The Russian concession of Hankou () was an extraterritorial exclave, a concession, of the Russian Empire in the former Chinese city of Hankou, now a district of Wuhan. It was established in 1896 by the Tsarist government and lasted until 1925, when the Soviet Union relinquished control over the territory.
It was one of five that existed in the city, alongside the British, French, German and Japanese ones.
History Formation Economic interests The defeat of the Russian Empire in the Crimean War at the hands of a Franco-British coalition underscored the disparities between itself and other European powers, triggering a refocusing towards "the East", faced with this "perceived rejection by ‘the West’" in a move aimed at "trying to compete with, and assert equality with, the self-appointed European bearers of ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’".
In the following decade, Russia managed to acquire vast territories of the Amur River basin, where Vladivostok would be founded, from the Qing Empire. However there was a growing imbalance between the dwindling fur and woollen textiles exports at the frontier town of Kyakhta, and the booming interest in the Qing's main export: tea.
The Russian presence in Hankou, correspondingly, was concentrated around the tea trade and consisted primarily of merchants and dealers aiming to cut production costs by operating closer to the source. They mostly settled in the British concession, with more dispersed among the French, and, to a lesser extent, the Chinese quarters. The trade route of their exported goods flowed down the Yangtze towards Shanghai and further, to a series of destinations, such as Tianjin, Kyakhta or directly to European Russia. The rate of chests of tea sent to Russian from Hankou was 8,554 in 1867, 9,120 in 1868 and 26,446 in 1869.
In 1863, the first tea brick factory was built, followed by two more later on, substituting the traditional hand-presses with steam engines, assembly lines, machinery, and mechanisation; together they employed around 900 people. Further development followed, with the construction of the first industrial wharf and warehouse dock on the river front in 1871.
Initially, the atmosphere between the foreign powers sharing Hankou was akin to that of "one close European family", however this level of solidarity was not to last. In September 1895, Count Artur Pavlovich Kassini, Russian minister in Beijing, received a petition from Russian traders regarding the possibility of creating an independent concession. Some sources attribute the incipient idea to the Russian consul in the city, Alexander Stepanovich Vakhovich.
Such development is plausible, as Vakhovich was a diplomat unlike those of aristocratic backgrounds, more experienced with commercial affairs, who noted that while other nations raced to "line their pockets at China's expenses, [the Russians] sat by quietly and nobly as before". Additionally, the forwarded petition underscored the advantages of developing direct shipping between Hankou and Russia;Kassini to Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del' (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MID), 19 (7) Sept. 1895, RGIA, f. 560, o. 28, d. 617, l. 2. Vakhovich's brother worked for the firm "Shevelev & Co.", which had previously attempted, unsuccessfully, to organise steamer services from Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk to Hankou.
Regardless, as activity grew, and the Russians living in the city became economically influential, then-Tsesarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, future Tsar of Russia, organised an official visit to the city in April 1891. The subject of the visit remains one of debate among scholars; the Chinese government claimed that he had toured the Hanyang Steel factory, which the local administration had invested in. As the visit aligned with the so-called "Self-Strengthening period", this claim was made to demonstrate autonomous Chinese achievements in the wake of numerous instances of foreign involvement. However, it has also been claimed that he only visited the Russian factories, making the visit purpose more aligned with imperialist interests than strictly diplomatic ones.
Further debate exists around the importance of economic activity as a deciding factor for Russian interest in Hankou, as is argued by Candidate of Sciences Viktoria Gennadievna Sharonova, who believes that the Russian Empire aimed to concentrate its defused diaspora in the city. Karin-Irene Eiermann, on the other hand, minimises the economic aspects, and focuses on the political nature of the investment:
Political motivations After its victory in the Sino-Japanese War, Japan issued a set of demands to its defeated Chinese enemy, one in particular caught the eye of Sergei Witte. As an influential statesman, he had pursued his vision of modernisation centred around the Trans-Siberian Railway, which he wanted to pass through the shortest route to Vladivostok, Manchuria. Japan's interest in the region, particularly demands regarding the Liaodong Peninsula, threatened to interfere with his plans. Thus, Russia allied with other European powers for Japan to abandon its claims on Liaodong, along with a series of other territorial, economic and political demands from China, as a "price" for the intervention.
Soon enough, Hankou also caught the interest of Witte. Dmitry Dmitrievich Pokotilov produced a report for the Ministry of Finance regarding the importance of the Trans-Siberian on trade with treaty ports, where he stated that the city was of "paramount importance" for Russian commerce in the region; he was later appointed head of the Russo-Chinese Bank by Witte. He identified three main problems: geography, transportation (or rather, lack thereof) and culture. Geographical limitations coupled with an underdeveloped transportation infrastructure made the distance between the Russian heartland to the Far East and the concessions extremely difficult, costly and tedious to traverse. Additionally, he expressed the view that the average Russian merchant was "by nature little mobile […] accustomed to travelling overland", to do business in China he needed to "enter what is for him a completely new set of situations". The construction of the Trans-Siberian would, he concluded, "radically change" the circumstances.
