1.
Empire of Japan
–
The Empire of Japan was the historical Japanese nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the enactment of the 1947 constitution of modern Japan. Imperial Japans rapid industrialization and militarization under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei led to its emergence as a world power, after several large-scale military successes during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Empire also gained notoriety for its war crimes against the peoples it conquered. A period of occupation by the Allies followed the surrender, Occupation and reconstruction continued well into the 1950s, eventually forming the current nation-state whose full title is the State of Japan or simply rendered Japan in English. The historical state is referred to as the Empire of Japan or the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan in English. In Japanese it is referred to as Dai Nippon Teikoku, which translates to Greater Japanese Empire and this is analogous to Großdeutsches Reich, a term that translates to Greater German Empire in English and Dai Doitsu Teikoku in Japanese. This meaning is significant in terms of geography, encompassing Japan, due to its name in kanji characters and its flag, it was also given the exonym Empire of the Sun. After two centuries, the policy, or Sakoku, under the shoguns of the Edo period came to an end when the country was forced open to trade by the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. The following years saw increased trade and interaction, commercial treaties between the Tokugawa shogunate and Western countries were signed. In large part due to the terms of these Unequal Treaties, the Shogunate soon faced internal hostility, which materialized into a radical, xenophobic movement. In March 1863, the Emperor issued the order to expel barbarians, although the Shogunate had no intention of enforcing the order, it nevertheless inspired attacks against the Shogunate itself and against foreigners in Japan. The Namamugi Incident during 1862 led to the murder of an Englishman, Charles Lennox Richardson, the British demanded reparations but were denied. While attempting to exact payment, the Royal Navy was fired on from coastal batteries near the town of Kagoshima and they responded by bombarding the port of Kagoshima in 1863. For Richardsons death, the Tokugawa government agreed to pay an indemnity, shelling of foreign shipping in Shimonoseki and attacks against foreign property led to the Bombardment of Shimonoseki by a multinational force in 1864. The Chōshū clan also launched the coup known as the Kinmon incident. The Satsuma-Chōshū alliance was established in 1866 to combine their efforts to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu, in early 1867, Emperor Kōmei died of smallpox and was replaced by his son, Crown Prince Mutsuhito. On November 9,1867, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned from his post and authorities to the Emperor, however, while Yoshinobus resignation had created a nominal void at the highest level of government, his apparatus of state continued to exist. On January 3,1868, Satsuma-Chōshū forces seized the palace in Kyoto. On January 17,1868, Yoshinobu declared that he would not be bound by the proclamation of the Restoration, on January 24, Yoshinobu decided to prepare an attack on Kyoto, occupied by Satsuma and Chōshū forces
2.
Russian Empire
–
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
3.
Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
4.
Sakhalin Oblast
–
Sakhalin Oblast is a federal subject of Russia comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russias far east. The oblast has an area of 87,100 square kilometers and its administrative center and the largest city is Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Besides people from parts of the former Soviet Union and the Korean Peninsula. Sakhalin is rich in gas and oil, and is Russias second wealthiest federal subject. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group, according to a 2012 official survey 21. In addition, 37% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 15% is atheist, the indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Nivkhs, Oroki, and Ainu minorities. Early maps of Sakhalin reflect the uncertainty of the age as to whether or not the mass was attached to the Asian continent. The fact that it is not connected was conclusively established by Mamiya Rinzō, Japanese settlement on Sakhalin dates to at least the Edo period. Ōtomari was supposedly established in 1679, and cartographers of the Matsumae domain mapped the island, during the Ming and Qing dynasties China considered the island part of its empire, and included the Sakhalin peoples in its system for subjugated peoples. At no time though was any attempt made to establish an Imperial military presence on the island. Japan, concerned about Russian expansion in northeast Asia, unilaterally proclaimed sovereignty over the island in 1845. Russian settlers ignored this claim however, and beginning in the 1850s, established coal mines, administration facilities, schools, prisons, Russia also agreed to dismantle its military base at Ōtomari. South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as Karafuto-chō, with the capital Toyohara, after the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war northern Sakhalin ultimately became governed by the Russian SFSR as a part of Far Eastern Oblast, Far Eastern Krai and Khabarovsk Krai. Sakhalin Oblast was established on 20 October 1932 as a part of Far Eastern Krai, in August 1945, the Soviet Union took over the control of entire Sakhalin and Kuril Islands. The Soviet attack on South Sakhalin started on August 11,1945, the 56th Rifle Corps consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214th Tank Brigade attacked the Japanese 88th Division. Although the Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by three times, they could not advance due to strong Japanese resistance, Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fighting continued until August 21, however, this was relatively limited in scope. From August 22 to August 23, most of the remaining Japanese units announced truce, the Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on August 25,1945 by occupying the capital of Sakhalin, then known as Toyohara
5.
Flag of Japan
–
The national flag of Japan is a white rectangular flag with a red disc in the center. This flag is officially called Nisshōki in the Japanese language, but is commonly known as Hinomaru. The flag embodies Japans nickname as the Land of the Rising Sun, the Nisshōki flag is designated as the national flag in the Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem, which was promulgated and became effective on August 13,1999. Although no earlier legislation had specified a flag, the sun-disc flag had already become the de facto national flag of Japan. Two proclamations issued in 1870 by the Daijō-kan, the body of the early Meiji period. A sun-disc flag was adopted as the flag for merchant ships under Proclamation No.57 of Meiji 3. Use of the Hinomaru was severely restricted during the years of the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II. The name of the country as well as the design of the flag reflect this importance of the sun. The ancient history Shoku Nihongi says that Emperor Monmu used a flag representing the sun in his court in 701, during the Meiji Restoration, both the sun disc and the Rising Sun Ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy became major symbols in the emerging Japanese Empire. Propaganda posters, textbooks, and films depicted the flag as a source of pride, in Japanese homes, citizens were required to display the flag during national holidays, celebrations and other occasions as decreed by the government. Different tokens of devotion to Japan and its Emperor featuring the Hinomaru motif became popular during the Second Sino-Japanese War and these tokens ranged from slogans written on the flag to clothing items and dishes that resembled the flag. Public perception of the flag varies. Historically, both Western and Japanese sources claimed the flag was a powerful and enduring symbol to the Japanese, since the end of World War II, the use of the flag and the national anthem Kimigayo has been a contentious issue for Japans public schools. Disputes about their use have led to protests and lawsuits, the flag is not frequently displayed in Japan due to its association with ultranationalism. To Okinawans, the flag represents the events of World War II, for some nations that have been occupied by Japan, the flag is a symbol of aggression and imperialism. The Hinomaru was used as a tool against occupied nations for purposes of intimidation, asserting Japans dominance, several military banners of Japan are based on the Hinomaru, including the sunrayed Naval Ensign. The Hinomaru also serves as a template for other Japanese flags in public, the exact origin of the Hinomaru is unknown, but the rising sun seems to have had some symbolic meaning since the early 7th century. In 607, a correspondence that began with from the Emperor of the rising sun was sent to Chinese Emperor Yang of Sui
6.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
–
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is a city in Sakhalin island, and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It was called Vladimirovka from 1882 to 1905, then Toyohara ) from 1905 to 1946, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk began as a small Russian settlement called Vladimirovka, founded by convicts in 1882. The Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, which brought an end to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Vladimirovka was renamed Toyohara, and was the prefect capital of Japanese Karafuto Prefecture. After the end of World War II, the Japanese portion of Sakhalin island was occupied by Soviet troops, ownership of the city was transferred to the Soviet Union and it was renamed Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Town status was granted to it in 1946, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the administrative center of the oblast. As a municipal division, the city of oblast significance of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is incorporated as Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Urban Okrug, due to significant investment from oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk has experienced substantial economic growth. Although this growth has occurred in the northern part of the island. The demand for natural resources by the Japanese, Chinese, there has been significant criticism, including from Presidential Envoy Kamil Iskhakov, that Sakhalin is not caring for its citizens. Despite sizable gas deposits and incoming investments from gas companies, the administration does not yet have plans for the installation of gas services on the island. The oblast also continues to have the highest rate of crime in all of Russia. Out of the few remaining Japanese buildings in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, one now functions as the local museum. The city is served by the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport, the city is also the hub for the islands narrow gauge railway network, the Sakhalin Railway, built under the Japanese administration in the early 20th century. In addition to railways, the town is also a hub for roadways, such as the A-391, plekhanov Branch of Far East law institute Most residents are ethnic Russians, but there also exists a sizable population of Koreans. Of the 43,000 Sakhalin Koreans, half are estimated to live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, also smaller numbers of indigenous minorities, such as Ainu, Nivkhs and Oroks can be found. The Latin Catholic Church of St. James in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the episcopal see of the missionary Apostolic Prefecture of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk. The city is located on the Susuya River and it is the largest city on the island, and the only one with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The straight-line distance to Moscow is 10,417 kilometers, scuba diving and recreating on the seacoast is permitted only in places defined by the Border Guard. The climate is continental with mild summers and cold winters
7.
