One of the few photos of Agvan Dorjiev, a Russian Buryat Buddhist monk and Tibetan diplomat.
Introduction
The history of international relations has long been dominated by a standard narrative of the “Rise of the West.” In this view, the significant geopolitical events of the Modern age occurred in Europe, with Asia as the site of decline, colonization, and exploitation. This narrative, however, ignores the unique structures of sovereignty that operated in Inner Asia and shaped the foreign affairs of the nations in and around that space. If we recenter our view of international relations on the unique structures and dynamics of Asia, the history and policy of Eurasian states come into greater focus. With this in mind, the Qing Empire, for example, should not be viewed as just another Chinese dynasty, but as an Inner Asian empire that viewed itself as the successor to Mongol hegemony.
Russia is a liminal nation between Asia and Europe. Russian leaders were aware of this bipolar status and swung between attempts at Westernization and pivots towards Asian domination. As Russia expanded further into Inner Asia, the Russian Empire encountered different structures of sovereignty operating on a different plane than international relations in Europe.
A critical example of this is the attempt at Russian patronage of Tibet in the early twentieth century. In 1904, the Dalai Lama fled the British to Mongolia, where he resided until 1906. From Urga, the Tibetan court sought to establish relations with Tsar Nicolas II. In both the Russian and Tibetan courts, the primary architects of this vision were Buryats (and, in Russia’s case, orientalists who were intimately acquainted with the Buryats). Why did the Buryats and other officials in the Tsar and Dalai Lama’s court argue for the importance of Tibet to Russian policy? In this paper, I argue the centrality of Tibetan Buddhism to the post-Chinggisid structure of sovereignty in Inner Asia and that the attempt at Russian patronage of Tibet was an attempt to have Russia assume the imperial legacy of the Mongol empire. Furthermore, I claim that post-Chinggisid conflict in Inner Asia was a conflict over the inheritance of this imperial legacy and Tibetan Buddhism was the means by which geopolitical actors legitimized that claim. While Imperial Russia was unable to establish patronage with Tibet or truly assert itself as the Eurasian hegemon, the Dalai Lama’s sojourn in Mongolia is a snapshot of a Russian encounter with non-European structures of sovereignty.
This paper draws on the scholarship of many historians – Robert Rupen, Marlène Laruelle, James Millward, and Anya Bernstein – who have worked to develop a Eurasian historical framework. In addition, I build off of Ayşe Zarakol’s recent work on Eurasian international politics to analyze post-Chinggisid structures of sovereignty. The primary sources for this paper are letters and telegrams sent primarily between Russian officials during the Dalai Lama’s temporary refuge in Mongolia, as well as a policy proposal relating to Tibet from E.E. Ukhtomskii.
Ukhtomskii, Tibet, and Russian Orientalism
On December 13, 1903, Francis Edward Younghusband led an army of 2500 British soldiers across the border from British India into Tibet. Meeting only feeble resistance from the poorly trained and poorly armed Tibetan army, Younghusband and the British quickly advanced to Gyantse and seized the fortress-monastery (dzong).[1] The central Tibetan government at Lhasa soon realized their dire situation. The British sought to conquer Tibet lest it fall into the hands of the Russian Empire, and they had the means to do so. The feeble Tibetan army was no match for the modern British military. As the British marched into Lhasa, the Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia with his Inner circle. Younghusband, for his part, was embarrassed to find no evidence of Russian presence in Lhasa.[2]
However, Britain’s fears of a Russian Tibet were not entirely unfounded. One of the Dalai Lama’s closest advisors was a Russian Buryat named Agvan Dorjiev. The ultimate goal of the Dalai Lama’s government was to end their long suzerainty to China, which was becoming increasingly disadvantageous to Tibet. Dorjiev’s solution was to replace China with Russia. A Tibet suzerain to Russia, in Dorjiev’s view, would be far safer and more autonomous than a Tibet suzerain to China. Yet Dorjiev was not the only official to envision a greater Russian presence in Tibet. Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomskii, an orientalist and confidant of Tsar Nicholas II was an early advocate of Eurasianism, stemming from his interest in the Buddhist Mongol tribes of Inner Asia.[3] In 1890, he was selected to accompany the then-Tsarevich Nicolas II on his grand tour of the East. In his 1904 book “From the Realm of Lamaism”, Ukhtomskii urged stronger diplomatic connections with Tibet, just as Dorjiev was working towards. Russia had fallen behind, in Ukhtomskii’s view, in developing “a more intimate relationship with the kingdom of the Dalai Lama.”