This coincidentally aligned itself with Witte's vision of the dependence of Russian commerce on state support, based around the economic theory put forward by Friedrich List:
Consequently, Witte wrote and presented a memorandum to Tsar Nicholas II, stressing the importance of Hankou as a potential treaty port, as well as the "pre-eminent" position of Russian tea merchants, who, however, had to operate within foreign concessions. The problem was, thus, framed as one of cost, as it was estimated that around 5,000 rubles were paid annually to the British in the form of taxes, levies, rents, etc. Tea commerce, however, was disproportionally conducted by Russian, rather than British merchants, as by 1895, British producers had left Hankou almost entirely, spurred on by shifting preferences for Indian and Sri Lankan sorts, partly influenced by deliberate efforts of the British, "stoking fears about adulteration and poor hygiene" of Chinese products.
The memorandum proved convincing, and the Tsar communicated his approval for the establishment of a Russian concession in Hankou on November 22.
Establishment With the plan put in motion in late 1895, negotiations and delimitations began, but issues regarding landowners within the selected territory arose from the very beginning. In a manner similar to that of the British in 1861, the Russians faced the problem of a "wealthy Chinese" who owned a significant portion of the land. Considering that Russian and Chinese authorities reserved the right to a negotiated price exclusively to foreign owners, and unwilling to pay solely for his land, the affluent landowner began construction of a large building, with the hopes of receiving a larger compensation. The British had resolved the similar problem by way of armed sailors, the Russians, on the other hand, had to refrain from employing force, as the concession was supposed to be a sign of "gratitude" for the triple intervention against Japan. 18 months were needed to evict the landowner, with additional payments for his "unfinished warehouse".Vakhovich to Pavlov, 1 Sept. (20 Aug.) 1897, RGIA, f. 560, o. 28, d. 617, l. 52.
Afterwards, around late December of the same year, the French authorities stated that they possessed a claim to certain plots of the concession's land.Kassini to Lobanov, 20 (8) Dec. 1895, AVPRI, f. 143, o. 491, d. 390, l. 10 Unwilling to damage its relationship with an important ally, the Russian government agreed to settle any existing disputes around a negotiation table. Additional disagreements also occurred with British companies, which leased land inside the concession, oftentimes resisting offers of acquisition, both during the concession's inception and throughout its existence.
Under the Russian Empire The Russian concession in Hankou came into existence on April 14, 1896; a "construction committee" was first implemented, with the cooperation of local Russian industrialists, to aid kickstarting its development. The administration was later handed over to a "popular council" —composed of a mixture of individuals and companies, Russian and foreign— that oversaw the governance of all of its inhabitants, regardless of nationality. Furthermore, the Russian Consulate organised the creation of a Temporary Economic Committee, formed out of four members among the landowners in the concession. Both organisations were in charge of the operation of the concession, construction and other ventures—all subsidised by the Russian government.
All in all, among the completed projects were: a promenade (dubbed Nicholas' Promenade), the new building of the Russian Consulate (relocated from Hanyang), an industrial bureau, all the corresponding infrastructure for a set of police and firefighter units, two schools (a Russian and a Russo-Chinese one) —which specialised in commerce and economic science— an Orthodox church as well as a number of luxurious residences. Even so, the development remained relatively minor in comparison to that of other European powers. The Russian population didn't venture into other markets apart from the aforementioned brick tea, while pursuits of education or missionary work were, if anything, limited.
Parallel to the progress of the Russian concession in Hankou, the Russian Empire continued its expansion in Asia in the form of a 25-year lease of the southern tip of the Liadong Peninsula (including Dailan and Port Arthur), building rights of a railway through Manchuria, and another concession in Tianjin. While providing the Tsarist government with strategically beneficial territories, this expansion also collapsed whatever goodwill was left with the Qing government regarding the Russian concession in Hankou and Russian influence as a whole, much to the displeasure of Witte.
However, the statesman himself would soon fall out of favour with the Tsar, and with him, vanished the dual vision of the concession, one cultivated around ideals of a "national economy" as he and Pokotilov, Witte's right-hand man, defined it, and another, a narrower one, born out of the on-site economic realities. Likewise, after 1905, and the expulsion of the Russian Empire from southern Manchurian in its humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, contact between Russian territories in China and the Trans-Siberian Railway was cut, putting a definite end to any of Witte's plans for railways to "form the iron skeleton of this new Russia".