Why did the Yongzheng Emperor, who was politically wise in history, cede 100,000 square kilometers of territory to Tsarist Russia?

In the fifth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1727 AD), China and Russia signed the Treaty of Kyakhta on the basis of mutual consultation, and the Qing court recognized that about 100,000 square kilometers of land south and southwest of Lake Baikal were under the jurisdiction of Tsarist Russia.

Strictly speaking, the Treaty of Kyakhta was a treaty of equality, and it could not be said that the Yongzheng Emperor ceded territory. It's just that the Qing court at that time had an attitude of calming the people, so that Tsarist Russia gained a lot of benefits from the Qing Dynasty through the treaty, and the Qing Dynasty paid a considerable price.

In China's history, there has never been a clear and stable national boundary between the Central Plains dynasty and the nomadic tribes in the north, and the two sides are basically in a state of borderlessness. Even the boundary between the Central Plains Dynasty and the surrounding vassal states was not as detailed as it is today. In the 17th century, with the continuous invasion of Tsarist Russia, the area around Lake Berga was finally established by treaty.

Tsarist Russia's de facto control of the area around Lake Berga began with the Treaty of Nebuchu signed during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty.

In the 27th year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1688 AD), the Qing court and Tsarist Russia negotiated territorial issues in Nebuchu. The following year, the two sides signed the Treaty of Nebuchu, which provided for the Outer Khingan Ridge as the dividing line between the two countries. During this negotiation, the Qing court made great concessions and renounced its territorial claims around Lake Baikal.

Historically, the agrarian civilization of the Central Plains Dynasty and nomads were difficult to be compatible with each other. As a result, the Central Plains dynasty rarely exercised direct jurisdiction over nomadic tribes. Because the area around Lake Berga is very far from the Central Plains, this has led to the historical Central Plains dynasty, except for the Tang Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, which briefly ruled here, and for most of the time, it was basically borderless and had no government rule.

During the time of Genghis Khan, the indigenous people who lived on the shores of Lake Berga were called "Buryatia" by the Mongols, which means "people of the forest". It can be seen that the indigenous people along the shores of Lake Berga should belong to the fishing and hunting peoples.

In 1207, Genghis Khan ordered his eldest son Shuchi to lead an army to conquer the Buryatia tribe, officially incorporating the region into the territory of the Mongol Khanate. With the collapse of the Mongol Empire, by the 16th century, the Buryat Mongol tribes had declined.

During the Ming Dynasty, although Buryatia still belonged to the Northern Mongols, the connection with the Khalkha Mongols, the main body of the Northern Mongols, was not close, which provided an opportunity for the subsequent invasion of Tsarist Russia.

In the late 16th century, Russia began to cross the Ural Mountains into Siberia. With the absolute superiority of the Cossack cavalry, Tsarist Russia wantonly slaughtered the nomadic tribes living in Siberia, and tens of thousands of Siberian Mongols were slaughtered.

Beginning in the fourth year of the Ming Chongzhen reign (1631 AD), the Buryat Mongols fought for 25 years against Tsarist Russia, but finally failed due to isolation.

The area around Lake Berga, where the Buryats have lived for generations, was not governed by the Ming Dynasty and did not arrive in the early Qing Dynasty. At the time of the chaos of the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was occupied by Tsarist Russia.

In the ninth year of the Ming Chongzhen Dynasty (1636 AD), the power of Tsarist Russia had reached the Sea of Okhotsk, and the entire Siberian region became a colony of Tsarist Russia. The Russians built military forts along the rivers in Siberia and settled the land. As Russian power gradually approached northeast China, military conflict was inevitable.

From the mid-17th century, Russia continued to cross the Outer Xing'an Ridge and invade the Heilongjiang River basin in northeast China, burning, looting, and doing all kinds of evil.

