Forced Migration of Chinese Subjects to Russian Turkestan in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

This article examines forced migration from China to Russian Turkestan in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. It reconstructs the chronology, scale, composition, and typology of these movements and assesses their significance for Russian-Chinese relations and the history of Central Asia. The study is based on documents from five archives in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, as well as published sources from the period under review. Methodologically, it combines historical analysis with the push-pull model of migration, while also taking into account legal and administrative mechanisms that shaped cross-border mobility.

The article shows that forced migration from China to Russian Turkestan was a large-scale and recurrent phenomenon rather than a series of isolated refugee movements. The first documented arrival of refugees from China in Russian Turkestan during the period under study occurred in 1864. In total, more than 100,000 people crossed into the Russian Empire as forced migrants. These movements included representatives of most ethnic and religious groups living in Xinjiang, among them Uyghurs, Dungans, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Oirats/Kalmyks, Sibe, Solons, Daurs, and Kashgarian groups. Refugees included men and women, adults and children, sedentary and nomadic populations, urban and rural residents, as well as both Chinese subjects and former subjects of the Russian Empire who had previously migrated to Chinese territory. The study demonstrates that the main waves of migration were directly connected with political upheavals in China, including the Muslim uprisings in Xinjiang, the Qing reconquest of the region, the transfer of the Ili region back to Chinese rule, and the Xinhai Revolution. The article distinguishes between spontaneous forced migration and state-managed forced resettlement, most clearly exemplified by the migration from the Ili region in 1881–1883. It also shows that the push factors were often mutually conditioned: groups loyal to the Qing authorities fled from insurgents, whereas participants in or supporters of anti-Qing movements later fled from Qing repression. By contrast, the pull factors were broadly similar across different refugee groups and included geographical proximity, the expectation of safety, the availability of refuge, ethnic and social ties with the population of Russian Turkestan, and the relative attractiveness of Russian rule in the borderlands.

The article concludes that the overwhelming majority of refugees from China remained within the Russian Empire. Return migration mainly affected those groups that had initially sought temporary refuge. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, readmission became an important coercive mechanism in the regulation of refugee flows. It was shaped both by Russia’s treaty obligations toward China and by changes in the Russian Empire’s own policy toward immigration and the settlement of its frontier regions. The study thus shows that forced migration from China to Russian Turkestan was not only a demographic and humanitarian process, but also an important factor in imperial governance, border management, and Russian-Chinese diplomacy.

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