In Beyond the Amur, Victor Zatsepine offers a much-needed account of the life and society of the Amur frontier, a region that straddled the border between the Qing and Russian Empires. The succinct title of the book betrays its transregional ambition: for policy makers in Beijing and Saint Petersburg, the expanse of land lying on the other side of the border river was an illegible universe beyond the purview of the state. For the hunters, trappers, and traders roaming the Amur basin, however, the states were the very definition of the far beyond. By switching seamlessly between these two perspectives, Zatsepine captures the myriad connections in a zone that is best described as the Zomia of Northeast Asia.
True to its name, the book weaves Russian, Chinese, and English sources into a detailed picture of the development of the Amur frontier. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 discuss the...