In the ninth year of the Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty (1652 AD), Russia crossed the Outer Xing'an Ridge and invaded the Heilongjiang River basin in northeast China. Zhang Jing Haise, garrisoned in Ningguta (present-day Hailin County, Heilongjiang Province), led his troops to counterattack, and a fierce battle broke out between the two sides in the village of Uzara, the first battle between China and Russia.

From the eleventh year of the Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty to the thirteenth year of the Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty (1654-1656 AD), Russia again crossed Lake Berga and occupied Nebuchu. At this point, the eastern and western shores of Lake Berga were firmly controlled by Tsarist Russia, and the Buryat Mongols were also under Tsarist rule.

In the 14th year of the Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty (1657 AD), Tsarist Russia sent regular troops to establish the cities of Nebuchu and Yaksa at the confluence of the Shilka and Nebuchu rivers. The Qing court once sent troops to recover the city of Yaksa and repeatedly urged Tsarist Russia to negotiate, but Tsarist Russia ignored it.

In the twenty-fourth year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1685 AD), after the Kangxi Emperor quelled the "Three Domains Rebellion", he sent the capital Peng Chun to lead more than 2,000 people from Yaohun to besiege the city of Yaksa by land and water, and Tsarist Russia was forced to evacuate. However, after the Qing army left, Tsarist Russia sneaked into the city of Yaksa to rebuild its stronghold.

In the twenty-fifth year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1686 AD), the Qing army again besieged the city of Yaksa. After months of fighting, the Russians suffered heavy casualties, the military leader Tolbuzin was killed, and the city of Yaksa was in sight.

Sophia, the regent of Tsarist Russia, hurriedly asked the Qing court to withdraw the siege and sent Golovin as ambassador to negotiate the border. In order to show the sincerity of the negotiations, the Qing court announced an unconditional ceasefire and stopped the siege of the city.

In the 28th year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1689 AD), the Qing court sent the minister Soetu to negotiate the border with the representative of Tsarist Russia, Golovin, in the city of Nebuchu.

Soetu believed that Nebuchu, Yaksa, and the Heilongjiang River basin belonged to Qing territory and could not be ceded to Tsarist Russia. So at the beginning of the negotiations, Soetu proposed that the Lena River was the boundary and Lake Baikal also belonged to the Qing Dynasty.

However, Golovin, a Russian negotiator, claimed that the Lake Berga area had been a Russian land since ancient times and proposed to divide the territory of the two countries with the Heilongjiang River as the boundary.

In fact, compared with the Qing Dynasty, Tsarist Russia occupied the area around Lake Berga earlier, and the reason why the Qing Dynasty put forward the territorial claims around Lake Berga was because the Qing emperor was also the Great Khan of Mongolia, and Buryat Mongolia was part of Mongolia.

While the negotiations between the two sides were deadlocked, the leader of the Dzungar Khanate in the northwest, Gardan, led the Mongol horsemen to sweep across the Mongolian plateau and garrison at Ulan Butong (southwest of present-day Keshketengqi, Inner Mongolia), approaching Beijing, posing a serious threat to the Qing court.

In order to stabilize Tsarist Russia as soon as possible and fully deal with the rebellion of Dzungar, Soetu chose to compromise with Tsarist Russia according to the Kangxi Emperor's edict, ceding the territory around Nebuchu and west of it that originally belonged to the Qing Dynasty to Tsarist Russia in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Yaksa. All Russian strongholds on the south bank of the Yaksa and Erguna rivers were demolished and relocated.

The two countries are bounded by the Golbitsi and Erguna rivers to the west, of which hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land between Lake Baikal and the Erguna River belong to Tsarist Russia, while the entire outer northeast is all the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and the ownership of the land between the Khingan Ridge and the Udi River is not determined. Tsarist Russia lost the Sea of Okhotsk, but established trade relations with the Qing dynasty.

At the same time , Soetu proposed to demarcate the line between China and Mongolia and Siberia , but the Russian representative Golovin refused to negotiate on the grounds that Mongolia was under the jurisdiction of the Dzungar Khanate and that the Qing Dynasty did not border Buryatia.

