Not only Alaska: 140 years ago, Alexander II sold the Ili region to China

Everyone knows the story of how Russia in 1867 sold the huge peninsula of Alaska to America for 7.2 million dollars. However, this is not the only episode of such trade in our history. The popular blogger Vyacheslav Kondratyev recalled one more thing: on February 24, 1881, that is, 140 years ago, shortly before the murder of Tsar Alexander II by terrorists, Russia sold to China for 9 million rubles. silver Ili region together with the city of Kuldzha. This is a territory in Central Asia of 55 thousand square meters. km., which is twice the size of Crimea...

10 years earlier, in 1871, our country conquered this land from the Uyghurs, but China immediately declared its claims to these lands, referring to the fact that it owned them back in the 18th century, and then as a result of the Uyghur-Dungan uprising. which happened in 1864, lost control over them.

Western regions of China after receiving the Ili region from Russia. The borders of this territory are circled in red.

The negotiations went on for a long time, and in the end it was decided to sell these lands to China, but with the guarantee that Russian merchants would be able to trade freely on them.

Vasily Vereshchagin's painting "Attack by surprise" is dedicated to the Ili expedition of the Russian army. In the painting, the soldiers of General Kolpakovsky reflect the sudden attack of the cavalry of the Kuldzhi Sultan Abil-oglu.

The reason for such compliance with Russia was its geopolitical interests, which were concentrated at that time in the Balkans and in Turkmenistan, and therefore it was not reasonable to wage another war in such remote lands and in difficult conditions, although Russian Ambassador to Beijing Bytsov categorically opposed this deal.

The protagonists of the Ili epic: Sultan Abil-oglu, who led the Uighur uprising against the Chinese, and then unsuccessfully tried to defend his sultatate from the Russian troops. The winner of the Sultan, General Gerasim Kolpakovsky, who later became the governor of Semirechye. Governor-General of Turkestan Konstantin Kaufman.

It is also strange that China so persistently sought to regain itself the extremely poor and hostile to Beijing Ili region, in which, in addition, there were no natural resources. Be that as it may, and since then, first the border of Russia, then the USSR, and now Kazakhstan and China passes exactly where it was established under the treaty of 1881,

It is also interesting that, unlike the residents of Alaska, who were hostile to the Russians and did not move to Russia after the sale, the Muslim population of the Ili region did not want to return to China at all - and almost 110 thousand Uighurs voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship, having moved from their homes.

Photo contains the painting "Ruins of the Chinese Shrine in Ak-Kent", painted by the famous artist Vasily Vereshchagin, who visited those parts during the short Russian rule.