Karafuto Prefecture
–
Karafuto Prefecture, commonly called South Sakhalin, was the Japanese administrative division corresponding to Japanese territory on southern Sakhalin island from 1905 to 1945. Through the Treaty of Portsmouth, the portion of the south of 50°N became a colony of Japan in 1905. In 1907 the prefecture of Karafuto was established, with its capital at Ōtomari in 1905, in 1945, with the defeat of Japan in World War II, Karafuto was occupied by Soviet troops and its Japanese administration ceased to function. Karafuto Prefecture was formally abolished as an entity on June 1,1949. Since 1951, the part of Sakhalin has been a part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Soviet Union. The Japanese name Karafuto comes from Ainu kamuy kar put ya mosir and it was formerly known as Kita Ezo, meaning Northern Ezo. When Japanese administered the prefecture, Karafuto usually meant Southern Sakhalin only, for convenience, the northern part of the island was sometimes called Sagaren. In Russian, the island was named Sakhalin or Saghalien. It is from Manchu sahaliyan ula angga hada, meaning peak of the mouth of Amur River, the southern part was simply called Yuzhny Sakhalin. In Korean, the name is Sahallin or Hwataedo, with the name in use during Korea under Japanese rule. Japanese settlement on Sakhalin dates to at least the Edo period, Ōtomari was established in 1679, and cartographers of the Matsumae domain mapped the island, and named it Kita-Ezo. Japanese cartographer and explorer Mamiya Rinzō established that Sakhalin was an island through his discovery of what is now named Mamiya Strait in 1809, the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda acknowledged that both Russia and Japan had joint rights of occupation to Sakhalin, without setting a definite territorial demarcation. As the island settled in the 1860s and 1870s, this ambiguity led to increasing friction between settlers. In the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, Japan agreed to give up its claims on Sakhalin in exchange for undisputed ownership of the Kuril Islands, Russia retained the northern portion, although the Japanese were awarded favorable commercial rights, including fishing and mineral extraction rights in the north. In 1907, Karafuto Prefecture was officially established, with the capital at Ōtomari, in 1908, the capital was relocated to Toyohara. In 1920, Karafuto was officially designated an external territory of Japan, in 1943, the status of Karafuto was upgraded to that of an inner land, making it an integral part of the Empire of Japan. In August 1945, after repudiating the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Karafuto, the Soviet attack started on August 11,1945, three weeks before the surrender of Japan. Although the Soviet Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by three to one, they advanced only slowly due to strong Japanese resistance, Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing
8.
Russia
–
Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
9.
Sakhalin
–
Sakhalin is a large Russian island in the North Pacific Ocean, lying between 45°50 and 54°24 N. It is Russias largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast, Sakhalin, which is similar in shape to and about one third the size of Honshu, is just off the east coast of Russia, and just north of Japan. The population was 497,973 as of the 2010 census, made up of mostly ethnic Russians, the indigenous peoples of the island are the Ainu, Oroks and Nivkhs. Sakhalin was claimed by both Russia and Japan over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries and these disputes sometimes involved military conflict and divisions of the island between the two powers. Most Ainu on Sakhalin moved to Hokkaido, only 43 kilometres to the south, the island is known in Russian as Сахалин. In Chinese, it is known as Kuye, in Japanese, it is known as Karafuto or, borrowing the Russian appellation, as Saharin. The spelling Saghalien may be found in historical texts, the European names derive from misinterpretation of a Manchu name ᠰ᠊ᠠᡴᡥᠠᠯᡳᡟᠠ᠊ᠠ ᡠ᠊ᠯᠠ ᠠ᠊ᠩᡤᠠ ᡥ᠊ᠠᡩᡩᠠ sahaliyan ula angga hada. Sahaliyan, the word that has borrowed in the form of Sakhalin. Its Japanese name, Karafuto, supposedly comes from Ainu kamuy kar put ya mosir, the name was used by the Japanese during their possession of its southern part. Sakhalin was inhabited in the Neolithic Stone Age, a later population familiar with bronze left traces in earthen walls and kitchen-middens on Aniva Bay. Among the indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Ainu in the half, the Oroks in the central region. Chinese chronicled the Xianbei and Hezhe tribes, who had a way of life based on fishing, the Mongol Empire made some efforts to subjugate the native people of Sakhalin starting in about 1264 CE. According to Yuanshi, the history of the Yuan dynasty, the Mongols militarily subdued the Guwei. The Nivkhs and the Oroks were subjugated earlier, whereas the Ainu people submitted to the Mongols later, following their subjugation, Gǔwéi elders made tributary visits to Yuan posts located at Wuleihe, Nanghar, and Boluohe until the end of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China. In the early Ming dynasty, the relationship was re-established. Chinese of the Ming dynasty knew the island as Kuyi or Kuwu, there is some evidence that the Ming eunuch Admiral Yishiha reached Sakhalin in 1413 during one of his expeditions to the lower Amur, and granted Ming titles to a local chieftain. Under the Ming dynasty, commerce in Northeast Asia and Sakhalin was placed under the system for subjugated peoples, a Ming boundary stone still exists on the island. In an early attempt, a Japanese settlement was established at Ootomari on Sakhalins southern end in 1679
10.
Treaty of Portsmouth
–
The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5,1905 after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The war was unpopular with the Russian public, and the Russian government was under increasing threat of revolution at home. On the other hand, the Japanese economy was severely strained by the war, with rapidly mounting foreign debts, No Russian territory had been seized, and the Russians continued to build up reinforcements via the Trans-Siberian Railway. The intermediary approached by the Japanese side was the United States President Theodore Roosevelt, however, as the war progressed, Roosevelt had begun to show concerns on the strengthening military power of Japan and its impact on long-term United States interests in Asia. In February 1905, Roosevelt sent messages to the Russian government via the US ambassador to St Petersburg, initially, the Russians were unresponsive, with Tsar Nicholas II still adamant that Russia would prove victorious in time. At this point, the Japanese government was also lukewarm to a peace treaty, on March 8,1905, Japanese Army Minister Terauchi Masatake met with the American minister to Japan, Lloyd Griscom, to convey word to Roosevelt that Japan was ready to negotiate. However, from the Russian side, a positive response did not come until after the loss of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, two days after the battle, Tsar Nicholas II met with his grand dukes and military leadership and agreed to discuss peace. On June 7,1905, Roosevelt met with Kaneko Kentarō, a Japanese diplomat, Roosevelt chose Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as the site for the negotiations, primarily due to its climate being cooler than that of Washington, D. C. The Japanese delegation to the Portsmouth Peace Conference was led by Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō, the Russian delegation was led by former Finance Minister Sergei Witte, assisted by former ambassador to Japan Roman Rosen and international law and arbitration specialist Friedrich Martens. The negotiations took place at the General Stores Building, mahogany furniture patterned after the Cabinet Room of the White House was ordered from Washington. The Japanese initially demanded recognition of their interests in Korea, the removal of all Russian forces from Manchuria and they also wanted confirmation of their control of Sakhalin, which Japanese forces had seized in July 1905, partly for use as a bargaining chip in the negotiations. A total of twelve sessions were held between August 9 and August 30, during the first eight sessions, the delegates were able to reach an agreement on eight points. These included an immediate fire, recognition of Japans claims to Korea. Russia was also required to return its leases in southern Manchuria to China, Russia was allowed to retain the Chinese Eastern Railway in northern Manchuria. The remaining four sessions addressed the most difficult issues, those of reparations, on August 18, Roosevelt proposed that Rosen offer to divide the island of Sakhalin to address the territory issue. On August 23, however, Witte proposed that the Japanese keep Sakhalin, when Komura rejected this proposal, Witte warned that he was instructed to cease negotiations and that the war would resume. This ultimatum came as four new Russian divisions arrived in Manchuria, outmaneuvered by Witte, Komura yielded, and in exchange for the southern half of Sakhalin the Japanese dropped their claims for reparations
11.
50th parallel north
–
The 50th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 50 degrees north of the Earths equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, at this latitude the sun is visible for 16 hours,22 minutes during the summer solstice and 8 hours,4 minutes during the winter solstice. The maximum altitude of the sun on the solstice is 63.5 degrees. At this latitude, the sea surface temperature between 1982 and 2011 was about 8. 5°C. The entire island came under Soviet control after World War II, 49th parallel north 51st parallel north
12.
Japan
–
Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
13.