[4] Compared to Britain and other countries, Russia was in a uniquely advantageous position due to its Buddhist population in Inner Asia. “Russia,” Ukhtomskii writes, “has all the ready information that would enable it to be ahead of every country in relations [with Tibet] thanks to its Buriats [sic] and its Kalmyks…[Tibet] beckons us toward it in the remote hope … that one day we will see the Dalai Lama… incarnated, within the Russian sphere of influence.”[5] In his view, Trans-Baikalia, the homeland of the Buryats, was the “key to the heart of Asia,” rendering the Buryats indispensable for Russian grand strategy in Asia.[6] For Ukhtomskii, Russia’s imperial destiny was Asian. “Russia in reality,” he wrote, “conquers nothing in the East, since the alien races visibly absorbed by her are related to us by blood, in tradition, in thought. We are only tightening the bonds between us and that which in reality was always ours.”[7] The key to this destiny, Ukhtomskii believed, was Tibetan Buddhism. If only Russia could understand the importance of Tibet, Ukhtomskii argued, and thus “establish a relationship with Tibet through our [Buryat] lamas…there would be a Russian emperor in Peking instead of a Manchu one.”[8]
In part due to the influence of Ukhtomskii, another Buryat, Pyotr Badmaev also had the ear of the Tsar and Prime Minister Sergei Witte.[9] Badmaev, along with Ukhtomskii, helped propagate the myth of the “White Tsar” – that Tibetan Buddhists across Asia viewed the Russian Tsar as a messianic Bodhisattva-king and would willingly submit to his domination.[10] Badmaev made his plans clear in his 1900 book Russia and China. Despite China’s pre-eminent position in Asian geopolitics, Badmaev understood “Tibet rather than China to be the political crux of Asia.”[11] The task of Russian foreign policy in Inner Asia therefore, was to increase Russian control over Tibet, especially Gansu, which he viewed as the lynchpin of Inner Asia.[12]
The Dalai Lama in Mongolia
As the Dalai Lama arrived in Urga, Mongolia, an opportunity arose to establish stronger diplomatic relations between Tibet and the Russian Empire. Dorjiev, for his part, sought an audience with the Tsar to fully secure his vision for Russo-Tibetan relations. In October 1904, he telegrammed Vladimir Lamsdorf, Russia’s foreign minister to inform him of the Dalai Lama’s presence in Urga. Lamsdorf quickly requested an advisory report from P.M. Lessar, the Russian envoy stationed in Peking.[13] In his report, Lessar urged caution to avoid antagonizing China, which increasingly viewed the autonomy of the Dalai Lama as a threat to their sovereignty, and to avoid causing tension between the Tibetan and Mongolian lamas.[14] However, Lessar was acutely aware of the strategic potential of a Russia-aligned Tibet. “It is certain,” Lessar wrote to Lamsdorf, “that the Dalai Lama will be recognized as the spiritual leader of all Mongolians, the Buddhists of China, Tibet, and India, the formation of a common center of the powerful religion within our borders will be very desirable despite the huge expenditure needed.”[15]
The issue of what to do about the Dalai Lama and diplomatic relations with Tibet only became more urgent for Russia as the duration of the Dalai Lama’s sojourn in Mongolia increased. In St. Petersburg, a significant Tibet lobby, led by Badmaev and Ukhtomskii, had formed to advocate for Russian patronage of Tibet. Meanwhile, Dorjiev continued to push for a meeting with the Tsar. In May 1905, D.D. Pokotilov, the new Russian envoy in Peking, met the Dalai Lama in Urga and relayed his impressions to Lamsdorf. Pokotilov reported that the “main and almost exclusive aim of the arrival of the Dalai Lama to Urga was that he [sought] patronage of Russia.”[16] Others characterized Dorjiev’s political and religious goals as far grander. W.A. Unkrig, a Polish-born Russian Orthodox priest turned German anthropologist and expert on Mongolian Buddhism wrote in 1954 that
The religiously-based purpose of all the attempts of Agvan Dorjeev was the foundation of a Lamaist-oriented kingdom of the Tibetans and Mongols (and all other Lamaist peoples) as a theocracy under the Dalai Lama. Such a kingdom of the Tibetans and Mongols was to be under the protection of Tsarist Russia, which Dorjeev’s [sic] own Lamaist followers certainly favored.[17]
This interpretation, that Dorjiev’s goal was a Pan-Buddhist confederation under Russian sovereignty in Inner Asia is widely accepted.[18] However, it wasn’t just Dorjiev, but also Badmaev, other educated Buryats, and the Orientalist faction in the Tsar’s court. The small class of educated Buryats in the Russian Empire were particularly invested in this project. This faction actively “worked for a Greater Mongolian State, a re-creation of a Mongolian Empire.”[19]
In February 1906, Dorjiev was in St. Petersburg to be received by the Tsar. Dorjiev once again requested the patronage of the Tsar but received only “abstract promises.”[20] The mission was a failure. No true diplomatic progress was made between Russia and Tibet, and the Dalai Lama began a slow return to Lhasa. Despite a large Eurasianist faction in St. Petersburg, the Russian government had far more pressing concerns. The Russo-Japanese War had ended in a humiliating defeat for Russia, and diplomatic affairs in Europe were growing tense. Underlying all of this were massive domestic social, political, and economic crises that would, in time, spell the downfall of the Romanov monarchy.
