On the Role of the Voivodeship Administration of the Yakut District in the Formation of the Border between Russia and China in the 17th Century

Abstract

The article examines the activities of the administration and the service people of the Yakut district in developing new lands in the Far East. The study is based on the documents of the 17th century Yakut voivodeship office. The authors investigate processes of bringing the peoples inhabiting the region to the citizenship of the Russian tsar and establishing borders with China. These actions in the modern concept may be interpreted as foreign policy. Their role in shaping the situation on the Far Eastern borders of Russia in the 17th century is being considered. The article discusses the first campaigns organized by the Yakut voivodes into the basin of the Amur river in the early 1640s and look into the specifics of their activities in the 1650s. Though the main role in strengthening the Russian presence in the Far East was transferred to the Nerchinsk, Irkutsk and other voivodes in the middle of the 17th century, the Yakut voivodes were still entrusted with some foreign policy functions in subsequent years. Representatives of the Yakut voivodeship office also played an important role in other Russia’s foreign policy activities, such as strengthening of the Yakut stockaded town, the actions of Yakut military personnel on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, and the regulation of the movement of the Yakut District's rural population to the border with the Qing Empire.