The 1900 Amur anti-Chinese pogroms () were a series of killings and reprisals undertaken by the Russian Empire against subjects of the Qing dynasty of various ethnicities, including

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

, Daur, and Han peoples. They took place in Blagoveshchensk and in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River in the Amur region, during the same time as the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

in China. The events ultimately resulted in thousands of deaths, the loss of residency for Chinese subjects living in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River, and increased Russian control over the region. The Russian justification for the pogroms were attacks made on Russian infrastructure outside Blagoveshchensk by Chinese Boxers, which was then responded to by Russian force. The pogroms themselves occurred between 4–8 July ( Old Style, O.S.; 17–21, New Style or N.S.),

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), 2 ...

Name

The name for the killings and reprisals that occurred in Amur is not standardized, and has been referred to by different names over time. The most common Chinese name for the pogroms is the ''Gengzi'' Russian Disaster (), but the two most major events in Blagoveshchensk and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River are referred to as the Blagoveshchensk Massacre () and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River Massacre () respectively. The Russian name of the pogroms in Blagoveshchensk is referred to as the Chinese Pogrom in Blagoveshchensk (russian: Китайский погром в Благовещенске), while the killings and reprisals that took place in the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River are referred to as the Battle on the Amur ( Russian: Бои на Амуре).

Background

Blagoveshchensk was founded on the territory ceded to Russia by Treaty of Aigun in 1858.

Process

Blagoveshchensk

Sixty-Four Villages East of the River

Lieutenant-General Konstantin Nikolaevich Gribskiy ordered the expulsion of all Qing subjects who remained north of the river. This included the residents of the villages, and Chinese traders and workers who lived in Blagoveshchensk proper, where they numbered anywhere between one-sixth and one-half of the local population of 30,000. They were taken by the local police and driven into the river to be drowned. Those who could swim were shot by the Russian forces. There were 1,266 households, including 900 Daurs and 4,500 Manchus in the area until the massacre. Many Manchu villages were burned by Cossacks in the massacre according to Victor Zatsepine.

Legacy

Andrew Higgins of '' The New York Times'' wrote that Chinese and Russian officials tended to not bring up the incidents during periods of good China-Russia relations or China-Soviet Union relations, while the incident was brought up after the Sino-Soviet split with people still alive who had been in the pogroms being interviewed by Chinese officials. Higgins stated that in 2020 Chinese and Russian officials purposefully avoided dealing with the incident.