My Land, My People: Discourses and Practices in the Tumen River Demarcation, 1860s to 1910s

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My Land, My People: Discourses and Practices in the Tumen River Demarcation, 1860s to 1910s is written by Nianshen Song and published by . It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1303229226 (ISBN 10) and 9781303229220 (ISBN 13).

My dissertation explores border-making and identity politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Yanbian region, a multilateral and multiethnic frontier in Northeast China adjoining Korea and Russia. The dispute over territory was triggered by thousands of Korean peasants crossing one of the traditional Sino-Korean boundary rivers, the Tumen River, and taking refuge in Qing-China's royal reserve, Manchuria. Along with the formation of the immigrant society came conflicts among China, Japan, Korea and Russia over jurisdiction of the Korean refugees and the authenticity of the Sino-Korean boundary. These conflicts had persisted for decades under the background that Manchuria, a virgin land with enormous economic potential and geo-political value, became an increasingly important arena for global capitalist and imperialist competition. All the involving state and non-state actors put forth their claims to this borderland by engaging competing nation- and state-building projects, which underscored some of the most salient themes in modern East Asian history, namely, the territorialization of China's ethnic frontiers; the making of the Korean nation; the configuration of Japanese colonialism; and the transformation of East Asian world order. Using materials gathered from national and local archives in China, Korea, and Japan, I examine the political, social, and intellectual dimensions of the Tumen River dispute and its trans-regional context.