Aigun

Aigun, also written Aihui, was a historic town on the right bank of the Amur River in northern Manchuria, about thirty kilometers downstream from the site of present-day Heihe. The Chinese characters mean “bright jade,” but the name is a transliteration of a Manchu or Ducher place name rather than a description of local minerals. The Amur provided fish, drinking water, and the principal route through a forested and marshy frontier. Its broad channel also separated and connected the Manchu, Ducher, Daur, and Russian worlds whose settlements faced one another across the river.

The town’s predecessor belonged to the Ducher people and stood on the northeastern bank, now on the Russian side. Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov recorded it as Aytyun in 1652. Archaeology suggests the site had been occupied since about the end of the first or beginning of the second millennium CE. During the Yongle era the Ming had also maintained a fort at Aigun for roughly twenty years. In the 1650s the Qing evacuated many Duchers toward the Sungari and Hurka, destabilizing the existing settlement pattern.

After Qing forces captured Albazin in 1685 or 1686, Aigun was moved to the southwestern bank, near the village of the Daurian chief Tolga. The new town became an important headquarters for the Manchu river fleet and frontier administration. From 1683 it served as the seat of the military governor of Heilongjiang, although the provincial capital soon moved first to Nenjiang in 1690 and later to Qiqihar. Aigun remained the seat of a deputy lieutenant-general responsible for a large section of the Amur valley.

Jesuit cartographers visited around 1709 and found a well-defended town surrounded by fertile riverside villages and food supplies. Its fleet controlled movement on the Amur and supported Qing influence over communities that paid tribute or traded along the river. The river was more than a boundary: its islands, channels, and tributaries supported fishing, transport, and tribute collection. Aigun’s survival depended on the Qing state’s ability to maintain a fleet and supply its frontier posts, while local Ducher and Daur communities supplied knowledge of the river and surrounding forests.