For the Dalai Lama, Russia was the last best hope of Tibet. Without Russian patronage, Tibet was unprotected and unprepared for the 20th century. For centuries, their suzerain relationship with China had secured autonomy for Tibet. With a more aggressive China attempting to assert sovereignty – not suzerainty – over its Inner Asian holdings, the Dalai Lama saw the writing on the wall.
The Patron-Priest Relationship and Imperial Legitimacy in Inner Asia
Dorjiev, Badmaev, and other Buryats naturally understood the structure of sovereignty in Inner Asia in a way European Russians (who had not traveled extensively in Inner Asia, like Ukhtomskii) could not. If Russia were to become a truly Asian Empire, Tibet would be crucial to this mission.
Buryat scholar Bazar Baradiin, who (on the behest of the Russian government) spent time living in and studying Tibetan monasteries frequented by Buryat pilgrims, reported that “Tibetan monasteries functioned as multinational communities with various ethnic groups living together, thus evidencing the Inner Asian Buddhist cosmopolitanism [emphasis in original].”[21] The expansion of Tibetan Buddhism across Inner Asia created a transnational Buddhist space, centered on Tibet and the figure of the Dalai Lama. What Baradiin and Ukhtomskii observed during their travels to Inner Asia was that Tibetan Buddhism already functioned as a form of Eurasianism. Russia could realize its Eurasian destiny on the back of the pre-existing institution of Eurasianism: Tibetan Buddhism.
The reason for this can be traced back to an arrangement between Goden Khan and Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen, the then-leader of the Sakya order of Tibetan Buddhism, in 1246. Goden Khan, one of Chinggis Khan’s grandsons, invaded Tibet in 1240.[22] In 1246, Sakya Pandita was summoned to the court of Goden Khan. Sakya Pandita would serve as a personal spiritual mentor to the Khan, and in return, Tibet would accept Mongol rule. However, the Sakya clan would serve as administrators of Tibet on behalf of the Khan. For the first time, a religious order became the temporal political leaders of Tibet. This relationship became known as the patron-priest relationship.[23]
In 1258, Kublai Khan summoned the Sakya leader, Drogön Chögyal Phagpa to his court. Phagpa gave Kublai Khan secret tantric teachings and pledged fealty to him.[24] Once the religious initiation was granted, the bond was secured forever: the relationship between a student and a tantric guru was irrevocable. Phagpa served the Khan as the administrator of Tibet and much more, including creating the official script of the Mongol Empire. This arrangement allowed Tibet to maintain its autonomy, granted religious legitimacy to Mongol sovereignty over Tibetan Buddhist-practicing peoples, and led to the establishment of Tibetan theocracy.
