What had Russia to gain from alliances in the West?
Her future was in the East; and he intended to drive back the tide of Europeanism which his predecessors had so industriously invited.
Russian youths were prohibited from being educated in Western universities, and at the same time there was established at Canton a school of instruction where they might learn the Chinese language and the methods and spirit of Chinese civilization.

It was a determined purpose to Orientalize his empire.

And violating all the traditions of history, the flight of the Russian Eagle from that moment was toward the rising, not the setting sun.
Muraviev, now Governor of the Eastern Provinces of Siberia, was empowered to negotiate a treaty with China to determine the rights of the two nations upon the river Amur, which separated Manchuria, the northernmost province of China, from Russian Siberia.

The treaty, which was concluded in 1858, conceded the left bank of this river to Russia.
Nikolaifsk, a great part of the year sealed up with ice, was only a stepping-stone for the next advance southward.

From the mouth of the Amur to the frontier of Korea there was a strip of territory lying between the sea on the east and the Ussuri river on the west, which to the Russian mind, at that time, seemed an ideal possession.