In order not to prejudice the agreement reached on the demarcation of the eastern sector of the border between the two countries, the Qing court representatives agreed to temporarily suspend the demarcation of the central border. Therefore, the border west of the upper reaches of the Erguna River was not demarcated due to the opposition of Tsarist Russia.

The two sides finally signed the Treaty of Nebuchu, which was available in Manchu, Russian and Latin, with Latin as the basis, and a stone monument was erected. The inscription is inscribed in Manchu, Chinese, Russian, Mongolian and Latin scripts.

When the Qing court signed the Treaty of Nebuchu, the name of the country used was "China", which was the first time in the form of an international treaty that "China" was used as the proper name of a sovereign state. At the same time, the Treaty of Nebuchu was also the first modern sovereign state to delineate borders between China and a foreign country.

According to the provisions of the Treaty of Nebuchu, Buryat Mongols (the eastern shore of Lake Baikal) were given to Tsarist Russia, and the area south and southwest of Lake Berga was not divided at this time and belonged to the undetermined border, but Tsarist Russia constantly invaded the area.

After the signing of the Treaty of Nebuchu, the Kangxi Emperor conquered Kaltan three times and incorporated the Khalkor Mongols into the territory of the Qing Dynasty. At this time, the borders of the Qing Dynasty finally bordered the Buryat Mongols, which made it possible to negotiate the central border with Tsarist Russia again.

In the 37th year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1698 AD), under the powerful offensive of the Qing army, the Dzungar Khanate submitted to the Qing Dynasty. However, when the Qing army left, the Dzungars rebelled again to confront the Qing dynasty.

Although Russia and the Qing court signed the Treaty of Nebuchu, they were not satisfied, and they often invaded the area south of Lake Berga where the Khalkha Mongols grazing it, on the grounds that the central border was not demarcated.

For this reason, the Kangxi Emperor interrogated the Russian government several times, but they all responded perfunctorily. In a fit of anger, the Kangxi Emperor announced the cessation of trade with Russia, causing heavy losses to Tsarist Russia.

In the 58th year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1719 AD), Tsarist Russia sent envoys to China to seek the restoration of commercial relations, and the Qing Dynasty proposed to delimit the central border between China and Russia, and the Russian envoys agreed to report the issue to the Tsar, so the Kangxi Emperor resumed trade between the two countries.

On the surface, Tsarist Russia appeared to be peaceful, but in fact it secretly had close relations with Dzungar and supported the confrontation between Dzungar and the Qing dynasty. When the Kangxi Emperor found out, he once again announced the severance of economic and commercial trade with Tsarist Russia.

After the Yongzheng Emperor came to the throne, he continued the policy of the Kangxi Emperor. At that time, the internal and external situation of Yongzheng was very grim, and a series of problems such as the emptiness of the national treasury caused by the Kangxi Emperor in his later years needed to be solved urgently, and the external Dzungar once again became a major problem for the Qing Dynasty, and if effective measures were not taken against it, the frontier would be turbulent and affect the rule of the Qing Dynasty.

The form of Tsarist Russia is also not very good, its troubles on the European side. Due to years of foreign expansion, coupled with wars with Persia, Sweden and other countries, the Russian treasury was empty, and the Qing Dynasty broke off commercial trade with Tsarist Russia, which was equivalent to cutting off its financial routes.

The Qing Dynasty wanted to pacify Dzungar, but if Tsarist Russia continued to support Dzungar, it would inevitably increase the difficulty of the Qing Dynasty's suppression of the rebellion; If Tsarist Russia wanted to develop in the long run, it needed a lot of fiscal revenue, and if it wanted to increase fiscal revenue, it had to conduct commercial trade with the Qing Dynasty. It is in this context that both sides feel compelled to sit down and talk.