This set a precedent for later relations between Tibet and the Mongols. In the 16th century, long after the dissolution of the Mongol Empire, Altan Khan of the Tumed Mongols wished to re-unite the Mongol tribes under his banner. But Altan Khan needed something to legitimize his claim of succession to the Mongol imperial legacy. That legitimacy was found in Tibet.[25] Altan Khan summoned the abbot of the prestigious Sera Monastery, Sonam Gyatso, to Mongolia. The meeting followed the pattern set by Kublai Khan and Phagpa: Altan Khan received tantric initiations (thus creating an inseparable religious bond) and bestowed upon Sonam the royal title of Dalai (Ocean of Wisdom).[26] Sonam also granted Altan Khan the title “‘Religious King, Brahma of the Gods,’ and prophesied that within 50 years Altan’s descendants would rule over all of China and the Mongols.”[27] Sonam Gyatso, now the Dalai Lama, belonged to the Geleg order of Tibetan Buddhism. Soon after his meeting with Altan Khan, the Mongol tribes converted to the Gelug school. So great was this newfound religious connection that the 4th Dalai Lama, Yonten Gyatso, was found in Mongolia.[28]
In 1637, the 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, met with Gushi Khan of the Khoshut Mongols and entered into a patron-priest relationship with him. In 1641, Gushi Khan’s armies conquered Tibet and installed the Dalai Lama as the political ruler of Tibet – a system of government that would continue until 1951.[29]
As the Qing Empire increased its sovereignty over Inner Asia in the 18th Century, the patron-priest relationship was re-established between the Qing Emperors and the Dalai Lamas. While most of China adhered to traditional folk religion, Pure Land Buddhism, or Daoism, Tantric Tibetan Buddhism became the religion of the Imperial Court. The claim was clear: the patron of the Gelug order was the rightful leader of all Tibetan Buddhists in Inner Asia and inherited the imperial legacy of the Mongol Empire. For this and many other reasons, it is better to view the Qing as a primarily Inner Asian empire, rather than a Chinese dynasty, which secured its legitimacy through Tibetan Buddhism, the religion of the Mongols.[30]
The Russian Lieutenant-Colonel who was sent to Mongolia to meet with the Dalai Lama in 1906, Khitrovo, wrote that “In the person of the Dalai Lama, the Mongolians see incarnate genius similar to that of the immortal Chinggis Khan and the famous Kublai Khan”[31] Khitrovo was right to observe the deferential status with which the Dalai Lama was treated by the Mongolians, but failed to understand the historical background of the Mongol-Tibet connection and its political connotations.
In 1771, the Torghud Mongols returned to the territory of the Qing Empire.[32] The Torghuds were nomads who had been driven out by the Russians and Kazakhs and had nowhere else to go but to submit to the Qing Empire. The Torghuds, like most Mongol tribes, were devout followers of Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhism. This event solidified Qing control over the Mongol tribes, and “burnished [the Emperors] image as a great patron of the [Gelug order].”[33] For the Qing, this event symbolized the fulfillment of Sonam Gyatso’s prophecy to Altan Khan. The re-imperialization of Inner Asia was complete, with the imperial legacy of the Mongols now in the hands of the Qing.[34] The Qianlong Emperor understood the submission of the Torghuds as “the concluding episode in a long-running historical dynamic” of Inner Asian nomadism, migration, and tribal conflict, and the “beginning of a new [dynamic] of vast ‘multiethnic’ empires,” dominating Inner Asian geopolitics, chief among these China and Russia.[35]
Therefore, we can characterize the post-imperial conflicts in Inner Asia as a struggle over the imperial legacy of the hegemony of the Mongol Empire – who had a legitimate claim to hegemonic sovereignty over Inner Asia? After the dissolution of the Mongol Empire, the post-Chinggisid states adopted claims of Eurasian hegemonic sovereignty. Although the Chinggisid Mongols initially justified their claim of universal sovereignty solely through conquest itself, the post-Chinggisid states adopted other ideologies of imperial legitimation.[36] In the Middle East, Islam allowed them to maintain their pretension to universal sovereignty, without the need for continuous conquest and expansion.[37] In Inner Asia, however, that was Tibetan Buddhism. As Tibet leveraged religion in order to maintain its autonomy, Tibetan Buddhism became the means by which would-be emperors legitimized their claims to Eurasian sovereignty.
It was for this reason that Dorjiev and Badmaev advocated for Russian patronage of Tibet and were viewed as working towards the establishment of a “Pan-Buddhist confederacy.” The Buryats were a Mongol tribe that practiced the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism (and thus acknowledged the religious primacy of the Dalai Lama) and were intimately aware of the post-Chinggisid conflicts in Inner Asia. What they (and Ukhomskii) believed was that the Russian Empire could be the state to assume the mantle of the Mongol imperial legacy and re-imperialize Inner Asia. After all, the submission of the Torghuds symbolized the end of tribal conflict in Inner Asia.[38] The battle, if it were to manifest, would be between the existing empires – Russia, China, and now, perhaps, Japan.
The Dalai Lama was sympathetic to Dorjiev’s pro-Russian plan because of the increasing unreliability of Qing China. China, like Russia, was confronting its own domestic and international troubles (known in Chinese historiography as the “Century of Humiliation”) and was thus incentivized to exert further sovereignty over Tibet. The Dalai Lama believed that Russia would be a better partner that would allow Tibet to maintain its autonomy and pre-eminent position in Inner Asian geopolitics.
