evidence: Summary - This map of Sakhalin Island, located just off the Pacific coast in the Russian Far East, was published in 1885. Russia and Japan had maintained competing claims over Sakhalin (Karafuto in Japanese) since at least the 18th century, and effectively split the island after the Treaty of Shimoda of 1855. Before this, imperial China had exerted nominal sovereignty over the island as far back as the Yuan and Ming Dynasties in the 13th and 14th centuries. The name Sakhalin itself possibly derives from a Manchu term used extensively within the region. Following the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1875, Russia gained full control over Sakhalin in exchange for ceding all the Kurile Islands to Japan. This map reflects the 30-year period after 1875 when Russia ruled the entire island (up to the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, when, in the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan regained southern Sakhalin as far north as the 50th parallel). The map scale is in versts, a tsarist-era unit of distance equal to 1.07 kilometers, and water depths in sazhens, (one sazhen = 2.13 meters). The map shows relief and underwater shoals by shading.