Prefectures of Japan
–
The Prefectures of Japan consist of 47 prefectures. They form the first level of jurisdiction and administrative division of Japan and they consist of 43 prefectures proper, two urban prefectures, one circuit or territory and one metropolis. The Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration created the first prefectures to replace the provinces of Japan in 1868, each prefectures chief executive is a directly-elected governor. Ordinances and budgets are enacted by an assembly whose members are elected for four-year terms. Under the current Local Autonomy Law, each prefecture is subdivided into cities and districts and each district into towns, for example, Hokkaido has 14 subprefectures that act as branch offices of the prefecture. Some other prefectures also have offices that carry out prefectural administrative functions outside the capital. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, is a merged city-prefecture, the Wests use of prefecture to label these Japanese regions stems from 16th-century Portuguese explorers and traders use of prefeitura to describe the fiefdoms they encountered there. Its original sense in Portuguese, however, was closer to municipality than province and those fiefs were headed by a local warlord or family. Though the fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized multiple times, and been granted legislative governance and oversight, the Meiji government established the current system in July 1871 with the abolition of the Han system and establishment of the prefecture system. Although there were initially over 300 prefectures, many of them being former Han territories, this number was reduced to 72 in the part of 1871. The Local Autonomy Law of 1947 gave more power to prefectures. In 2003, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states, the plan called for each region to have greater autonomy than existing prefectures. This process would reduce the number of administrative regions and cut administrative costs. As of August 2012, no reorganization has been scheduled, the central government delegates many functions to the prefectures and municipalities, but retains the overall right to control them. Although local government expenditure accounts for 70 percent of government expenditure, the central government controls local budgets, tax rates. Historically, during the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate established bugyō-ruled zones around the nine largest cities in Japan, and 302 township-ruled zones elsewhere. When the Meiji government began to create the system in 1868, the nine bugyō-ruled zones became fu, while the township-ruled zones. Later, in 1871, the government designated Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto as fu, during World War II, in 1943, Tokyo became a to, a new type of pseudo-prefecture
14.
Korsakov (town)
–
Little is known of the early history of Korsakov. The site was home to an Ainu fishing village called Kushunkotan. Nevelskoy left detailed recollections of the landing and he encountered a predominantly Ainu population as well as Japanese nationals who, judging by Nevelskoys account, exercised authority over the native inhabitants. At the time of Nevelskoys arrival, the village featured several standing structures—Nevelskoy calls them sheds—and even a Japanese religious temple, the villagers supposedly welcomed the Russians after they learned about their mission. In 1875, the whole Sakhalin including the village was ceded to Russia, such prisoners and their families comprised early settlers of fort Korsakovsky until its hand-over to the Japanese. Prominent Russian writers, including A. P. Chekhov and V. M, doroshevich, visited Korsakovsky and left keen observations of its unsavory trade. In 1905, Korsakovsky was handed over to Japan after Russias defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905, renamed Ōtomari, it was temporarily the capital of Karafuto Prefecture between 1905 and 1907. While in Japanese hands the town grew substantially, upon the ashes of fort Korsakovsky the Japanese built a stone-clad modern city, with paved streets and electricity. A penal colony under Russias administration, Ōtomari maintained the practice of forced labor. Korsakovs present-day Korean population are descendants of these labour conscripts. After World War II, Ōtomari was again ceded from Japan, the Japanese population was mostly repatriated by 1947, though a few remained, along with a sizable Korean population. Old Ōtomari burned down substantially with the entry of the Russian troops, the old Bank, Japanese bank building remains standing today, though efforts to convert it to a museum came to nothing for lack of funds. Other Japanese sites and memorials were all destroyed, including a Shinto shrine, an interesting sample of Japanese monuments can now be seen near Prigorodnoye - a fallen stella to Japanese soldiers. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Korsakov serves as the center of Korsakovsky District and is subordinated to it. As a municipal division, the town of Korsakov and seventeen rural localities of Korsakovsky District are incorporated as Korsakovsky Urban Okrug. The thousands of employed in the Bor continued their work for private fishing companies. The catch was sold in Japan for hard currency, mainly in Wakkanai, fishermen purchased Japanese electronics and used cars. This semi-illicit, semi-barter economy had a positive economic effect on Korsakov
15.
Surrender of Japan
–
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2,1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting major operations, on August 6,1945, at 8,15 AM local time, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, American President Harry S. Truman called again for Japans surrender, warning them to expect a rain of ruin from the air, later in the day, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. After several more days of negotiations and a failed coup détat. In the radio address, called the Jewel Voice Broadcast, he announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies, on August 28, the occupation of Japan by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers began. The role of the bombings in Japans unconditional surrender. The state of war ended when the Treaty of San Francisco came into force on April 28,1952. Four more years passed before Japan and the Soviet Union signed the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, by 1945, the Japanese had suffered an unbroken string of defeats for nearly two years in the South West Pacific, the Marianas campaign, and the Philippines campaign. In July 1944, following the loss of Saipan, General Hideki Tōjō was replaced as minister by General Kuniaki Koiso. After the Japanese loss of the Philippines, Koiso in turn was replaced by Admiral Kantarō Suzuki, the Allies captured the nearby islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the first half of 1945. Okinawa was to be an area for Operation Downfall, the American invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. The Allied submarine campaign and the mining of Japanese coastal waters had largely destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet, the destruction of the Japanese merchant fleet, combined with the strategic bombing of Japanese industry, had wrecked Japans war economy. Production of coal, iron, steel, rubber, and other vital supplies was only a fraction of that before the war, as a result of the losses it had suffered, the Imperial Japanese Navy had ceased to be an effective fighting force. Although 19 destroyers and 38 submarines were still operational, their use was limited by the lack of fuel, the only course left is for Japans one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight. As a final attempt to stop the Allied advances, the Japanese Imperial High Command planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū codenamed Operation Ketsugō and this was to be a radical departure from the defense in depth plans used in the invasions of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Instead, everything was staked on the beachhead, more than 3,000 kamikazes would be sent to attack the transports before troops. The strategy of making a last stand at Kyūshū was based on the assumption of continued Soviet neutrality, a set of caves were excavated near Nagano on Honshu, the largest of the Japanese islands. In the event of invasion, these caves, the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters, were to be used by the army to direct the war and to house the Emperor and his family
16.
World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
17.
Japanese language
–
Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to language groups, particularly to Korean. Little is known of the prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, during the Heian period, Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end in 1853 of Japans self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person, Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener. Japanese has no relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji, in its writing system. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used in a fashion, such as for imported acronyms. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period, Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan, the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, in these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early 8th century, the end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794
18.
Ainu language
–
Ainu or Hokkaido Ainu is the sole survivor of the Ainu languages. It is spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, until the 20th century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. There were at least 19 dialects of the Ainu languages, only the Hokkaido variant survives, the last speaker of Sakhalin Ainu having died in 1994. Hokkaido Ainu is moribund, though attempts are being made to revive it, Ainu has no generally accepted genealogical relationship to any other language family. Depending on the system used, Ainu could be considered a moribund language or a critically endangered language. As of 2016, Ethnologue lists Ainu as class 8b, nearly extinct and it has been endangered since before the 1960s. Most of the approximately 15,000 ethnic Ainu in Japan speak only Japanese, during the 1980s, in the town of Nibutani, where many of the remaining native speakers live, there were 100 speakers, of whom only fifteen used the language every day. Today, there are only around ten native speakers remaining, all of whom are at least 80 years old, there are also some semi-speakers who are at least 60 years old. Most of these live in southwestern Hokkaido. There is a movement to revitalize the language, mainly in Hokkaido. Ainu oral literature has been documented both in hopes of safeguarding it for generations, as well as using it as a teaching tool for language learners. Beginning in 1987, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido began hosting Ainu language classes, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido is the main supporter of Ainu culture in Hokkaido. Ainu language classes have been conducted in areas in Japan. Efforts have also made to produce web-accessible materials for conversational Ainu because most documentation of the Ainu language focused on the recording of folktales. Ainu syllables are CV, that is, they have a syllable onset. There are five vowel sounds in Ainu, Plosives /p t ts k/ may be voiced between vowels and after nasals, both /ti/ and /tsi/ are realized as, and /s/ becomes before /i/ and at the end of syllables. There is some variation among dialects, in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final /p, t, k, after an /i/, this /x/ is pronounced. A glottal stop is inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel
19.