Ultimately, none of these efforts came to fruition. Russia had its hands full with far more pressing issues, both domestically and in Europe and the Far East, to form a patron-priest relationship with Tibet. The advent of the twentieth century brought with it the advent of modern Western-style nationalism, fundamentally restructuring how China conceived of itself and its relation to Inner Asia. Tibet was left alone. In 1913, the Dalai Lama issued a declaration of independence.[39] But it was not to last; Tibet would be conquered and integrated into the People’s Republic of China in 1951.
Conclusion
In the field of Inner Asian post-Chinggisid geopolitics, conflict was between competing claims of hegemonic sovereignty inherited from the Mongol empire. As one of the Tibetan Buddhist Mongol tribes in Inner Asia, the Buryats (and those intimately familiar with them like Ukhomskii) understood the structure of sovereignty in Inner Asia and the centrality of Tibet, because they, unlike European Russians, were geopolitical actors in that space. Dorjiev, Badmaev, and other Buryats viewed themselves as inhabiting a transnational Pan-Mongolian and Pan-Buddhist space, “firmly linked…to the Tibetan religious universe.”[40] Tibetan Buddhism was far more than a common religion in Inner Asia: Tibetan Buddhist monasteries functioned as early institutions of transnational Eurasianism, and Tibetan Buddhism was a vital legitimating factor in the struggle to re-imperialize Inner Asia.
Dorjiev, Badmaev, and Ukhomskii understood that if Russia was to be an actor in this geopolitical struggle, it must recognize the importance of Tibet. This view diverges from most Russian Eurasianists such as George Vernadsky who viewed Russia as “the geopolitical heir of the Chinggisid Empire” and thus believed in a world-historical right for Russian domination of Inner Asia.[41] In contrast, Ukhomskii, Dorjiev, and Badmaev understood that the Tatar Yoke did not solely or automatically grant Russia the imperial legacy of Mongol hegemony. Rather, Russia would have to enter a new geopolitical space, with structures of sovereignty unfamiliar to the European court in St. Petersburg.
Despite fervent efforts and grand visions, the historical context of the time – marked by the Russo-Japanese War, diplomatic challenges in Europe, and internal crises – precluded any attempt at Russian patronage of Tibet. Yet this event encapsulates a crucial moment of encounter between Russia and the unique structures of Inner Asian power dynamics.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Rossiya i Tibet: Sbornik Russkikh Arkhivnykh Dokumentov 1900-1914. Moscow, RU: Vostochnaya Literatura, 2005.
Ukhtomskii, Esper Esperovich. Iz Oblasti Lamaizma: K Pokhodu Anglichan Na Tibet. St. Petersburg, RU: Vostok, 1904.
Unkrig, W.A. Letter to Dr. Rudolph Lowenthal, December 17, 1954.
Secondary Sources
Bernstein, Anya. “Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents: Buryat Buddhologists and the History of an Eurasian Imaginary.” Inner Asia 11, no. 1 (2009): 23–45.
Halperin, Charles J. “George Vernadsky, Eurasianism, the Mongols, and Russia.” Slavic Review 41, no. 3 (1982): 477–93.
Kuleshov, Nikolai S. Russia’s Tibet File: The Unknown Pages in the History of Tibet’s Independence. Dharamsala, IN: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1996.
Laruelle, Marlene. “‘The White Tsar’: Romantic Imperialism in Russia’s Legitimizing of Conquering the Far East.” Acta Slavica Iaponica 25 (2008): 133–34.
Millward, James A. “The Qing Formation, the Mongol Legacy, and the ‘End of History’ in Early Modern Central Eurasia.” Essay. In The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time, edited by Lynn A. Struve, 92–120. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Asia Center, 2004.
Oye, David Schimmelpenninck van der. Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2006.
Rupen, Robert A. Mongols of the Twentieth Century. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964.
Rupen, Robert A. “The Buriat Intelligentsia.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1956): 383–98.
Schaik, Sam Van. Tibet: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
Shaumian, Tatiana. Tibet: The Great Game and Tsarist Russia. New Delhi, IN: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Wylie, Turrell V. “The First Mongol Conquest of Tibet Reinterpreted.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37, no. 1 (1977): 103–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/2718667.
Zarakol, Ayşe. Before The West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
[1] Sam Van Schaik, Tibet: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 177.