In the third year of the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1725 AD), the Qing Dynasty had quelled the rebellion in Qinghai's Luobuzang Danjin, and could free up its hands to deal with the southern invasion of Tsarist Russia. Tsar Catherine I believed that Dzungar was still a containment to the Qing dynasty, so she took the opportunity to send an embassy to negotiate with the Qing dynasty in order to seek greater interests in the negotiations on the demarcation of the border between the two countries.

In the same year, Russia appointed Count Savoie Vladis Raviche as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to go south to negotiate with the Qing court on trade, border demarcation, missionary issues, and other issues.

The Yongzheng Emperor ordered Longkodo to inspect the Altai Mountains and immediately go to the Khalkha Mongol border to inspect the border and wait for talks with the Russian envoys. Longkodo was not only the uncle of the Yongzheng Emperor, but also worked in the Li Domain and had some diplomatic experience.

The Russian plenipotentiary, Count Sava Vladislavich, was a veteran of diplomacy and was well prepared for the negotiations.

Immediately after his appointment, he organized personnel to map the Sino-Russian border, and then learned about the Qing court's attitude towards negotiations, counterinsurgency, and missionaries through French missionaries who preached in the Qing Dynasty.

In order to seize the initiative in the negotiations, Savoie Vladislavich bribed Maqi, a senior bachelor who had been in charge of Russian affairs for many years, through French missionaries, and through Maqi, he mastered the Qing court's negotiating cards.

At the same time, on the one hand, Tsarist Russia continued to support the Dzungars, causing them to put pressure on the Qing court from the west; On the other hand, Tsarist Russia moved the posts of the tributaries of the Kyakhta and Chuku rivers to the south, trying to occupy more land before negotiating the demarcation of the border, forming an established fact of occupation.

In the first six months, the Qing court and Tsarist Russia held more than 30 rounds of negotiations and discussed more than 20 drafts. However, because the two sides were too different on the issue of chemical boundaries, no agreement was reached.

In the fifth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1727 AD), in order to break the deadlock, the Qing court took the initiative to make concessions on trade and other issues, and the two sides reached ten preliminary agreements on some issues of principle.

Under the concessions of the Qing court, Tsarist Russia gained a lot of rights, but the Qing court wanted to solve the demarcation issue first, Tsarist Russia never gave in and did not make progress.

After that, the two sides moved the venue of negotiations from Beijing to the Sino-Russian border. Qing court negotiator Ronkodo took a tough stance, demanding that Russia must return large tracts of land that had been occupied by Mongolia. In order to protect its vested interests, Tsarist Russia refused to make concessions, and the two sides once again reached a stalemate.

In order to force the Qing court to make concessions, on the one hand, Tsarist Russia built fortifications at various military strongholds on the border, and transferred the garrison of Tobolsk to the border to threaten the Qing dynasty militarily; On the other hand, he incited the Mongol princes in the border areas to put pressure on the Qing court.

These Mongol princes and nobles called the Yongzheng Emperor and said that Longkodo's hard-line attitude led to war in the border region at any time. At the same time, the Russian negotiator Savoy wrote a letter to the Yongzheng Emperor, complaining about Ronkodo's tough attitude.

In order to further pressure the Yongzheng Emperor, Savoy also bought the Qing court scholar Maqi through the French missionary Badomin to persuade the Yongzheng Emperor to give in.

At that time, the Yongzheng Emperor's reforms were in deep water, and he had to deal with the rebellion in the northwestern Dzungar, and the pressure was very great. In this case, he was not willing to break out another war with Tsarist Russia. Therefore, in order to avoid the breakdown of negotiations, he made the decision to make concessions to Tsarist Russia.

