Research Of Cao Tingjie And "the Instruction Of Three Northeast Provinces’Atlasn"

Northeast is one of the birthplaces of the Chinese nation with a long history.Vast White Mountain and Black water--the landscape of northeast China bred alarge number of ethnic tribes. The people had frequently exchanged with the CentralPlains since ancient times. They not only enriched the history and culture in thenortheast region, but also played an important role in the history of the entireChinese nation. In Qing Dynasty, the rulers regarded the northeast as “the land ofdragon rising”. At the19th century, Qing Dynasty, which rested on its laurelsinstead of making a progress for a long term, was invaded wildly by imperialistpowers, its sovereignty had been trampled on, and large swathes of territory fell intothe hands of foreign powers. Northeast suffered long-term intrusion by tsarist Russia,large territory was occupied, and border defense had a tense situation. Manypatriotic scholars determinedly devoted themselves to the study on the northeast soas to fulfill their responsibility to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorialintegrity through their own researches.Cao Tingjie, as a historical geographer, was one of lofty patriots, persevered inhis study, visited the vast land in the northeast China, and recorded a great deal ofdetailed information on history, geography, ethnicity, culture of the northeast, whichprovided an important reference for later study and development of the northeast. Asa patriot, he collected intelligence about the territory occupation, wrote the literatureof frontier defense against aggression, he didn’t hesitate to put his life at risk forrubbing the inscription on Yong Ning Temple’s Monument of Nuergan, thenconducted a study on the inscription in details, which exposed the crime ofaggression in northeast by Tsarist Russia, and proved that China had jurisdictionover the northeast since ancient times. Combining the history and geography withthe current situation, he proposed some feasible suggestions for revitalizing thenortheast, which made a great contribution to anti-Russia and development of thenortheast. The Instruction of Three Northeast Provinces’ Atlas, Northeast Frontier Digestand Main Points of Eastern Siberia Records are three most well-known works ofCao Tingjie. The Instruction of Three Northeast Provinces’ Atlas contains more thanfifty entries, including a great deal of analysis on history, geographical concept,archaeological remains, and minority tribes of large northeast area covering theHeilongjiang River basin and the Wusuli River basin, which involve many aspects.Cao Tingjie referred to a large number of historical literature, inspected thenortheast in person, summarized and recorded numerous valuable information onhistory and geography, which is helpful for knowing the history development of thenortheast made by Chinese nation, recognizing the effective jurisdiction of thenortheastern region made by Chinese past dynasties, and revealing the crime ofaggression in northeast committed by Tsarist Russia. The Instruction of ThreeNortheast Provinces’ Atlas provided convincing historical evidence. Even at present,The Instruction of Three Northeast Provinces’ Atlas is still worth reading literatureon northeast study. Mr. Jin Yufu named the evidence as “finding what thepredecessor didn’t find” and “a required work of Liaodong geography”.Since the1980s, there had been a great upsurge in Cao Tingjie’s study in thefield of history and geography in the northeast. Many renowned scholars hadpublished monographs and papers on Cao Tingjie, including history writings, lifeexperiences, border defense value, and patriotism of Cao Tingjie, which gave aenormous attention to Cao Tingjie and relevant historical materials in his works; TheInstruction of Three Northeast Provinces’ Atlas had also been concerned to someextent; however, there was rare literature or thesis with a comprehensive andsystematic study. This thesis started with the life experience of Cao Tingjie, Thethesis made a brief analysis of some literature written by Cao Tingjie, gave anevaluation to him, focused on the background when he wrote Introduction of thetMap in Three Northeastern Provinces, the editions in circulation, and contentanalysis, aiming to make an in-depth summary of the literature value of the work.trying to analyze summarize the histories of aggression in the northeast by tsarisRussia, the northeast ethnicities, the northeast development through studying on Cao Tingjie’s The Inst ruction of Three Northeast Provinces’ Atlasso as to be helpful forpeople to know the history, geography of the northeast.