Negotiations
From the 1710s the Kangxi Emperor began to put pressure on Saint Petersburg for an agreement, largely by interfering with the caravan trade. The Lev Izmailov mission in 1719/22 to Peking produced no results.
Just before his death, Peter the Great decided to deal with the border problem. On October 23, 1725 Sava Vladislavich, a Serb in the Russian service, left Saint Petersburg with 1,500 soldiers and 120 staff including map-makers and priests. Before reaching Peking in November 1726, he picked up Lorents Lange and Ivan Bucholz and sent out cartographers to survey the border. The negotiators on the Manchu side were Tulishen and Dominique Parrenin. After six months a draft treaty was worked up, but it became clear that neither side had adequate maps. In May Vladslavich and Tulishen went back to Selenginsk near Lake Baikal to get the waiting maps. By August 31 a draft treaty was drawn up ('Treaty of Bura' after a nearby river). Work quickly began setting up border markers starting from Kyakhta on the Selenga River. The 'Abagaitu Letter' listed 63 markers from Kyakhta east to the Argun River. The 'Selenginsk Letter' listed 24 markers west from Kyakhta to the "Shabindobaga River on the northwest slopes of the Altay Mountains" . The 'Treaty of Bura' was sent to Peking to be combined with work already done there. The result was sent back to the frontier and the Treaty of Kyakhta was signed on 25 June 1728. The treaty had three official versions, in Russian, in Latin and in Manchu. No official Chinese version of the treaty exists.
Read more about this topic: Treaty Of Kyakhta
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