One: A hundred years of conquest
In 1579, Yermak, a Cossack active in the Don River valley and making a living by plundering merchants and foreign envoys, was attacked by an army sent by Ivan the Terrible of Russia.
After the fiasco, Yermak, with 540 Cossacks, defected to the Stroganov family, which had been granted a license by the Tsar to reclaim the Kama River Valley.
(Ivan the Terrible)
At that time, the "Strokanov family", heeding the Tsar's call to prepare an army to attack the Siberian Khanate, saw Yermak with more than 500 strong men to defect, and he began to think of waste.
After recruiting a team of 300 people, Yermak and his men gathered 840 Cossacks and distributed them with weapons, translators and guides, so that this group of outlaws could fight for Tsarist Russia!
This Yermak was the famous Siberian conqueror of Tsarist Russia, and his starting point was also very European, a bandit who was recruited.
Britain relied on pirates to fight the world, and Russia relied on robbers to seize territory, and the two major powers of Europe, the East and the West, complemented each other perfectly.
Then Yermak, with a force of 840 men, went east, crossed the Ural Mountains and then down the river, attacking the Tatars with advanced firearms.
The weapons of the dimensionality reduction blow, so that the Siberian Khanate, which numbered only more than 100,000 people, suffered bad luck, and on November 4, 1582, the Russian army defeated Kuchum Khan and captured iskell, the capital of the Siberian Khanate.
The grief-stricken Kuchum Khan fled to the south, reorganized his forces to continue with the Russian army Zhou Xuan, and after 17 years of guerrilla resistance, Kuchum Khan was killed and the Siberian Khanate completely sank.
(Siberian Khanate)
Of course, this is a later story!
For Tsarist Russia's gaze was not just a small Siberian Khanate, but the whole of Siberia.
Although where is the barren land, although there is nothing but the ice field, but the land is the land?
The success of the front line made Ivan Theron very happy, and he immediately pardoned Yermak's past crimes, and rewarded him with many things, encouraging him to continue his efforts and continue to march.
With the reward of Ivan the Terrible, Yermak continued to attack, achieving the first Cossack eastward advance.
However, this Yermak did not live long, and in August 1584, during a night raid by the Tatars, he died of a throat wound.
Although Yermak was dead, the pace of the attack of Tsarist Russia and the Cossacks did not stop.
In the years that followed, Tsarist Russia saw that the vast Siberian enemy was weak and weak, and there was a cheap to take advantage of, and it was busy flying, and constantly sent troops deep into Siberia, and after a hundred years, Tsarist Russia controlled most of Siberia and the Far East, making it the most important area on the map of today's Russia.
This is siberia and the Far East, which covers an area of more than 13 million square kilometers and contains endless resources and wealth.
Why was Tsarist Russia, farther away, complete its government against Siberia and the Far East?
The more distant Central Plains Dynasty, which had been fighting with the northern nomads for so long, why didn't it occupy this piece?
What made the Tsarist Russians successful and made the Central Plains Dynasty reluctant to get involved?
Let's keep watching!
(Conquest of Siberia)
Two: The characteristics of the Far East make him easy to conquer.
The answer to what kind of regions the Far East and Siberia are is that the environment is extremely cold, sparsely populated, and vast.
These three causes are layered and progressive relationships.
The environment is too cold, so that human beings can not survive, high latitude altitude and minus tens of degrees of temperature, so that where to live requires great courage, in addition to a small number of indigenous people, not many people will yearn for siberia and far east where birds and will freeze.
This makes in addition to the indigenous people, immigrants lose interest in Siberia, no immigrants enter, the indigenous people who insist on Siberia because of the cold, there is a difficulty in survival, the fertility rate is not high, the survival rate is not high, so the population is very sparse.
This very sparse population, also distributed in tens of millions of square kilometers of land, is definitely not too much to describe it as uninhabited.
This is also the root cause of the fact that even today, Siberia and the Far East have a territory of more than 13 million square kilometers and a population of only 38 million.
Looking back today at the time of Tsarist Russia's conquest of Siberia, there is a population of 3 million in this land. (Estimated, no real data)
A small population meant that the state was not well organized and cohesive enough, allowing the conquest of Tsarist Russia to be smooth.
