Great Game
Tibet and Inner Asia

British-Russian competition also existed in Tibet and " Inner Asia ". Strategists of the Russian Empire sought to create a springboard to surround the Qing dynasty in Inner Asia as well as a second front against British India from the northeast direction.

Britain had been exploring territories north of India by recruiting " Pundits ", native Indian explorers, among them Nain Singh, who reached Lhasa, Tibet, in 1866. He and his cousin Kishen Singh continued to travel around Tibet and surrounding regions for many years. The publications of the Royal Geographical Society in 1869 made the arrival of British Pundits at Lhasa known in Russia. The Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky felt there was a British threat to Russian ambitions in Inner Asia, and set out on a series of 1870s expeditions. Although he failed to reach Tibet's capital at Lhasa, he travelled extensively in Tibet, Qinghai, and Xinjiang. Przhevalsky's expeditions became famous and increased interest in European expansion into Asia among the Russian press, aristocracy and academia. In the 1880s, Przhevalsky advocated for the "forcible annexation of western China, Mongolia, and Tibet, and their colonization by Cossacks ", although the plan received some pushback from Tsar Alexander III who favoured influence rather than an invasion.

Historian Alexandre Andreev argues that Tibet was a major territorial focus of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and was connected to the Great Game. Andreyev mentions that in 1893, Tsar Alexander III financed an adventurist project by a Tibetan medicine practitioner, Piotr Aleksandrovich Badmaev, which aimed to annex Mongolia, Tibet, and China to the Russian Empire. Although not very successful, various agents were sent out to conduct espionage in Tibet in regards to British influence, investigate trade and attempted to foment rebellion in Mongolia against the Qing dynasty. In the late 19th century, Britain strategically supported the Qing Dynasty's protectorates against the Russian Empire. According to Andreyev, "in the days of the Great Game, Mongolia was an object of imperialist encroachment by Russia, as Tibet was for the British.""

Britain feared increased Russian influence in Tibet, due to contacts between the Russia-born Buryat Agvan Dorzhiev and the 13th Dalai Lama. Agvan Dorzhiev claimed that Russia was a powerful Buddhist country that would ally with Tibet against China or Britain. In response, Britain sought to increase its own influence in Tibet as a buffer for British India. British forces, led by Sir Francis Younghusband, invaded the country with the Curzon expedition in 1904 and made a treaty with the Tibetans, the 1904 Lhasa Convention.

According to Robert Irwin, who considers a smaller, espionage-focused interpretation of the Great Game, Tibet was indeed connected to the Great Game, but "the truth is that, in the period concerned, British ruling circles didn't own so much as a sweetshop in Tibet." Specifically, he notes that the commercial trade that followed the Younghusband expedition was negligible compared to the cost of the expedition.

Pradip Phanjoubam states that the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Tibet ultimately had implications for Northeast India as well, culminating in the Simla Convention. Phanjoubam argues that Britain overreacted to Russian interest in Tibet, if perhaps understandably due to the presence of Dorzhiev. A constantly shifting British policy on China from pro- to anti-Qing protectorates by Britain, as well as the shift from opposition to Russia to the 1907 Convention, led the Qing Dynasty to decide on a forward policy in the Himalayas. If it were not for the Xinhai Revolution, India would have been more threatened than it was. Nonetheless, "On the chessboard of the Great Game in far off places as Mongolia, Afghanistan and Persia was thus determined the fate of British Tibet policy, and therefore, the shadow of the Great Game too came to fall on the future of India's Northeast."

In its Meiji period, the Empire of Japan would observe the Great Game and participate indirectly through diplomacy and espionage. For example, Japan hosted Abdurreshid Ibrahim, a pan-Muslim opponent of Russian and British expansion. Japanese interest in the region as well as enmity with Russia led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and an attempted Ottoman-Japanese alliance. Nishi Tokujirō made some of Japan's first official diplomatic interactions in Central Asia and observed Russian colonial policy during the early Meiji period, while during the end of the period, Colonel Fukushima Yasumasa managed Japan's Central Asia policy during its contest with Russia. Later, the Russo-Japanese War also changed and weakened Russian designs in Xinjiang. According to researcher Jin Noda, Japanese intelligence activities occurred "against a backdrop of acute Russian and British interest in the geopolitical fate of Xinjiang, Tibet, and Russian Turkestan".

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim also acted as a tsarist agent during the Great Game, leading an expedition through Tibet, Xinjiang, and Gansu on the way to Beijing. The Russian General Staff wanted on-the-ground intelligence about reforms and activities by the Qing dynasty, as well as the military feasibility of invading Western China: a possible move in their struggle with Britain for control of inner Asia. In a report to the Russian General Staff, Mannerheim also argued in favor of a Russian invasion of Xinjiang. Disguised as an ethnographic collector, Mannerheim joined the French archeologist Paul Pelliot 's expedition at Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan. They started from the terminus of the Trans-Caspian Railway in Andijan in July 1906, but Mannerheim quarreled with Pelliot, so he made the greater part of the expedition on his own. Mannerheim met the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet and acted as an envoy of Russia.
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