[2] Schaik, Tibet: A History, 178.
[3] Marlene Laruelle, “‘The White Tsar’: Romantic Imperialism in Russia’s Legitimizing of Conquering the Far East,” Acta Slavica Iaponica 25 (2008): 133–34, 123.
[4] Esper Esperovich Ukhtomskii, Iz Oblasti Lamaizma: K Pokhodu Anglichan Na Tibet (St. Petersburg, RU: Vostok, 1904), 128, in Laruelle, “The White Tsar”, 130.
[5] Ukhtomskii, Iz Oblasti Lamaizma, 128, in Laurelle, 130-1.
[6] Anya Bernstein, “Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents: Buryat Buddhologists and the History of an Eurasian Imaginary,” Inner Asia 11, no. 1 (2009): 23–45, 29.
[7] Ukhtomskii, Travels in the East of His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas II of Russia when Cesarewitch (1900) quoted in David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2006), 44.
[8] Ukhtomskii, Iz Oblasti Lamaizma, 3-4, as quoted in Bernstein, Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents, 31.
[9] Laruelle, “The White Tsar”, 120.
[10] Rupen, Robert A. “The Buriat Intelligentsia.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1956): 383–98, 391, and Laurelle, “The White Tsar”, 1-2.
[11] Laruelle, “The White Tsar”, 121.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Tatiana Shaumian, Tibet: The Great Game and Tsarist Russia (New Delhi, IN: Oxford University Press, 2001), 88.
[14] Secret Telegram from P.M. Lessar to V. Lamsdorf (October 24, 1904) in Rossiya i Tibet: Sbornik Russkikh Arkhivnykh Dokumentov 1900-1914 (Moscow, RU: Vostochnaya Literatura, 2005), 59.
[15] Ibid., Rossiya i Tibet: Sbornik Russkikh Arkhivnykh Dokumentov 1900-1914 (Moscow, RU: Vostochnaya Literatura, 2005), 60, as cited in Shaumian, Tibet, 89.
[16] Secret Telegram from D.D. Pokotilov to V. Lamsdorf, AVPRI, Fund Chinese Desk, file 1455, list 3, as cited in Shaumian, Tibet, 98.
[17] Letter from W.A. Unkrig to Dr. Rudolph Loewenthal (Dec. 17, 1954) in Robert A. Rupen, Mongols of the Twentieth Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964), 106.
[18] Bernstein, Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents, 36; Laruelle, The White Tsar, 118; and Rupen, The Buriat Intelligensia, 390-391.
[19] Rupen, The Buriat Intelligensia, 384.
[20] Shaumian, Tibet, 117.
[21] Bernstein, 33.
[22] Schaik, 76.
[23] Turrell V. Wylie, “The First Mongol Conquest of Tibet Reinterpreted,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37, no. 1 (1977): 103–33, 119.
[24] Schaik, 79-80.
[25] Ibid., 115.
[26] The title was also posthumously bestowed upon Sonam’s two predecessors, making him the 3rd Dalai Lama but the first to hold the title.
[27] James A. Millward, “The Qing Formation, the Mongol Legacy, and the ‘End of History’ in Early Modern Central Eurasia,” essay, in The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time, ed. Lynn A. Struve (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Asia Center, 2004), 92–120, 106.
[28] Schaik, 117.
[29] A massive political and religious crackdown on other schools of Tibetan Buddhism ensued. Furthermore, the Dalai Lama was not the religious leader of the Gelug order. That title belonged to the abbot of Ganden Monastery, the Ganden Tripa. The Dalai Lama had previously been just one of many high-ranking Gelug lamas, and his expeditious rise to power created resentment among the Gelug monastic establishment. Eventually, this conflict would come to dominate domestic politics in Tibet from 1913 to 1951.
[30] Millward, The Qing Formation, 100.
[31] Nikolai S. Kuleshov, Russia’s Tibet File: The Unknown Pages in the History of Tibet’s Independence (Dharamsala, IN: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1996), 87.
[32] Millward, The Qing Formation, 96.
[33] Millward, 98.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid., 115-116.
[36] Ayşe Zarakol, Before The West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 21-22.
[37] Zarakol, Before The West, 20.
[38] Milward, 115.
[39] Schaik, 190.
[40] Bernstein, 25.
[41] Charles J. Halperin, “George Vernadsky, Eurasianism, the Mongols, and Russia,” Slavic Review 41, no. 3 (1982): 477–93, 487.