Without the activity of the great powers and the resistance of the establishment, the Russians' offensive would certainly have been smooth!
In addition to this demographic size factor, the national character of the Slavs was also one of the key factors in the Russian conquest of Siberia.
(Permafrost environment)
Three: The national character of the Slavs determines Russia's ambitions.
The national character of a nation determines the style of the country.
What kind of country was Tsarist Russia?
A semi-agrarian and semi-nomadic people, the Vikings founded a country, and after experiencing the conquest of the Mongols, they became a European outlier conqueror by mixing The Blood of the Mongols!
This heterogeneity exists because of multiculturalism.
(Slavic distribution)
To the west, they longed for the glory of the Roman civilized Christian world, but after the long Mongol conquest, they were despised by the Christian world.
In the east, they were baptized by the Mongols, and after the disaster, they understood the importance of the strong and the territory.
This gives Russia the genes of expansion tradition and strength.
This tradition and gene, combined with the not very high temperature of the Eastern European plain in the core of Europe, makes the cold in Siberia not a problem for them.
The towering trees of the Far East, the vast meadows are all things that the Russian people have in mind, even if it is frozen soil. Fur is not wealth?
With such demands, and the Tsar's various policies of encouragement, the hardy, tough Cossacks became the vanguard of Tsarist Russia's attack on Siberia, and it is not surprising that it did its best until the end of the ocean.
Even if it is cold and frozen, the ocean is still an ocean? The Russians' ambition to reach the sea lasted for hundreds of years from the moment of the birth of Tsarist Russia.
Knowing this, it is also understood that the driving force behind Tsarist Russia's conquest of Siberia and the Far East, wealth, access to the sea, and the desire to conquer in the blood are not blocked by frozen soil.
(Cossack conquest)
Four: Conquest and control of Tsarist characteristics.
With ambition, with strength, there is motivation.
After a century-long leap forward, Tsarist Russia occupied most of Siberia, and the few strong enemies they encountered chose to take a detour or maintain diplomatic relations.
Adhere to the idea of taking advantage of what can be taken advantage of, talking about what cannot be taken advantage of, and then waiting for the opportunity.
Such a maneuver allowed Tsarist Russia to use the Qing Dynasty to encroach on part of the territory of the Dzungar Khanate, and after becoming strong, to take advantage of the Second Opium War to open the Qing Dynasty.
This was a foreign move by Tsarist Russia after occupying Siberia and the Far East, and when the strategic projection ability was not enough, it first squeezed the persimmons and then slowly ate the hard bones.
What about his rule over the occupied areas of Siberia?
The answer is that Huai Rou slaughtered at the same time, and the emigration was real.
The aborigines, those who disobey will slaughter and drive away, and those who obey will give you bones and let you be a cow and a horse.
In this way, the Tatars in the Far East and Siberia suffered, and they could not bear it, which contributed to the return of the legendary Hults, and as for those who did not return to the east, they also became submissive under the oppressive rule of Tsarist Russia.
(Tatars)
In addition to this treatment of the indigenous people, Tsarist Russia also engaged in the export of immigrants.
In the first half of the 17th century, the population of Siberia was only 200,000 people, of which 100,000 were indigenous and about 100,000 Were Russians, and by the end of the 18th century, the Slavs accounted for the majority of Siberia's total population of 1.2 million.
By 1905, Siberia had a population of 9.4 million, 90 percent of whom were Russians.
Of siberia's 38 million people today, 80 percent are Russians, 5 percent are Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the proportion of indigenous people is a pitiful 15 percent.
After a round of noisy domination, Tsarist Russia spent hundreds of years of cultivation and colonization, so that the majority of Russians was established, and the rule of Tsarist Russia became stable.
This is Russia's efforts to stabilize and develop Siberia and the Far East, seemingly rough, but in fact thick and thin, knowing the root cause of the problem.
The root cause of this is the determination of the status of the main nation.
(Siberian immigrants)
Russia is farther away from Siberia, but it controls this area, while the Central Plains Dynasty is actually closer, why can't it be controlled?
