[2] It reversed the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) by transferring the land between the Stanovoy Range and the Amur River from the Qing dynasty to the Russian Empire.

[4] Since the reign of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), Russian emperors had desired to make Russia a naval power in the Pacific.

They gradually achieved their goals by annexing the Kamchatka Peninsula and establishing the naval outpost of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in 1740, naval outposts in Russian America and near the Amur watershed, encouraging Russians to go there and settle, and slowly developing a strong military presence in the Amur region.

From 1850 to 1864, when China was heavily involved in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion, and Governor-General of the Far East Nikolay Muraviev camped tens of thousands of troops on the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria, preparing to make legal Russian de facto control over the Amur from past settlement.

[3] The Russian general Muraviev and the Qing official Yishan, both military governors of the area, signed the treaty on May 28, 1858, in the town of Aigun.