ABSTRACT
In 1800 China and France were the most imposing states in Eurasia. The Russian government’s main concern was to preserve a valuable trading link and a major source of customs revenue. British power and prestige seemed to have reached their peak at the end of the Seven Years War. The Russians had a profitable Asian empire of impressive dimensions, but their power and influence in relation to the Chinese still seemed slender to them as well as to the Chinese. By coincidence, the Russians and the British took comparably decisive steps to develop their Asian empires within the space of the same few years, 1798-1806. Russian power in western Asia had been significantly enhanced. The transformation of the political map of Eurasia during the first two decades of the nineteenth century had left Russia and Great Britain looking the strongest and most secure of the world’s states.
