Practice of land allocation as a part of the regional agrarian colonization in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century in the Amur region

Based on the archival sources, this article intends to show the specific nature of the practice of land allocation in the Amur region in the framework of the regional agrarian colonization in the second half of the 19th-early 20th century. It was thought that in the new region, Cossacks and peasants would become the agents of the European agrarian tradition of land use based on shifting cultivation. However, natural and geographical factor led to a new strategy of economic development. In southern forest-steppe areas, settlers would receive large land plots where they would cultivate both cereals and vegetable crops borrowed from the Chinese and Koreans. Due to the lack of lands in the northern areas covered with forest and in the foothills of the Sikhote Alin Mountains, peasants were forced to turn to horticulture and use new technologies for increasing the productivity of their fields.