Kwantung (redirected from Kantoshu)

Kwantung 

a Peninsula in northeastern China; the southwestern tip of the Laotung Peninsula. Area, about 3,500 sq km. The relief is mostly hilly, with individual ridges of up to 663 m. The shores are very jagged, and bays (Kwantung, Talienwan) and harbors are plentiful. The ice-free ports of Dairen (Dal’nii) and Lüshum (Port Arthur) are located on Kwantung.

Kwantung was conquered by the Han Dynasty in the second century B.C. For a long time (until the seventh century A.D.) it was part of the state of Koguryo, and from the eighth through the 12th centuries it belonged to various states that existed on the territory of Manchuria and northern China. In the 13th through the 15th centuries it belonged to the Yuan and Ming empires, and in the 16th century it was conquered by the Manchus, who established their rule throughout China in the mid-17th century. Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), Kwantung was ceded to Japan but was soon returned to China under pressure from Russia, France, and Germany. In 1898, under a convention that Russia concluded with China, the territory of Kwantung was leased to Russia for 25 years. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, under the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905). the leasing rights to Kwantung were turned over to Japan. In 1923, when the lease under the 1898 convention expired, Japan refused to return Kwantung to China. The Kwantung Army—Japanese troops stationed in Kwantung—occupied Manchuria in 1931. In August 1945. Kwantung was liberated from the Japanese occupiers by the armed forces of the USSR and was turned over to China.

V. P. ILIUSHECHKIN