At the Frontier of God's Empire

Manchuria, or northeast China, is strategically located at the intersection of four major powers in Northeast Asia: China, Russia, Japan, and Korea. Its inhabitants include Chinese, Russians, Japanese, Koreans, Manchus, Mongolians of various ethnicities, and other indigenous populations. The Manchus conquered China proper in 1644 and founded China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing. In the two hundred years that followed, the Manchu rulers established a multiethnic and multicultural empire. However, as the homeland of the Manchus, Manchuria became emblematic of the Manchu Way," and from the seventeenth century onward, the Qing government enforced strict but fluctuating policies to prevent the migration of Han Chinese to Manchuria. The restrictions lasted until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Qing began to loosen its prohibition on immigration to Manchuria amid challenges posed by domestic crises and the expansion of Western imperialism. In 1858, Niuzhuang (Newchwang), a small town on the upper reaches of the Liao River in the Liaodong Peninsula, became the first treaty port open to the West on China's northeast frontier following the Treaty of Tianjin, signed after the Second Opium War. A few years later, in 1864, a British customs office was established there. The British chose this small river town in southern Manchuria to open up the market of northeast China and spearhead its strategic interests in the region, particularly in response to the regional imperial competition between Russia and Japan. But before the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, British policy in Manchuria was weak and indecisive"--