ABSTRACT
Pushed back from the frontiers of Tartary at the end of the seventeenth century, Russia resumed interest in them and beyond throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There was considerable excitement about the potential of the Amur Valley, even thoughts of a counterpart to California, as Russia firmly established its presence in a series of treaties with China.
Conflict between Great Britain and Russia in Central Asia led to the Great Game of Empire. Russophobia reached a new height in the Crimean War by the Black Sea which had distant repercussions near the shores of the Far East. Generally speaking, however, although Great Britain and Russia were both becoming more interested in the Far East as the global competition for empire intensified, there was no serious clash before the coming of the railway in what was now widely known as Manchuria.
