China and Russia: The Beginnings of Contact
William Gardener describes how Russia's stealthy advance across Siberia led to close relations with China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The preamble to the treaty of 1689 between Russia and China was signed at Nerchinsk beside the left bank of the Shilka river, whose confluence further east with the Argun forms the 2,500-mile-long Amur, the Chinese Hei-lung-chiang, or River of the Black Dragon, now the northern boundary of Manchuria. It begins thus:
‘Anno Cam Hi 28° crocei serpentis dicto 7ae Lunae die prope oppidum Nipchou congregati turn ad cor-rigendam et reprimendam insolentiam eorum inferioris notae venatorum hominum...’
That the language of the official text was Latin (with semi-official versions in Russian and in Manchu) is but one of the treaty’s peculiar features. It was the first ever to be signed between China and another power, and was not to form a precedent for one with any power other than Russia for a hundred and fifty years. It set the tone and kept the peace in relations between China and Russia for a period even longer.
Englished, and somewhat abbreviated, the preamble states that:
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