Why did China give Russia land almost twice the size of France? The story of the Treaty of Aigun and the Convention of Peking, told on animated war maps, and why "give" may be the wrong word.
In October 1860 the Old Summer Palace burned, British and French troops held Beijing and the Qing emperor had fled. Within weeks a third power, one that was not even at war with China, walked away with about a million square kilometres of land north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri. This film follows how a thinly settled frontier, a governor who kept moving men down the river, an empire fighting rebels and Europeans at once, and a young Russian officer posing as a go-between added up to Outer Manchuria, and how long the quarrel over it lasted.
WHAT YOU WILL SEE
Why the figure is about a million square kilometres, and how it compares with France at 551,500
The Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and the Cossack fort of Albazin: where the line stood before 1858
Nikolay Muravyov and the Amur voyages of 1854 and 1855, which put Russian settlers on the river before any treaty
The Qing empire in 1858: the Taiping Rebellion, the Second Opium War and a ban on Han settlement in Manchuria
The Treaty of Aigun of 28 May 1858, and why Beijing refused to ratify it
Nikolay Ignatyev in 1860, the Convention of Peking and the founding of Vladivostok
The aftermath: the 1900 expulsions at Blagoveshchensk, the Karakhan Manifesto, Zhenbao Island in 1969
How the border was finally settled in 1991 and 2004-2008, and what is still disputed today: names, maps and memory
CHAPTERS (times are approximate)
0:00 The Old Summer Palace burns
0:58 Part I: The Line at the Amur
3:43 Part II: The Governor Who Would Not Wait
6:26 Part III: An Empire Under Siege
8:22 Part IV: Aigun
10:12 Part V: The Fixer
13:10 Part VI: The Bill Comes Due
15:44 Part VII: The Promise and the Quarrel
18:26 Part VIII: Closing the Book
SOURCES
Treaty of Aigun (1858); Convention of Peking (1860); Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689); Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881); Sino-Soviet border conflict (1969); the 1991 and 2004 China-Russia border agreements. Works cited in these accounts include Nicholas Riasanovsky, Mark Mancall, Sergey Radchenko, Chang and Elleman on Sino-Russian borders, and Allen Whiting. Photographs from Wikimedia Commons (public domain and open licences), including Felice Beato's 1860 images of the Old Summer Palace and the Taku forts.
NOTE ON FIGURES
The ceded area is given as between 910,000 and about one million square kilometres depending on the source; we use "about a million". Casualty figures for 1900 and 1969 are disputed, so the film says so instead of picking one side's numbers.
ABOUT THE PICTURES
Painted scenes are AI-generated illustrations of historical events and are not photographs. Archive photographs are real and credited on screen. Maps are drawn from modern geographic data and simplified.
#history#militaryhistory#documentary
How this was made
Made with AI
Sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated. Learn more
