Abstract

The plague epidemic in Manchuria and the Chinese Eastern Railway right-of-way in 1910–1911 has for many years been a subject of study by scholars in various fields. At the same time, the views of Chinese researchers on the causes of the spread and course of the epidemic, and on the participation of Chinese medics in its localization, were poorly presented in the Russian literature. Public opinion, which was reflected in the Russian press and sessions of the State Duma, is also not fully covered in studies. In order to fill the historiographic gap, the authors examine medical reports of the early twentieth century, documents of the Russian State Historical Archive, stenographic reports of the State Duma, periodicals and memoirs of the Chinese physician, “fighter against plague”, Wu Lienteh. They conclude that the plague epidemic in 1910–1911, which took the lives of more than 100,000 people in northeast China and Chinese Eastern Railway area, was not unexpected for Russian medical experts, who had recorded local outbreaks of plague before. However, what occurred in the autumn of 1910 took the administration at all levels, both in Russia and China, by surprise. The absence of a system of anti-plague organizational measures and trained medical personnel resulted in the rapid spread of plague from Russian Transbaikalia to the southern provinces of China. Calls from a Siberian group of deputies to the State Duma to fight against the plague all together were met with little enthusiasm. The Russian press also tried to focus on this urgent problem. Thousands of deaths in Manchuria were announced regularly on the pages of newspapers at the turn of 1910–1911. It was due to the tremendous effort on the part of medical workers and substantial financial resources, mainly Russian, that the epidemic was finally brought to a halt. The plague did not penetrate into Russian territory.