The Amur Annexation was the annexation of the southeast corner of Siberia by the Russian Empire in 1858–1860 through a series of unequal treaties forced upon the Qing dynasty of China.
It geographically falls in Asia, but is culturally and politically considered European, since it is a part of Russia. Major geographical zones within Siberia include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau.
Southern Siberia was part of the Mongols' khanate of the Golden Horde from the 10th to the mid-15th century.
Siberia entered the flow of Russian history relatively late, at the end of the sixteenth century. The official Russian incursion into Siberia dates to 1581, when the Cossack hetman Ermak Timofeevich led a detachment across the Ural Mountains and soon after defeated the forces of the Khanate of Sibir'.
As a result, China lost the region now known as Russian Manchuria (an area of more than 1 million km2) and access to the Sea of Japan.
Today Russia and China share approximately a 4,300-km long border.
The Russians reached the Pacific Ocean in 1639. After the conquest of the Siberian Khanate (1598), the whole of North Asia – an area much larger than the old khanate – became known as Siberia and, by 1640, the eastern borders of Russia had expanded more than several million square kilometres.
In 1922 Siberia became part of the Soviet Union. The idea of an independent Siberia was considered in 1989, during the election of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, but they reached a compromise with the Siberian Agreement, which gave more regional power to the local leaders.
Western Siberians trace 57% of their ancestry to ancient North Eurasians, represented by the 24,000-yr-old Siberian Mal'ta boy MA-1. Eastern Siberian populations formed a distinct sublineage that separated from other East Asian populations ∼10,000 yr ago.
Their work confirms that Denisovans were the cave's first human inhabitants, about 300,000 years ago.
Although Russian today is the dominant language in virtually every corner of North Asia, Siberia and the Northern Pacific Rim of Asia remain home to over three dozen mutually unintelligible indigenous language varieties.
Chalcolithic groups in the eastern Ural foothills developed the so-called Andronovo culture, which took various local forms. The settlements of Arkaim, Olgino and Sintashta are particularly notable as the earliest evidence for urbanisation in Siberia.
Thus, by pure diplomacy and only a few thousand troops, the Russians took advantage of Chinese weakness and the strength of the other European powers to annex 350,000 square miles (910,000 km2) of Chinese territory.
Three countries bordered both China and the Soviet Union: Afghanistan, Mongolia and North Korea. Both the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and Mongolian People's Republic were pro-Soviet satellite states during the Cold War, while the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was neutral.
Known for its bitterly cold winters, Harbin is heralded as the Ice City (冰城) for its winter tourism and recreations. Harbin is notable for its ice sculpture festival in the winter.
By mid-1918, most of Siberia had been cleared of Bolsheviks; and on June 17, a date Siberians still mark, a Provisional Siberian Government issued “a declaration on the state independence of Siberia,” with Omsk as its capital.
So, by the mid-17th century, the Russian people had established the borders of their country close to the modern ones, and explored almost the whole of Siberia, except eastern Kamchatka and some regions north of the Arctic Circle.
On November 3, 1918, the Provisional Siberian Government sacrificed own independence for the sake of consolidation of all possible forces to fight against the Bolsheviks.
Scientists have identified the earliest evidence of some of the first known humans -- Denisovans and Neanderthals, in southern Siberia.
By 5000 years ago, people had settled across Alaska and northern Canada. In 2019, researchers published work based on genetic and linguistic evidence suggesting that sometime between 2200 and 500 years ago, people living in northwestern Alaska boated back across the Bering Sea into Siberia.
Indigenous Americans, who include Alaska Natives, Canadian First Nations, and Native Americans, descend from humans who crossed an ancient land bridge connecting Siberia in Russia to Alaska tens of thousands of years ago. But scientists are unclear when and where these early migrants moved from place to place.
China and the Russian Federation
China and Russia share a land border which was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, which was renewed in June 2021 for five more years.
The area that is now Vladivostok was ruled by various states, such as the Mohe, the Goguryeo, the Balhae and the later Liao, Jīn and Ming dynasties. The area was ceded by China to Russia as a result of the Treaty of Aigun of 1858 and the Treaty of Peking of 1860.
Crimea became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on 18 October 1921 as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, The Russian SFSR founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, with the Crimean ASSR retaining a degree of nominal autonomy and run as a Crimean Tatar enclave.