Territory

Boundaries

The administrative boundaries of European Russia, apart from Finland and its portion of Poland, coincided broadly with the natural limits of the East-European plains. In the North it met the Arctic Ocean; the islands of Novaya Zemlya, Kolguyev and Vaigach also belonged to it, but the Kara Sea was reckoned to Siberia. To the East it had the Asiatic dominions of the empire, Siberia and the Kyrgyz steppes, from both of which it was separated by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Caspian Sea — the administrative boundary, however, partly extending into Asia on the Siberian slope of the Urals. To the South it had the Black Sea and Caucasus, being separated from the latter by the Manych depression, which in Post-Pliocene times connected the Sea of Azov with the Caspian. The West boundary was purely conventional: it crossed the peninsula of Kola from the Varangerfjord to the Gulf of Bothnia; thence it ran to the Kurisches Haff in the southern Baltic, and thence to the mouth of the Danube, taking a great circular sweep to the West to embrace Poland, and separating Russia from Prussia, Austrian Galicia and Romania.

It is a special feature of Russia that it has few free outlets to the open sea other than on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. Even the White Sea is merely a gulf of that ocean. The deep indentations of the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland were surrounded by what is ethnological Finnish territory, and it is only at the very head of the latter gulf that the Russians had taken firm foothold by erecting their capital at the mouth of the Neva. The Gulf of Riga and the Baltic belong also to territory which was not inhabited by Slavs, but by Baltic and Finnish peoples and by Germans. The East coast of the Black Sea belonged properly to Transcaucasia, a great chain of mountains separating it from Russia. But even this sheet of water is an inland sea, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, was in foreign hands, while the Caspian, an immense shallow lake, mostly bordered by deserts, possessed more importance as a link between Russia and its Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercourse with other countries.

Geography

Ethnic map of European Russia before the First World War

Main article: Geography of Russia

By the end of the 19th century the size of the empire was about 22,400,000 square kilometres (8,600,000 sq mi) or almost 1/6 of the Earth's landmass; its only rival in size at the time was the British Empire. However, at this time, the majority of the population lived in European Russia. More than 100 different ethnic groups lived in the Russian Empire, with ethnic Russians comprising about 45% of the population.

Territory development

In addition to almost the entire territory of modern Russia,^[4] prior to 1917 the Russian Empire included most of Ukraine (Dnieper Ukraine and Crimea), Belarus, Moldova (Bessarabia), Finland (Grand Duchy of Finland), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (including Mengrelia), the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Russian Turkestan), most of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Baltic provinces), as well as a significant portion of Poland (Kingdom of Poland) and Ardahan, Artvin, Iğdır, and Kars from Turkey. Between 1742 and 1867 the Russian Empire claimed Alaska as its colony.

Following the Swedish defeat in the Finnish War and the signing of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn on September 17, 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as an autonomous grand duchy. The Tsar ruled the Grand Duchy of Finland as a constitutional monarch through his governor and a native Finnish Senate appointed by him.

Imperial external territories

According to the 1st article of the Organic law, the Russian Empire was one indivisible state. In addition, the 26th article stated that "With the Imperial Russian throne are indivisible the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Finland". Relations with the Grand Duchy of Finland were also regulated by the 2nd article, "The Grand Duchy of Finland, constituted an indivisible part of the Russian state, in its internal affairs governed by special regulations at the base of special laws" and the law of June 10, 1910.^[5]

In 1744–1867 the empire also controlled the so-called Russian America. With the exception of this territory (modern day Alaska), the Russian Empire was a contiguous landmass spanning Europe and Asia. In this it differed from contemporary, colonial-style empires. The result of this was that while the British and French Empire declined in the 20th century, the Russian Empire kept a large proportion of its territory, firstly as the Communist Soviet Union, and latterly as part of the present-day Russian Federation.

Furthermore, the empire at times controlled concession territories, notably the port of Kwantung and the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, both conceded by imperial China, as well as a concession in Tianjin. See for these periods of extraterritorial control the relations between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire.

In 1815, Dr. Schäffer, a Russian entrepreneur, went to Kauai and negotiated a treaty of protection with the island's governor Kaumualii, vassal of King Kamehameha I of Hawaii, but the Russian Tsar refused to ratify the treaty. See also Orthodox Church in Hawaii and Russian Fort Elizabeth