Amur River
–
The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the worlds tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The largest fish species in the Amur is the kaluga, attaining a length as great as 5.6 metres, historically, it was common to refer to a river simply as water. The word for water is similar in a number of Asiatic languages, mul in Korean, muren in Mongolian, the name Amur may have evolved from a root word for water, coupled with a size modifier for Big Water. The Chinese name for the river, Heilong Jiang, means Black Dragon River in Chinese, and its Mongolian name, Khar mörön, means Black River. The river rises in the hills in the part of Northeast China at the confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka River and the Ergune River, at an elevation of 303 metres. It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes an arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres, receiving many tributaries. At Huma, it is joined by a tributary, the Huma River. Afterwards it continues to south until between the cities of Blagoveschensk and Heihe, it widens significantly as it is joined by the Zeya River. At the confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk, now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres and the river flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun River. Shortly after, the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, in many historical references these two geopolitical entities are known as Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria, respectively. The Chinese province of Heilongjiang on the bank of the river is named after it. The name Black River was used by the Manchu and the Ta-tsing Empire who regarded this river as sacred, the Amur River is an important symbol of, and geopolitical factor in, Chinese–Russian relations. The Amur was especially important in the following the Sino–Soviet political split in the 1960s. For many centuries the Amur Valley was populated by the Tungusic and Mongol people, for many of them, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17th century, these people were not known to the Europeans, and little known to the Han Chinese, the term Yupi Dazi was used for the Nanais and related groups as well, owing to their traditional clothes made of fish skins. This Ming Dynasty Aigun was located on the bank to the later Aigun that was relocated during the Qing Dynasty. In any event, the Ming presence on the Amur was as short-lived as it was tenuous, soon after the end of the Yongle era, Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vassili Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries in 1643–44 and 1649–51, respectively
20.
Hokkaido
–
Hokkaido, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is the second largest island of Japan, and the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel. The largest city on Hokkaido is its capital, Sapporo, which is also its only ordinance-designated city, about 43 km north of Hokkaido lies Sakhalin island, Russia, whereas to its east and north-east are the disputed Kuril Islands. Hokkaido was settled by the Ainu, Nivkh, and Orok before recorded history, the Nihon Shoki, finished in 720 AD, is often said to be the first mention of Hokkaido in recorded history. According to the text, Abe no Hirafu led a navy and army to northern areas from 658 to 660 and came into contact with the Mishihase. One of the places Hirafu went to was called Watarishima, which is believed to be present-day Hokkaido. During the Nara and Heian periods, people in Hokkaido conducted trade with Dewa Province, from the Middle Ages, the people in Hokkaido began to be called Ezo. Hokkaido, formerly known as Ezochi Ezochi or Ezogashima, the Ezo mainly relied upon hunting and fishing and obtained rice and iron through trade with the Japanese. During the Muromachi period, the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula, as more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes eventually developed into a war, takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain, and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiros descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, which was granted trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama. The Matsumae familys economy relied upon trade with the Ainu and they held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868. The Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state, medieval military leaders in northern Honshū maintained only tenuous political and cultural ties to the imperial court and its proxies, the Kamakura Shogunate and Ashikaga Shogunate. Feudal strongmen sometimes located themselves within medieval institutional order, taking shogunal titles, in fact many of the feudal strongmen were descended from Emishi military leaders who had been assimilated into Japanese society. The Matsumae clan were of Yamato descent like other ethnic Japanese people, the Emishi were conquered and integrated into the Japanese state dating back as far as the 8th century, and as result began to lose their distinctive culture and ethnicity as they became minorities. By the time the Matsumae clan ruled over the Ainu most of the Emishi were ethnically mixed, there were numerous revolts by the Ainu against feudal rule. The last large-scale resistance was Shakushains Revolt in 1669–1672, in 1789, a smaller movement, the Menashi-Kunashir Rebellion, was also crushed. After that rebellion the terms Japanese and Ainu referred to clearly distinguished groups, in 1799–1821 and 1855–1858 the Edo Shogunate took direct control over Hokkaido in response to a perceived threat from Russia
21.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
22.
Manchu language
–
Manchu is a severely endangered Tungusic language spoken in Manchuria, it was the native language of the Manchus and one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty of China. Most Manchus now speak Mandarin Chinese, according to data from UNESCO, there are 10 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Manchu language enjoys high historical value for historians of China, especially for the Qing dynasty and they supply information that is unavailable in Chinese and, when both Manchu and Chinese versions of a given text exist, they provide controls for understanding the Chinese. Like most Siberian languages, Manchu is a language that demonstrates limited vowel harmony. It has been demonstrated that it is derived mainly from the Jurchen language though there are many words from Mongolian. Its script is written and taken from the Mongolian alphabet. The Manchu language uses the Manchu script, which was derived from the traditional Mongol script, Manchu is usually romanized according to the system devised by Paul Georg von Möllendorff in his Manchu grammar. Its ancestor, Jurchen, used the Jurchen script, which is derived from the Khitan script, there is no relation between the Jurchen script and the Manchu script Chinese Characters can also be used to transliterate Manchu. Mongols learnt their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels. The Manchus followed the same syllabic method when learning Manchu script, today, the opinion on whether it is alphabet or syllabic in nature is still split between different experts. In China, it is considered syllabic and Manchu is still taught in this manner, the alphabetic approach is used mainly by foreigners who want to learn the language. Studying Manchu script as a syllabary takes a longer time, Manchus when learning, instead of saying I, a---la, I, o---lo, &c. were taught at once to say la, lo, &c. Many more syllables than are contained in their syllabary might have formed with their letters. The Qing dynasty referred to the Manchu language in various Chinese titles such as Qingwen 清文, or Qingyu 清語 and Guoyu 國語, the national was also applied to the Manchu writing as in Guowen 國文 in addition to Guoyu 國語. In the Manchu language version of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the term Chinese language referred to all three Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, not just one language, Guoyu now refers to Standard Chinese. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and Jurchen language as Manchu, Manchu began as a primary language of the Qing dynasty Imperial court, but as Manchu officials became increasingly sinicized, many started losing the language. Trying to preserve the Manchu identity, the government instituted Manchu language classes and examinations for the bannermen. Chinese classics and fiction were translated into Manchu, and a body of Manchu literature accumulated, as the Yongzheng Emperor explained, If some special encouragement … is not offered, the ancestral language will not be passed on and learned
23.
Korean language
–
It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of the Peoples Republic of China. Approximately 80 million people worldwide speak Korean and this implies that Korean is not an isolate, but a member of a small family. There is still debate on whether Korean and Japanese are related with each other, the Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. A relation of Korean with Japonic languages has been proposed by linguists like William George Aston, Chinese characters arrived in Korea together with Buddhism during the pre-Three Kingdoms period. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in hanja, however, today, the hanja are largely unused in everyday life, but in South Korea they experience revivals on artistic works and are important in historic and/or linguistic studies of Korean. Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation, verb inflection, the Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North Korea and South Korea. In South Korea, the Korean language is referred to by names including hanguk-eo Korean language, hanguk-mal, Korean speech and uri-mal. In hanguk-eo and hanguk-mal, the first part of the word, hanguk, refers to the Korean nation while -eo and -mal mean language and speech, Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo, literally national language. This name is based on the same Chinese characters meaning nation + language that are used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages. In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Chosŏn-mal, or more formally, the English word Korean is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first dynasty known to Western countries. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram and Goryeo In, the majority of historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. Such factors of typological divergence as Middle Mongolians exhibition of gender agreement can be used to argue that a relationship with Altaic is unlikely. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list, a good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asa, meaning hemp. Also, the doublet wo meaning hemp is attested in Western Old Japanese and it is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. Among ancient languages, various relatives of Korean have been proposed. Some classify the language of Jeju Island as a distinct modern Koreanic language, Other famous theories are the Dravido-Korean languages theory and the mostly unknown southern-theory which suggest an Austronesian relation. Korean is spoken by the Korean people in North Korea and South Korea and by the Korean diaspora in countries including the Peoples Republic of China, the United States, Japan. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea
24.
Korea under Japanese rule
–
Korea under Japanese rule began with the end of the Joseon dynastic monarchy in Korea in 1910 and ended at the conclusion of World War II in 1945. A major stepping-stone towards Japanese occupation of Korea was the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905, the annexation of Korea by Japan was set up in the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, which was never actually signed by the Korean regent, Gojong. Imperial Japanese rule over Korea ended in 1945, when American, Japanese administration of the Korean Peninsula was directed through the General Government. The industrialization of the Korean Peninsula began with the Joseon dynasty while Korea was still independent and it continues to be the subject of controversy between the two Koreas and Japan. In South Korea, the period is described as the Japanese forced occupation. Other terms include Japanese Imperial Period, period of the Japanese imperial colonial administration, in Japan, the term Chōsen of the Japanese-Governed Period has been used. The newly modernized government of Meiji Japan sought to join these colonizing efforts, the debate concerned Korea, then in the sphere of influence of Qing China, which certain elements in the Japanese government sought to separate from Chinese influence and establish as a puppet state. Further, the acquisition of Korea would provide both a foothold on the Asian continent for Japanese expansion and a source of raw materials for Japanese industry. Okubos views were supported by the faction, which mostly consisted of those returning from the Iwakura Mission in 1873. Iwakura Tomomi, the diplomat who had led the mission, persuaded the emperor to reconsider, of special note is the corruption of the local functionaries, who could purchase an appointment as an administrator and so cloak their predations on the farmers with an aura of officialdom. Yangban families, formerly well-respected for their status as a class, were increasingly seen as little more than commoners unwilling to meet their responsibilities to their communities. Despite the government abolishing slavery and burning the records in 1801, increasing numbers of peasants, at this time, Catholic and Protestant missions were well-tolerated among the yangban, most notably in and around the area of Seoul. Animus and persecution by more conservative elements, the Pungyang Jo clan, took the lives of priests and followers known as the Korean Martyrs, peasants continued to be drawn to Christian egalitarianism, though mainly in urban and suburban areas. Arguably of greater influence were the teachings of Choe Je-u, called Donghak. Themes of exclusionism, nationalism, salvation and social consciousness were set to music, allowing farmers to understand. Along with many other Koreans, Choe was alarmed by the intrusion of Christianity and he believed the best way to counter foreign influence in Korea was to introduce democratic and human rights reforms internally. Nationalism and social reform struck a chord among peasant guerrillas, Progressive revolutionaries organized the peasants into a cohesive structure. Arrested in 1863 following the Jinju uprising led by Yu Kye-chun, Choe was charged with misleading the people, Choe was executed in 1864, sending many of his followers into hiding in the mountains
25.
