by primitive tribes of Mongols, who represent socially and politically the ruins of the old Mongol Empire now crushed under the heel of China.
2. EARLY RUSSO-CHINESE RELATIONS
Theoretically, the geographical frontiers and the economic relations between Siberia and Mongolia have been settled by a series of treaties, of which the oldest dates back to 1689, when Russia in her eastward advance received her first check at the hands of China. For, strange as it may seem from the standpoint of modern international politics, it was the power of China which first called a halt upon the Russian advance in Asia. The process of subjugating the Tartars on the Southern Siberian steppes was swift and sure.[1] Less than half-a-century after Yermak had crossed the Urals, the Russians had swept across Northern Asia to the Pacific. In the Far East, however, the advance of the Russian arms was very different, and, on coming face to face with the outposts of the Chinese Empire on the Amur River, the Cossack suddenly met his match.
The early relations between these two great political powers in Asia I must here briefly describe. By the overthrow of the khanate of Sibir in the sixteenth century the Cossacks subdued the Turkish races of that country, and by the conquest of the Buriats round Lake Baikal in the seventeenth century overcame their Mongol kinsmen farther to the east. But as they advanced eastward yet a third race remained to be subdued. On both banks of the Amur River, and in the country now known as Manchuria, lived a race physically related to their Mongol
- ↑ See p. 177.
