Treaty of Aigun

Treaty of Aigun
Changes to the China–Russia border in the 19th century. Territory ceded to Russia in the Treaty of Aigun is shown in yellow.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	璦琿條約
Simplified Chinese	瑷珲条约
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Àihún tiáoyuē
Russian name
Russian	Айгунский договор
Romanization	Aygunskiy dogovor

The Treaty of Aigun was an 1858 treaty between the Russian Empire and Yishan, official of the Qing dynasty of China. It established much of the modern border between the Russian Far East and China by ceding much of Manchuria (the ancestral homeland of the Manchu people), now known as Northeast China.^[1] Negotiations began after China was threatened with war on a second front by Governor-General of the Far East Nikolay Muraviev when China was suppressing the Taiping Rebellion.^[2] It reversed the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) by transferring the land between the Stanovoy Range and the Amur River from the Qing dynasty to the Russian Empire. Russia received over 600,000 square kilometers (231,660 sq mi) of what became known as Outer Manchuria.^[3][2] While the Qing government initially refused to recognize the validity of the treaty, the Russian gains under the Treaty of Aigun was affirmed as part of the 1860 Sino-Russian Convention of Peking.^[4]