Japanese people
–
Japanese people are an ethnic group native to Japan. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of the population of their country. Worldwide, approximately 129 million people are of Japanese descent, of these, people of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as the Japanese diaspora. The term ethnic Japanese may also be used in some contexts to refer to ethnic groups, including the Yamato, Ainu. The Japanese language is a Japonic language that in the past was treated as a language isolate, the Japanese language has a tripartite writing system using Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Domestic Japanese people use primarily Japanese for daily interaction, the adult literacy rate in Japan exceeds 99%. Japanese religion has traditionally been syncretic in nature, combining elements of Buddhism, Shinto, a polytheistic religion with no book of religious canon, is Japans native religion. Mahayana Buddhism came to Japan in the century and evolved into many different sects. Today, the largest form of Buddhism among Japanese people is the Jōdo Shinshū sect founded by Shinran, most Japanese people profess to believe in both Shinto and Buddhism. Japanese peoples religion functions mostly as a foundation for mythology, traditions, Christianity in Japan is among the nations minority religions. Just under 2%, or about 2.5 million, of Japans population are Christians, many Japanese practice Christianity in the diaspora in Brazil, which is home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan. About 60% of Japanese Brazilians are Roman Catholics, while 90% of Japanese Mexicans are Roman Catholic, certain genres of writing originated in and are often associated with Japanese society. These include the haiku, tanka, and I Novel, although modern writers generally avoid these writing styles, historically, many works have sought to capture or codify traditional Japanese cultural values and aesthetics. Twentieth-century Japanese writers recorded changes in Japanese society through their works, some of the most notable authors included Natsume Sōseki, Junichirō Tanizaki, Osamu Dazai, Yasunari Kawabata, Fumiko Enchi, Yukio Mishima, and Ryōtarō Shiba. In contemporary Japan, popular authors such as Ryū Murakami, Haruki Murakami, decorative arts in Japan date back to prehistoric times. Jōmon pottery includes examples with elaborate ornamentation, in the Yayoi period, artisans produced mirrors, spears, and ceremonial bells known as dōtaku. Later burial mounds, or kofun, preserve characteristic clay haniwa, beginning in the Nara period, painting, calligraphy, and sculpture flourished under strong Confucian and Buddhist influences from China. Among the architectural achievements of this period are the Hōryū-ji and the Yakushi-ji, after the cessation of official relations with the Tang dynasty in the ninth century, Japanese art and architecture gradually became less influenced by China
26.
Edo period
–
The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the countrys 300 regional daimyō. The period was characterized by growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies. The shogunate was established in Edo on March 24,1603. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration on May 3,1868, instrumental in the rise of the new bakufu was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the achievements of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Already powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kantō area, after Hideyoshis death, Ieyasu moved quickly to seize control from the Toyotomi family. Ieyasus victory over the western daimyōs at the Battle of Sekigahara gave him control of all Japan. He rapidly abolished numerous enemy daimyō houses, reduced others, such as that of the Toyotomi, Ieyasu still failed to achieve complete control of the western daimyōs, but his assumption of the title of shogun helped consolidate the alliance system. After further strengthening his base, Ieyasu installed his son Hidetada as shogun. The Toyotomi were still a significant threat, and Ieyasu devoted the next decade to their eradication, in 1615, the Tokugawa army destroyed the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka. The Tokugawa period brought 250 years of stability to Japan, the political system evolved into what historians call bakuhan, a combination of the terms bakufu and han to describe the government and society of the period. In the bakuhan, the shogun had national authority and the daimyōs had regional authority and this represented a new unity in the feudal structure, which featured an increasingly large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and decentralized authorities. The feudal hierarchy was completed by the classes of daimyō. Closest to the Tokugawa house were the shinpan, or related houses and they were twenty-three daimyōs on the borders of Tokugawa lands, all directly related to Ieyasu. The shinpan held mostly honorary titles and advisory posts in the bakufu, the second class of the hierarchy were the fudai, or house daimyōs, rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service. By the 18th century,145 fudai controlled such smaller han, members of the fudai class staffed most of the major bakufu offices. Ninety-seven han formed the group, the tozama, former opponents or new allies. The tozama were located mostly on the peripheries of the archipelago, because the tozama were least trusted of the daimyō, they were the most cautiously managed and generously treated, although they were excluded from central government positions. The Tokugawa not only consolidated their control over a reunified Japan, they also had unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyōs and the religious orders
27.
Matsumae clan
–
The clan, originally known as the Kakizaki clan, had settled in Kakizaki, Kawauchi, Mutsu on the Shimokita Peninsula. Claiming descent from the Takeda of Wakasa province, the later took the name Matsumae. Due to their location, and their role as border defenders and they may well have been the first Japanese to meet Russians at all within Japanese territory. In 1778, a merchant from Yakutsk by the name of Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin arrived in Hokkaidō with a small expedition and he offered gifts and politely asked to trade. The Matsumae official tried to explain that he had no authority to agree to trade on behalf of the shogun, the following September, the Russians did just that. According to some accounts, they had misinterpreted what had been said, in 1790, a massive earthquake struck Hokkaidō, and a forty-two-foot tsunami lifted the Russian ship out of the sea, depositing it a quarter-mile inland. The merchant Lebedev then gave up on Hokkaidō, relations between the Matsumae and the Ainu was sometimes hostile, demonstrating that their power was not absolute in the region. In 1669, what started as a fight for resources between rival Ainu clans developed into a rebellion against Matsumae control of the region and it lasted until 1672, when Shakushains Revolt was finally put down. The last serious Ainu rebellion was the Menashi-Kunashir Rebellion in 1789, the 12 paintings of Ainu chiefs were displayed in 1791 in Kyoto. At roughly the time, in 1789, a Finnish professor, Erik Laxman, of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Like several other Japanese before them, they had found in the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. Like those before them, these castaways had been transported instead across Siberia on their way to St. Petersburg, Laxman saw their plight as an opportunity to work towards the opening of Japan, and suggested this to Catherine the Great, who agreed. In 1791, she appointed the son, Lt. Adam Laxman, to command a voyage to return these castaways to Japan. The expedition reached Hokkaidō in October 1792, and found the Japanese surprisingly hospitable, the Russians were allowed to spend the winter, and documents about them were sent to the bakufu in Edo. However, Professor Laxman insisted on bringing the castaways to Edo, the bakufu sent an envoy to the Matsumae, requesting that the Russians make their way to the town of Matsumae by land. Sensing a trap, the Russians refused, and they were allowed to make port in Hakodate. All other ships would be subject to seizure, the envoys returned three days later with a document restating the rules regarding trade at Nagasaki and the laws against the practice of Christianity in Tokugawa Japan. Since the Matsumae land was a march or borderland, the remainder of Hokkaidō, then called Ezo and it was only during the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century that the march was dissolved and Hokkaidō was formally annexed, and renamed, by Japan
28.
