CONFLICT OF AUTHORITY IN SOUTH MANCHURIA: THE EARLY YEARS OF THE RUSSIAN LEASEHOLD, 1898 - 1900

In 1898, Russia obtained from China the right to lease the southern part of Manchuria's Liaodong Peninsula, governing its citizens and exploiting its resources. Despite assurances that these concessions did not impair China's essential sovereignty in Liaodong, Russia's occupation in fact threatened numerous local interests. This study investigates Russia's efforts to obtain de jure authority in South Manchuria up through 1898 and then to translate that into de facto authority afterward, together with China's attempts to limit or circumscribe Russian authority in the period before mid-1900, when the Boxer Uprising led to Russia's occupation of all of Manchuria.;Relying on unpublished Zongli Yamen archives held in Taibei and on contemporary accounts by Russian administrators and observers, this study examines the conflict between Russian and Chinese authorities, from the central down to the local level, over sovereignty in Liaodong.;In the initial period, the Russians' emphasis was less on practical accomplishments, such as collecting the full amount of land-tax, than it was on ensuring their right to administer the leasehold. This attitude brought them into conflict with the Chinese administration of Jinzhou, the sub-prefectural seat of the leased region, which maintained its autonomy under the 1898 treaties. Numerous disputes arose over such matters as jurisdiction over criminals, the allocation of income from the leasehold salt industry, and the status of the local banner troops, whose traditional income from "emolument lands" was threatened by Russia's insistence on monopolizing the land-tax collection.;To resist the Russian intrusion, Chinese officials and citizens employed a variety of means, ranging from bureaucratic delay in the provincial capital to direct confrontation at the village level. These efforts proved unsuccessful, however. In addition to China's comparative military weakness, a major factor appears to be that no broadly-based movement could be organized against the Russians. Since at that time the concept of "sovereignty" was understood only in the restricted sense of specific prerogatives belonging to individuals responsible for governing the state, rather than as a general set of attributes pertaining to the nation as a whole, China's resistance therefore remained fragmentary and ineffective.