“The Eastern Three Provinces”: International Conflicts in Manchuria and Northeast Asia, 1850-1920

Becoming “The Eastern Three Provinces” 21

Chapter 1 Becoming “The Eastern Three Provinces”: International Conflicts in Manchuria and Northeast Asia, 1850-1920

Introduction

An English study on Manchuria in 1932 called it the “cockpit of Asia,” where “drama never dies.”1 It had other names such as “the Balkans in East Asia”2 and “the storm-center of Asia.”3 From 1850 to 1945, the conflicting security, political, and economic interests between several Chinese, Japanese, and Russian states, as well as non-state actors led to prolonged rivalries and occasional wars in the region.4 This period witnessed the rise and fall of once-prominent figures with many different titles whose careers were inseparable from Manchuria, such as Generalissimo Zhang Zuolin, his son Xueliang, General Roman Ungern von Sternberg, Ataman Grigory Semenov, Governor Wang Yongjiang, General Yang Yuting, Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi, and many others. This chapter focuses on the developments of Northeast Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries that set the background of the war between 1925 and 1931. During this period, Manchuria experienced rapid change as its orientation moved from a Sino-centric world system to a Northeast Asian and global net- work. It became more integrated into “China” institutionally and socially, but geopolitics, imperialism, and the international economy pulled the area in a different direction. As the result of long-term forces, circumstances and indi- vidual actions, a “Chinese” regime emerged in Manchuria.

1 Hubert Hessell Tiltman, Manchuria: The Cockpit of Asia (London, 1932), 1. 2 Yu Juemin, Manzhou youhuan shi (Tianjin, 1929), 1. 3 Owen Lattimore, Manchuria: Cradle of Conflict (New York, 1932), 4. 4 The disputed boundary between China and Russia was not completely confirmed until 2005, when the last section in dispute was settled. Jiang Changbin, Zhong-e dongduan bianjie de yanbian (Beijing, 2007), 2.

Northeast Asia: Implications of Geography

Colin Gray suggests, “physical and political geography provide opportunities, challenges, and dangers, and help condition the frame of reference for official and public debate over national choices in policy and grand strategy.”5 The physical and historical geographies of Northeast Asia were of vital importance in Zhang’s strategy and its failure. “Northeast Asia” roughly spanned from 100°-150° W and 30°-60° N. Several components stood out from a topographic map of this vast region: in the center was the Manchurian Plain, an area of gentle flatland as large as the North China Plain, surrounded on three sides by mountains. Southeast of the Plain was the Changbai Mountain Range that divided Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula. To the west, the Greater and Lesser Khingan Mountains stretched from south to north, separating the Manchurian Plain from the Inner Mongolia Plateau and Eastern Siberia. Across the Tsushima Strait south of the Korean Peninsula was the Japanese Archipelago.6 Three major river systems run across the region. The Amur River (Hei longjiang), now the natural boundary of Russia and China; the Liao River (Liaohe), its tributaries spreading across the Manchurian Plain and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia (Rehe Province during the Republican period); and the Songhua River (Songhuajiang), flowing through both Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces. According to the South Manchuria Railway Company, the size of Manchuria was 382,632 square miles, fifty-percent larger than modern France.7 Including Rehe Province, it was as large as France and Germany combined. As Owen Lattimore pointed out, it was necessary to distinguish the “historical geography of ancient Manchuria and the political geography of modern Manchuria.”8 Shaped by its environment, Manchuria was divided into three distinct components. South Manchuria, or Liaodong, was suitable for farming. Its northwestern part was the more arid western steppe—the territory of the nomads—while

5 Colin S. Gray, War, Peace, and International Relations, 137. 6 For Geography in Manchuria, see Owen Lattimore, Manchuria Cradle of Conflict, 13-17; Bank of Chōsen, Economic History of Manchuria (Seoul, 1920), 8-9; Dudley Stamp, Asia: a Regional and Economic Geography (London, 1967), 551-4. 7 Bank of Chōsen, 6. 8 Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (New York, 1940), 103; Dudley Stamp, 551-4; Michael Pillsbury, Environment and power warlord strategic behavior in Szechwan, Manchuria, and the Yangtze Delta, Unpublished PhD. Thesis, Columbia University (1980), 249. Chinese studies on the area saw the different people in pre-modern Manchuria as part of a “Zhonghua nation.” See Li Deshan, Luan Fan, Zhongguo dongbei guminzu fazhan shi (Beijing, 2003), 1.