Strait of Tartary
–
It is 900 kilometres long, 4–20 m deep, and 7.3 kilometres wide at the narrowest point. Tartary is a name used by Europeans to refer to a vast region covering Inner Asia, Central Asia. The toponym is derived from the Medieval ethnonym Tartars, which was applied to various Turco-Mongol semi-nomadic empires, since the Manchus rise to prominence in 1644, the name Tartars became applied to them as well, and Manchuria became known to the Europeans as the Chinese Tartary. Accordingly, when La Pérouse charted most of the strait between Sakhalin and the mainland Chinese Tartary in 1787, the body of water received the name of the Strait of Tartary. The Tartar Strait was a puzzle to European explorers since, when approached from the south, it becomes increasingly shallow, in 1787 La Perouse decided not to risk it and turned south even though locals had told him that Sakhalin was an island. In 1797 William Broughton also decided that the Gulf of Tartary was a bay, in 1805 Adam Johann von Krusenstern failed to penetrate the strait from the north. Mamiya Rinzōs journey of 1808 was little known to Europeans, gennady Nevelskoy passed the strait from the north in 1848. The Russians kept this a secret and used it to evade a British fleet during the Crimean War, s-117 was a Soviet Shchuka class submarine that was lost on or about 15 December 1952, due to unknown causes in the Strait of Tartary in the Sea of Japan. The boat may have collided with a ship or struck a mine. All forty-seven crewmen died in the incident. S, congressman, Larry McDonald, strayed into the Soviet air space and was attacked by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor just west of Sakhalin Island. The plane came down on the waters off the only land mass. An intensive naval search by the U. S. with assistance of Japanese, the Russians claimed it would raise the temperature of the Sea of Japan by an average of 35 degrees. Since 1973, a ferry operates across the strait, connecting the port of Vanino. Looking at the map, one could think that the Strait of Tartary would provide a convenient connection for boats sailing from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk, however, according to the SASCO that operates that shipping line, their ships rarely travel that way. The usual winter route from Vanino to Magadan is via Tsugaru Strait, and around Hokkaido, a tunnel under the strait, to provide a road and/or rail connection between Sakhalin and the mainland, was begun under Joseph Stalin, but abandoned incomplete after his death. Renewed calls for either a tunnel or a bridge have made by politicians in recent years. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Parusa. narod. ru, Tatar Strait—Strait of Tartary—
29.
Sovereignty
–
Sovereignty is understood in jurisprudence as the full right and power of a governing body to govern itself without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a term designating supreme authority over some polity. It is a basic principle underlying the dominant Westphalian model of state foundation, derived from Latin through French souveraineté, its attainment and retention, in both Chinese and Western culture, has traditionally been associated with certain moral imperatives upon any claimant. The concept of sovereignty has been discussed throughout history, and is still actively debated and it has changed in its definition, concept, and application throughout, especially during the Age of Enlightenment. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects consisting of territory, population, authority, Sovereignty is a hypothetical trade, in which two potentially conflicting sides, respecting de facto realities of power, exchange such recognitions as their least costly strategy. The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that, The imperium of the people is transferred to the Emperor, the Emperor is not bound by the law. Emperor is the law making and abiding force, Ulpian was expressing the idea that the Emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty, although he did not use the term expressly. Classical Ulpians statements were known in medieval Europe, but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times, Medieval monarchs were not sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy. Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom, Sovereignty existed during the Medieval Period as the de jure rights of nobility and royalty, and in the de facto capability of individuals to make their own choices in life. 1380–1400, the issue of sovereignty was addressed in Geoffrey Chaucers Middle English collection of Canterbury Tales. The story revolves around the knight Sir Gawain granting to Dame Ragnell, his new bride, what is purported to be wanted most by women and we desire most from men, From men both lund and poor, To have sovereignty without lies. For where we have sovereignty, all is ours, Though a knight be ever so fierce and it is our desire to have master Over such a sir. Jean Bodin, partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion, in his 1576 treatise Les Six Livres de la République Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that the sovereign must have both great and perpetual authority. Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to the ruler, however, although he is often connected with absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. Thus, Bodin’s sovereign was restricted by the law of the state. Bodin believed that “the most divine, most excellent, and the form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically”. With his doctrine that sovereignty is conferred by law, Bodin predefined the scope of the divine right of kings. During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as the main Western description of the meaning and power of a State
30.
Qing dynasty
–
It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water
31.
Vladivostok
–
Vladivostok is a city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located at the head of the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russias borders with China and North Korea. The population of the city as of 2016 is 606,653, the city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. The name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as the ruler of the East—a name similar to Vladikavkaz which means the ruler of the Caucasus, the Japanese name of the city is Urajiosutoku. In Korean, the name is transliterated as Beulladiboseutokeu in South Korea, Ullajibosŭttokhŭ in North Korea, Qing China, which had just lost the Opium War with Britain, was unable to defend the region. The Manchu emperors of China, the Qing Dynasty, banned Han Chinese from most of Manchuria including the Vladivostok area —it was only visited by illegal gatherers of ginseng and sea cucumbers. On June 20,1860, the supply ship Manchur, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Alexey K. Shefner. Warrant officer Nikolay Komarov with 28 soldiers and two non-commissioned officers under his command were brought from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur by ship to construct the first buildings of the future city, the Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel Chinese from territory it controlled. Hostilities broke out around Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations, the Chinese resisted a Russian attempt to take Ashold Island and in response, two Russian military stations and three Russian towns were attacked by the Chinese whom the Russians failed to oust. An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the 1870s and 1890s, a telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasaki was opened in 1871. That same year a commercial port was relocated to Vladivostok from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, town status was granted on April 22,1880. A coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883, the first high school was opened in 1899. The citys economy was given a boost in 1916, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks took control of Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway in its entirety. During the Russian Civil War they were overthrown by the White-allied Czechoslovak Legion, the intervention ended in the wake of the collapse of the White Army and regime in 1919, with all Allied forces except the Japanese withdrawing by the end of 1920. In April 1920, the city came under the governance of the Far Eastern Republic. Vladivostok then became the capital of the Japanese-backed Provisional Priamurye Government, the withdrawal of Japanese forces in October 1922 spelled the end of the enclave, with Ieronim Uborevichs Red Army taking the city on October 25,1922. As the main base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. The city hosted the summit at which Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974, at the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers. In 2012, Vladivostok hosted the 24th APEC summit, leaders from the APEC member countries met at Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok
32.
Outer Manchuria
–
Outer Manchuria or Outer Northeast China is an unofficial term for a territory in Northeast Asia that was formerly part of the Chinese Qing dynasty and now belongs to Russia. It is considered part of the historical region of Manchuria which also includes the modern-day Northeast China. Russia officially received this territory by the treaties of the Treaty of Aigun in 1858. The northern part of the area was also in dispute between 1643 and 1689, Outer Manchuria comprises the present-day Russian areas of Primorsky Krai, southern Khabarovsk Krai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and Amur Oblast. A Chinese claim adds the island of Sakhalin, currently, the Peoples Republic of China has no claim to the territory. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, in 1689, defined the China–Russia border as the Stanovoy Mountains and the Argun River, making Outer Manchuria a part of Qing dynasty China. After losing the Opium Wars, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign a series of treaties that gave away land and ports to the European powers, these were known as the Unequal Treaties. Starting with the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860, as a result, China lost Outer Manchuria, as well as access to the Sea of Japan. The terms Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria, modeled on Inner and Outer Mongolia, were coined to support Chinese claims to Russian territory and were never used in scientific literature, Manchuria is an accepted term for the area now belonging to China. According to this view, there were no Manchus north of the Nen River, however, the native population of Outer Manchuria were southern Tungusics, closely related to the Manchu and no more different from them than the differences found among various Mongol groups. The only exception was the Nivkh people inhabiting the lowest reaches of the Amur River, evenks, who speak a closely related Tungusic language, make up a significant part of the indigenous population. The original inhabitants of the region were apparently the Mohe and other Tungusic tribes, according to the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, the Manchu-Russian border was the Argun River and the Stanovoy Mountains until the Pacific coast. The eastern end of the boundary was held to be the Uda River. However, the Qing dynasty ceded Outer Manchuria to Russia in the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860. A small region to the north of the Amur, known as the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River, was kept by the Qing dynasty under the Treaty of Aigun, but was invaded and annexed by Russia in 1900. Outer Manchuria formed part of the far provinces of the Soviet Union and was used as the launch-pad for the Soviet assault on Japanese-occupied Inner Manchuria in 1945. In 2004, Russia agreed to transfer Yinlong Island and half of Heixiazi Island to China, both islands are found at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, and were until then administered by Russia and claimed by China. The transfer was meant to foster reconciliation and cooperation between the two countries, but it has also sparked different degrees of discontent on both sides, russians, especially Cossack farmers in Khabarovsk who had plowlands on the islands, were unhappy about the loss of territory
33.
