Achan

Achan lies in the river country around Lake Bolon and the lower Amur, a landscape of floodplain lakes, channels and marshes. The Achan people were among the communities known to Russian travellers on the Amur in the seventeenth century. The lake's rich fisheries and the river's waterways were central features of this region.

In the autumn of 1651 Yerofey Khabarov's Cossacks established a winter stronghold in Achan country. The following spring they fought an attacking Qing force, in an early clash between the expanding Russian and Qing powers on the Amur.