This series of posts is from a presentation entitled “German Geography of the Russian Empire 1721-1914” that I gave in the summer of 2025 at the conferences of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) and the Foundation for East European Family History Studies (FEEFHS). At a high level, it explores the territorial growth of Imperial Russia and shows its significance to German settlement and migration across the empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Geography of German Settlement in the Russian Empire
VII. Russian Far East
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| Section of the 1947 map “Territorial Growth of the Russian Empire from 1700 to 1914” showing the territory that Russia acquired in the Far East and North America. |
Timeline
1732 — Russian America (1732-1867).
1740 — Kamchatka annexed.
1850 — Founding of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.
1856 — Second Opium War (1856-1860).
1858 — Treaty of Aigun.
1860 — Convention of Peking.
1860 — Amur region annexed.
1875 — Treaty of St. Petersburg with the Empire of Japan.
1905 — Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).
In 1732, the Russian Empire began to colonize North America, modern-day Alaska and later northern California. The possessions were called “Russian America.” By 1812, Russian-American Company, a trading company, established Fort Ross. This was a Russian outpost in northern California, or Alta California at the time, a province of Spain. It was inhabited until 1842 and was the center of Russian colonial activity in North America. But in the end, it didn’t work out. American territory was too far away to adequately protect. Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867 and later became a state and available for homesteading.
Since the reign of Catherine the Great, the Russian Empire had a desire to make Russia a naval power in the Pacific. By 1740, it had annexed the Kamchatka Peninsula and established a naval outpost in Petropavlovsk. In 1850, Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was founded. This marked the beginning of renewed Russian expansion in Far East Asia.
While Russia was not a combatant in the Second Opium War, it was a mediator and negotiator. The war was fought by the Qing Dynasty of China against Great Britain, the Second French Empire, and, unofficially, the United States. Russia still walked away with some territorial gains as a result of the Convention of Peking. It included lands both north and south of the Ussuri River and the left bank of the Amur River. The river had become the border between the Russian Empire and the Qing Dynasty in 1856 in the Treaty of Aigun. This all resulted in the annexation of the Amur region by Russia, which opened up new trade routes, settlement, and important coastline.
By 1860, Vladivostok was founded on the Sea of Japan. While not a warm-water port, Vladivostok became a major Pacific port and a terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1916.
The last area to mention is the Sakhalin and Kuril islands. There was a long standing territorial dispute over the islands between Russia and Japan. Russia established settlements on Sakhalin, using it as a penal colony from 1869 to 1906, and a strategic outpost in the Pacific. The Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1875 attempted to resolve the dispute by giving Russia full control of Sakhalin and Japan full control of the Kuril Islands. However, the text was written in French, which was the international language for diplomacy and international relations at the time. The Japanese translation cast some controversy over what exactly constituted the Kuril Islands. After the Russo-Japanese war, Sakhalin was divided with the northern part going to Russia.
What did this mean for German settlement and migration?
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| Known German habitation in this region of the Russian Empire on a modern map. |
After Vladivostok was founded, Kunst & Albers, a German department store, was opened in 1864 by Germans from Hamburg. They were the earliest known Germans in the area. The First Imperial Census taken in 1897 recorded a total of 738 Germans. According to birth years in EWZ records from World War II, German re-settlement from other regions in Russia began around 1878 and continued into the early 20th century in Soviet Russia.
This was not a large voluntary German settlement location, although there were some incentives for resettlement in the Russian Far East. Most were centered around military colonization, infrastructure, i.e., the building of the Trans-Siberian railway, and mining. The Stolypin Agrarian Reforms (1906–1911), the voluntary resettlement program to Siberia, extended to Eastern Siberia as well. Given the years the reforms were in place, it is unknown how many Germans took up that offer to resettle in order to farm and how many went there for other reasons.
From the records found so far, the Germans who migrated to this area came from the following Russian provinces: Akmola, Bessarabia, Ekaterinoslav, Estonia, Irkutsk, Kherson, Kiev, Kursk, Latvia, Moscow, Perm, Podolia, Poltava, Pskov, Saratov, Smolensk, St. Petersburg, Taurida, Tomsk, Ufa, Volhynia, and Vyatka.
A notable settlement in this area that is just out of scope of the time period presented here was the Amur Mennonite colonies. Fleeing collectivization, a group of Mennonites established Daughter colonies along the Amur River in 1927. They were abandoned within three years when their residents fled under cover of night to Harbin, China and later immigrated to Paraguay. They were in the same area of Zeleny Klyn (Green Ukraine), an attempt by Ukraine at an independent state in the Russian Far East. The connection between the two, if there was one, is unknown.
The territories to the northeast here had no voluntary German settlement. They along with the rest of this region were developed as force labor and mining camps within the Gulag system, and Germans were deported to them under Soviet rule.
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Related Posts and Sources:
- Geography of German Settlement in the Russian Empire
I. Introduction (posted 20 September 2025)
II. The Baltics & Finland (posted 21 September 2025)
III. Eastern Europe (posted 22 September 2025)
IV. The Black Sea Region (posted 23 September 2025)
V. The Caucasus Region (posted 24 September 2025)
VI. Central Asia and Western Siberia (posted 25 September 2025)
VII. Russian Far East (posted 26 September 2025)
VIII. Summary (posted 27 September 2025) - Images from the series Geography of German Settlement in the Russian Empire