Sixty-Four Villages East of the River
–
Their area totalled 3,600 square kilometres. Among Russian historians, the occupied by the villages is sometimes referred as Zazeysky rayon, because it was separated by the Zeya from the regional capital. In the summer of 1857, the Russian Empire offered monetary compensation to Chinas Qing dynasty government if they would remove the Manchu residents from the area, however, their offer was rebuffed. The following year, in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, the Qing ceded the north bank of the Amur to Russia, however, Qing subjects residing north of the Amur River were permitted to retain their domiciles in perpetuity under the authority of the Manchu government. The estimates published between the late 1870s and early 1890s varied between 12,000 and 16,000, peaking in 1894, at 16,102. After that, reported numbers went down, by time, however. The military governor of the Amur region, Lieutenant-General Konstantin Nikolaevich Gribskii and they were taken by the local police and driven into the river, most did not know how to swim. Not a Chinaman escaped, except forty who were employed by a foreign merchant who ransomed their lives at a thousand roubles each. These, and many even worse, atrocities are remembered and now is their moment for revenge, so it was easy for Japan to enlist the sympathy of these men, especially when emphasized by liberal pay, as is now the case. It is believed more than 10,000 of these bandits, divided into companies of from 200 to 300 each. The Republic of China, the successor of the Qing Empire, has never recognized the Russian occupation as legitimate, in the 1991 Sino-Russian Border Agreement, the Peoples Republic of China renounced sovereignty of the 64 Villages. Therefore, the area appears as Chinese territory in many maps of China published in Taiwan even though it is now administered as a part of Amur Oblast. 47–72, retrieved 2009-02-24 Paine, S. C. M, imperial Rivals, China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier, M. E. Part 1, Blagoveshchensk, ISBN 5-8331-0051-8 Timofeyev, Oleg Anatolyevich, Russian-Chinese relations in the Amur region, mid-19th - early 20th centuries. Part 2, Blagoveshchensk, ISBN 5-8331-0051-8 Yang, Chuang, Gao, Fei, Feng, 海兰泡和江东六十四屯惨案, 百年中俄关系, Beijing, World Affairs Press, ISBN 7-5012-2876-0 A map of Aihun Ting from a 1911 Heilongjiang atlas. This is the district centered on Aihun on the Chinese side of the river, but also including the Sixty-Four Villages on the Russian side
34.
Treaty of Shimoda
–
The Treaty of Shimoda of February 7,1855, was the first treaty between the Russian Empire, and the Empire of Japan, then under the administration of the Tokugawa shogunate. Since the beginning of the century, the Tokugawa shogunate pursued a policy of isolating the country from outside influences. Foreign trade was maintained only with the Dutch and the Chinese and was conducted exclusively at Nagasaki under a government monopoly. This policy had two main objectives, the second objective was fear that foreign trade and the wealth developed would lead to the rise of a daimyō powerful enough to overthrow the ruling Tokugawa clan. The first contacts between Japan and Russia were made with the Matsumae clan in Hokkaido by the merchant Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin in 1778 and by official envoy Adam Laxman in 1792. The Russian expedition around the world led by Adam Johann von Krusenstern stayed six months in the port of Nagasaki in 1804–1805, failing to establish diplomatic, by the early nineteenth century, this policy of isolation was increasingly under challenge. In 1844, King William II of the Netherlands sent a letter urging Japan to end the policy on its own before change would be forced from the outside. In 1846, an official American expedition led by Commodore James Biddle arrived in Japan asking for ports to be opened for trade, but was sent away. A few years later, Russia learned that the United States was preparing an expedition to be led by Commodore Matthew Perry, to open Japan by gunboat diplomacy if necessary. If successful, it was feared that this would provide more American influence in the Pacific region and Asia, Russia immediately recommenced plans to send a mission to the Far East. Russian minister of Foreign Affairs Karl Nesselrode assigned Vice-Admiral Euphimy Vasilevich Putiatin to head the Russian mission, goncharov would use the experience in his Fregat Pallada, in which he described the details of the voyage and the negotiations. It is a description of how the Japanese received and processed foreign trade vessels. Pallada departed Kronstadt on October 7,1852 under orders to return only with a treaty at least as good as the one the Americans had obtained, also on the Russian agenda was a delimitation of the borders between Japan and Russia in Sakhalin and the Kurile islands. Despite years of debate on the policy, Perry’s visit created great controversy within the highest levels of the Tokugawa shogunate. Eventually, Putiatin arrived in Japan with his four vessels on August 21,1853, Putiatin and Perry had a somewhat differing approach to negotiating with the Japanese. Perry stressed the firepower of his warships and the consequences for Japan. Officials sent word to Edo, and while waiting for a response, Putiatin sailed to Shanghai for supplies, on his return to Nagasaki, there was still no reply, so he renewed his threat to go directly to Edo. The alarmed Nagasaki bugyō urged Edo to accept Putiatin’s terms, as the Russians seemed more accommodating that the Americans, disappointed, Putiatin left Japan in November 1853 promising to return in the spring
35.
Tokugawa shogunate
–
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the Tokugawa bakufu and the Edo bakufu, was the last feudal Japanese military government, which existed between 1600 and 1868. The head of government was the shogun, and each was a member of the Tokugawa clan, the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle and the years of the shogunate became known as the Edo period. This time is called the Tokugawa period or pre-modern. Following the Sengoku period, the government had been largely re-established by Oda Nobunaga during the Azuchi–Momoyama period. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu, society in the Tokugawa period, unlike the shogunates before it, was supposedly based on the strict class hierarchy originally established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The daimyō were at the top, followed by the warrior-caste of samurai, with the farmers, artisans, and traders ranking below. In some parts of the country, particularly smaller regions, daimyō and samurai were more or less identical, since daimyō might be trained as samurai, otherwise, the largely inflexible nature of this social stratification system unleashed disruptive forces over time. Taxes on the peasantry were set at fixed amounts which did not account for inflation or other changes in monetary value, as a result, the tax revenues collected by the samurai landowners were worth less and less over time. This often led to confrontations between noble but impoverished samurai and well-to-do peasants, ranging from simple local disturbances to much bigger rebellions. None, however, proved compelling enough to challenge the established order until the arrival of foreign powers. The Tokugawa Shogunate came to an end in 1868 with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. The bakuhan taisei was the political system in the Edo period of Japan. Baku is an abbreviation of bakufu, meaning military government—that is, the han were the domains headed by daimyō. Vassals held inherited lands and provided service and homage to their lords. The bakuhan taisei split feudal power between the shogunate in Edo and provincial domains throughout Japan, provinces had a degree of sovereignty and were allowed an independent administration of the han in exchange for loyalty to the shogun, who was responsible for foreign relations and national security. The shogun and lords were all daimyō, feudal lords with their own bureaucracies, policies, the shogun also administered the most powerful han, the hereditary fief of the House of Tokugawa. Each level of government administered its own system of taxation, the emperor, nominally a religious leader, held no real power, this was invested in the shogun. The shogunate had the power to discard, annex, and transform domains, the sankin kōtai system of alternative residence required each daimyō to reside in alternate years between the han and the court in Edo
36.
Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875)
–
The Treaty of Saint Petersburg between the Empire of Japan and Empire of Russia was signed on 7 May 1875, and its ratifications exchanged at Tokyo on 22 August 1875. Its terms stipulated that Japan cedes to Russia the part of Sakhalin island it then owned in exchange for the group of the Kuril Islands owned by Russia, consequently, Sakhalin island as a whole became Russian territory, and the entire Kuril archipelago Japanese territory. The authentic text of the Treaty is written in French, differences with its Japanese translation contributed to the controversy on what constitutes the Kuril islands, to which Japan renounced in 1951 by the Treaty of San Francisco. The Treaty of Shimoda of 1855 had defined the border between Japan and Russia to be the strait between Iturup and Urup islands in the Kurile chain, but had left the status of Sakhalin open, without well-defined borders, incidents between Russian and Japanese settlers began to occur. In order to remedy this situation the Japanese government sent an ambassador, Enomoto Takeaki, to Saint Petersburg to clearly define the border in this area
37.
Kuril Islands
–
There are 56 islands and many minor rocks. It consists of Greater Kuril Ridge and Lesser Kuril Ridge, the total land area is 10,503.2 square kilometres and the total population is 19,434. All the islands are currently under Russian jurisdiction, Japan claims the two southernmost large islands as part of its territory, as well as Shikotan and the Habomai islets, which has led to the ongoing Kuril Islands dispute. The disputed islands are known in Japan as the countrys Northern Territories, the name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu, the islands original inhabitants, kur, meaning man. It may also be related to names for other islands that have traditionally inhabited by the Ainu people, such as Kuyi or Kuye for Sakhalin. In Japanese, the Kuril Islands are known as the Chishima Islands, once the Russians reached the islands in the 18th century they found a pseudo-etymology from Russian kurit due to the continual fumes and steam above the islands from volcanoes. The Kuril Islands form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire, the chain has around 100 volcanoes, some 40 of which are active, and many hot springs and fumaroles. The climate on the islands is generally severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and short, the average annual precipitation is 30–40 inches, most of which falls as snow. The chain ranges from temperate to sub-Arctic climate types, and the vegetative cover ranges from tundra in the north to dense spruce. The highest elevations on the islands are Alaid volcano on Atlasov Island at the end of the chain. The soils are generally productive, owing to the influxes of volcanic ash and, in certain places. However, many of the steep, unconsolidated slopes are susceptible to landslides, only the southern most island has large areas covered by trees, while more northerly islands have no trees, or spotty tree cover. Invertebrates, Extensive kelp beds surrounding almost every island provide habitat for sea urchins, various mollusks and countless other invertebrates. Many species of squid provide a principal component of the diet of many of the marine mammals. Fish, Further offshore, walleye pollock, Pacific cod, several species of flatfish are of the greatest commercial importance, the long term fluctuations in the range and distribution of human settlements along the Kuril island presumably tracked the pinniped ranges. In historical times, fur seals were exploited for their fur in the 19th and early 20th centuries and several of the largest reproductive rookeries. In contrast, commercial harvest of the seals and Steller sea lions has been relatively insignificant on the Kuril islands proper. Since the 1960s there has been no additional harvest and the pinniped populations in the Kuril islands appear to be fairly healthy
38.