Fifth: National endowments, political, economic and technological constraints, let the Central Plains Dynasty miss opportunities.
Chinese civilization, from a corner of the Yellow River through the ability to assimilate through inclusive culture, in the process of continuous development, step by step from the Yellow River to the Yangtze River, into Bashu, into the western region, into the inner and outer northeast.
Let East Asia become the gathering place of Central Plains culture!
This step of cultural expansion, accompanied by battles, is, in an impolite way, no one's territory is sent with a charge.
However, there is also a limit to this step-by-step expansion, that is, the essence of farming culture, and the buffer zone of farming and nomadic culture.
The fertile land of the Central Plains is suitable for farming, and it is the core area that must be firmly controlled, the Mongolian plateau and part of the desert north, as well as the western region, which is a strategic buffer zone, a mixed area of farming and nomadism, and cannot be abandoned.
(Farming in traditional China)
But if you go north, there is no motivation!
Although the bitter cold land is rich in resources, in that era when the development of science and technology is not enough, untapped resources are equal to worthless resources, and can only be farmed, and the place where grazing is a good place.
Today's hard currency, natural gas, oil, minerals, not the top of the use ah? For the sake of wood and fur, there are inside and outside the northeast, and it is not cost-effective to seek far and near, so it is better to rule with bondage.
This is the cultural and economic reason for the stoppage, and in addition to this, there is another factor that the enemy is different.
Compared with the weak chicken countries encountered by Tsarist Russia during its conquest, the northern part of the Central Plains Dynasty has always had a strong nomadic regime.
The Han Dynasty had Xiongnu, the Three Kingdoms and two Jin Dynasties were more lively, the Southern and Northern Dynasties had Rouran and Khitans, the Sui and Tang Dynasties had Turks, the Song Dynasty had Khitans, Jurchens and Mongols, the Ming Dynasty had Mongolia, and the northern powers like marquees were all obstacles.
Russia's conquest of Siberia was easy and comfortable, and it was the product of the dimensionality reduction blow under the blessing of science and technology, and the product of the weak chicken rampant. In exchange for the Central Plains Dynasty's northern expedition to the west, it won the effort to win the battle, and if it lost the battle, there was a possibility of major problems, so it was better to control the strategic buffer zone and make diplomatic checks and balances and military balances cost-effective.
(Threat of Northern Peoples)
Epilogue: Technology emerges, do not think about the past and forge ahead.
In addition to military factors above the military level, the last and most critical factor is that after 1492, the world, once the East, began to fall behind!
In the nearly 500-odd years of world history after the opening of the Great Navigation Age, the reasons for the strength and weakness of major powers have changed from area and population to science and technology, institutions, and world trade.
At this point, during the Ming Dynasty, China began to reverse the era, but the huge volume and relatively backward technology allowed the Ming Dynasty to still earn countless silver in world trade, achieving the last highlight of the Silver Empire.
(The Age of Discovery Changed the World)
However, after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, although the territory expanded, the thinking was further stagnated, and the stagnation of thinking made science and technology backward.
In contrast, the West has different borders, with iterative development of science and technology, continuous progress in the system, and endless emergence of military theories.
Peter the Great's reforms, as well as the great northern war, allowed the originally backward Tsarist Russia to bathe in the light of science and technology, contact the fruits of swedish military reform, and train a strong Russian army.
The development of science and technology and the progress of the military system have also steadily improved Russia's military strength, and it has ushered in an era of anti-transcendence in the follow-up.
The outbreak of the Opium War and the great changes that have not occurred in three thousand years have brought the great powers of the East into a hundred years of decay.
It is nearly a hundred years behind, and it is nearly a hundred years behind.
Isn't it silly to think about the Far East and Siberia? Wrapping up the core area is immeasurable!
Fortunately, countless ancestors have worked hard and encouraged to maintain, so that today's China still has a vast world.
This heaven and earth, with a marine barrier in the south, the roof of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau world in the west, the Tianshan Mountains in the northwest, and the vast black earth in the east, still have great achievements.
The regrets of the past are in the past, and who can say clearly what will happen in the future?
Only by working hard and enterprising can we forge ahead!