the early 19th century. In the 18th century, there were 80,000 Ainu. In 1868, there were about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaidō, 2000 in Sakhalin and around 100 in the Kuril islands. The Santan Japanese traders, when they were trading in Sakhalin, seized Rishiri Ainu women to become their wives. Japanese annexation of Hokkaido In 1869, the imperial government established the Hokkaidō Development Commission as part of the measures of the Meiji Restoration. Sjöberg quotes Baba's (1890) account of the Japanese government's reasoning: ... The development of Japan's large northern island had several objectives: First, it was seen as a means to defend Japan from a rapidly developing and expansionist Russia. Second ... it offered a solution to the unemployment for the former samurai class ... Finally, development promised to yield the needed natural resources for a growing capitalist economy. As a result of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875), the Kuril Islands – along with their Ainu inhabitants – came under Japanese administration. In 1899, the Japanese government passed an act labelling the Ainu as "former aborigines", with the idea they would assimilate—this resulted in the Japanese government taking the land where the Ainu people lived and placing it from then on under Japanese control. Also at this time, the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group. The Ainu went from being a relatively isolated group of people to having their land, language, religion and customs assimilated into those of the Japanese. Their land was distributed to the Yamato Japanese settlers and to create and maintain farms in the model of Western industrial agriculture. It was known as "colonization" (拓殖) at the time, but later by the euphemism "opening up undeveloped land" (開拓). As well as this, factories such as flour mills, beer breweries and mining practices resulted in the creation of infrastructure such as roads and railway lines, during a development period that lasted until 1904. During this time, the Ainu were ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing. The same act applied to the native Ainu on Sakhalin after the Japanese annexation of it as the Karafuto Prefecture. Assimilation after annexation The Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination as the government as well as people in contact with the Ainu regarded them as dirty and primitive barbarians. The majority of