Invasion of Sakhalin
–
The Invasion of Sakhalin was the last land battle of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. However, the plan was vetoed, primary due to opposition by the Imperial Japanese Navy, on 7 June 1905, shortly after the Battle of Tsushima, US president Theodore Roosevelt met with Japanese diplomat and Kaneko Kentarō and the issue was reconsidered. By 1904, Sakhalin had an estimated 30,000 inhabitants, however, the island was used as a prison and a place of exile for political dissidents, it did not figure prominently in Russian strategic plans. The island was noted for its climate, isolation, and the high level of corruption of its ruling bureaucrats. The Imperial Russian Army had a garrison on Sakhalin with a strength of 7280 men. However, many of these men were conscripted farmers, hunters, Russian General MN Lyapunov had been a lawyer before the war, and had limited formal military training. The Japanese and moved on to occupy Korsakov on 8 July, the Japanese moved north, taking the village of Vladimirovka on 10 July, the same day that a new Japanese detachment landed at Cape Notoro. Colonel Arciszewski dug in order again to resist the Japanese, but was outflanked by the Japanese and was forced to flee into the interior of the island. He surrendered with his men on 16 July. About 200 Russians were captured while the Japanese suffered 18 dead and 58 wounded, on 24 July, the Japanese landed in northern Sakhalin near Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinski. In northern Sakhalin, the Russians had about 5,000 troops under the command of General Lyapunov. Because of the numerical and material superiority of the Japanese, the Russians withdrew from the city, the Japanese occupied Sakhalin with minimal effort and low losses. The Russians lost 181 dead and had 3,270 taken prisoner, the reasons for the low Russian resistance were in the low morale of the soldiers, who were mostly prisoners and deportees with little or no military training. Per the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War, Battle of Korsakov Invasion of South Sakhalin Connaughton, R. M. The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear—A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War 1904–5, historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War
39.
Russo-Japanese War
–
The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan, Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan feared Russian encroachment on its sphere of influence. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian Far East from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century, through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests, after negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China, in a surprise attack. The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt, the complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers. The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japans recent entry onto the world stage and it was the first major military victory in the modern era of an Asian power over a European one. Scholars continue to debate the historical significance of the war, after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Meiji government endeavored to assimilate Western ideas, technological advances and ways of warfare. By the late 19th century, Japan had transformed itself into an industrial state. The Japanese wanted to be recognized as equal with the Western powers, the Meiji restoration had always been intended to make Japan a modernized state, not a Westernized one, and Japan was always an imperialist power, looking towards overseas expansionism. By the 1890s it had extended its realm across Central Asia to Afghanistan, the Russian Empire stretched from Poland in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the east. With its construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the port of Vladivostok, in the Tsushima incident of 1861 Russia had directly assaulted Japanese territory. Between the Meiji Restoration and its participation in World War I, the first war Japan fought was the First Sino-Japanese War, fought in 1894 and 1895. The war revolved around the issue of control and influence over Korea under the rule of the Joseon dynasty, from the 1880s onward, there had been vigorous competition for influence in Korea between China and Japan. The Korean court was prone to factionalism, and was divided by a reformist faction that was pro-Japanese. In 1884, a coup attempt was put down by Chinese troops. A peasant rebellion led by the Tonghak religious movement led to a request by the Korean government for the Qing dynasty to send in troops to stabilize the country
40.
Ministry of Colonial Affairs
–
The Ministry of Colonial Affairs was a cabinet-level ministry in the government of the Empire of Japan from 1929 to 1942. This was followed by the even shorter-lived Colonial Administration Department within the office of the Governor-General of Taiwan, the office was abolished on 2 September 1897. The Japanese government continued to provide sporadic encouragement of overseas emigration to help relieve overpopulation of the Japanese home islands and to help spread Japanese influence overseas. During the late Meiji and early Taishō periods, large numbers of Japanese emigrated to Hawaii, California and the Philippines, however, the emigration of Japanese to foreign countries did nothing to help secure the peripheral areas of the Japanese Empire itself. After the acquisition of Korea, Karafuto, and the Kwantung Leased Territory as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, the bureau came under much criticism for its ineffectiveness, and on 10 June 1929, it was elevated into a separate cabinet-level ministry under Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka. It only provided advice and cooperated with private emigration sponsorship companies, likewise, the Governor-General of Korea, who was accustomed to virtual autonomy, rejected the new ministrys control and continued to administer Korea with little interference. On 1 November 1942, the Ministry of Colonial Affairs was abolished, becoming Japanese, Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Yanihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy, Redeeming Empire
41.
Nikolayevsk incident
–
Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was occupied in September 1918 by the Imperial Japanese Army as part of Japans Siberian Intervention force. In early February 1920, the town had a Japanese civilian community of around 450 people, in addition to the Japanese presence, the Russian White Army housed a garrison of roughly 300 men. The total civilian population at the time was around 15,000, in January 1920, the town was surrounded by a partisan force nearly 4,000 strong under the command of Yakov Tryapitsyn, who was loosely allied with the Bolshevik Red Army. On February 24,1920, realizing that he was outnumbered and far from reinforcement, however, Triapitsyn began to round up and execute White Movement supporters, the only force holding his hand being the small Japanese garrison. On 10 March, he issued an ultimatum to the garrison to voluntarily disarm, therefore, the Japanese intervened, launching a surprise attack on 12 March 1920. The attack failed and most of the Japanese troops died, the remaining few only surrendered when the Japanese high command ordered them to do so, after this, he was free to start a reign of terror and execute all those civilians he deemed dangerous to his forces. Being short with ammunition, one of the methods to execute the victims was to them with a bayonet. Several thousand inhabitants of the town were killed like this and with other execution methods, in late May, as a Japanese relief expedition approached, Triapitsyn executed all of the remaining inhabitants of the town, both Japanese and Russian, and burned the town to the ground. The Japanese government lodged a protest against the Bolshevik government in Moscow, niko Jiken no Shomondai // Roshiashi Kekyuu,1975, No.23. Ella Lury Wiswell, Richard A. Pierce The Destruction of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, An Episode in the Russian Civil War in the Far East,1920
42.
Petroleum
–
Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellow-to-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earths surface, which is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation and it consists of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock, Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling. Drilling is carried out studies of structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a variety of materials. Concern over the depletion of the earths finite reserves of oil, the burning of fossil fuels plays the major role in the current episode of global warming. The word petroleum comes from Greek, πέτρα for rocks and Greek, the term was found in 10th-century Old English sources. It was used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in 1546 by the German mineralogist Georg Bauer, Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China, early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production. The mythological origins of the oil fields at Yenangyaung, and its hereditary monopoly control by 24 families, Pechelbronn is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century, both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies. In 1848 Young set up a small business refining the crude oil, Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. The production of oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian, the worlds first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America, edwin Drakes 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well
43.
Coal
–
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen. A fossil fuel, coal forms when plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal. This involves biological and geological processes that take place over time, throughout history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals. Coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide, the extraction of coal, its use in energy production and its byproducts are all associated with environmental and health effects including climate change. Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining, since 1983, the worlds top coal producer has been China. In 2015 China produced 3,747 million tonnes of coal –47. 7% of 7,861 million tonnes world coal production, in 2015 other large producers were United States, India, European Union and Australia. The word originally took the col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula. In Old Turkic languages, kül is ash, cinders, öčür is quench, the compound charcoal in Turkic is öčür kül, literally quenched ashes, cinders, coals with elided anlaut ö- and inflection affixes -ülmüş. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas, due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed, the temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation and this trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal, as coal contains mainly carbon, the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called carbonization. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, the exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants — this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae, in its dehydrated form, peat is a highly effective absorbent for fuel and oil spills on land and water. It is also used as a conditioner for soil to make it able to retain. Lignite, or brown coal, is the lowest rank of coal, jet, a compact form of lignite, is sometimes polished and has been used as an ornamental stone since the Upper Palaeolithic
Russia
.svg)
