relief.