At this time, Longkodo was involved in the East Window incident of colluding with the party for personal gain, embezzlement and bribery, and secretly storing jade books. At that time, it was at a critical moment for Ronkodo to negotiate with the representatives of Tsarist Russia, and the DPRK minister suggested that Ronkodo be dismissed and questioned after the negotiations were over. However, the Yongzheng Emperor did not heed the advice of his courtiers, and immediately after obtaining the evidence, he ordered the recall of Longkodo and sent Borzigit Tsering to replace Longkodo as the chief representative of the Qing court.

Tseling was the brother-in-law of the Yongzheng Emperor, and although he was brave and loyal, he was a layman in diplomatic negotiations. The Yongzheng Emperor was anxious to use troops to the northwest and prepare to completely solve the Dzungar problem, so he repeatedly urged Tseling to solve the border demarcation problem with Tsarist Russia as soon as possible.

After a month of negotiations between the two sides, Tsering, Tulichen and others finally chose to make concessions and reached an agreement in accordance with the border demarcation plan proposed by Tsarist Russia, and Ronkodo's persistence was in vain.

On July 15, the fifth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1727 AD), the Qing court and Tsarist Russia signed the Treaty of Blenschi, which detailed the central boundary between the two countries.

The central section of the border, which stretched from the west bank of the upper reaches of the Erguna River in the east to the summit of Mount Abahaiitu in the middle of the mouth of the Hailar River, was established at that time, and the boundary line extended westward to Shabinda Baha, northwest of Mongolia.

According to the provisions of the Treaty of Blenschi, Tsarist Russia received Lake Baikal, Udinsk, the lower reaches of the Selenge River, etc., and the source of the Erguna River belonged entirely to the Qing Dynasty.

During the Kangxi Emperor's reign, during the negotiation of the Treaty of Nebuchu, in order not to affect the demarcation of the eastern border between the two countries at that time, the two sides agreed to temporarily suspend the demarcation of the central border. Therefore, the Treaty of Blensch only defines the demarcation of the central boundary that the Treaty of Nebuchu has shelved, and does not involve "land cession".

After the signing of the Treaty of Blenschi, the most difficult issue of border demarcation was resolved, and the negotiations between the two sides on the political, economic, religious and other aspects of the two countries were much simpler.

On May 18, the sixth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty (1728), the Qing court and Tsarist Russia signed and exchanged the Treaty of Kyakhta at the Russian camp near the Kyakhta River, which demarcated the border between the two countries in Mongolia, and the Qing Dynasty recognized Buryatia Mongolia as belonging to Tsarist Russia, while Tsarist Russia recognized Khalkha Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) as belonging to the Qing Dynasty.

Thus, about 100,000 square kilometers of Buryat Mongolia south and southwest of Lake Baikal were owned by Tsarist Russia, including Kyakhta, where the treaty was signed.

The most important reason why the Yongzheng Emperor finally agreed to transfer most of the land in the disputed area to Tsarist Russia, in addition to the pressure of the northwestern Dzungars, was that for the Qing Dynasty at that time, it was unlikely that the Khalkha Mongols would control the region, and even if they lost some of their interests in the process of demarcating the border, they lost more of the interests of the Mongols, and had little impact on the Qing Dynasty. In addition, the disputed area belongs to the land of bitter cold, and it is not of much value to the Qing Dynasty.

After the signing of the Treaty of Kyakhta , the Qing Dynasty established 59 Karen border posts in the region in order to strengthen its military defense in the Khalkha Mongols, with 12 Karen in the east under the control of the Heilongjiang generals and 47 Karen in the west under the internal administration of the Khalkha Mongols.

In fact, both the Treaty of Nebuchu and the Treaty of Kyakhta are equal treaties with high legal effect. Although the Qing Dynasty renounced its territorial claims around Lake Berga, this did not mean that the Qing Dynasty ceded the land.

Since the Ming Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty has never controlled the area around Lake Berga. Before the rise of the Qing dynasty, Tsarist Russia had already occupied this area. Therefore, the argument that the Yongzheng Emperor ceded 100,000 square kilometers of territory to Tsarist Russia is untenable.