ABSTRACT
The fact that clashes of interest between the great powers in the Far East, a region so remote from Europe, could reach crisis proportions seems to reflect the global nature of imperial rivalries in this period. The crises were, however, largely an Anglo-Russian duel, with Japan playing the part of an increasingly concerned spectator, then participant. For the western powers, China hardly constituted an area of vital strategic importance. For them, the Far East was ‘the end of the line’, even if China persisted in regarding itself as the ‘Middle Kingdom’. Still, China was coterminous with French Indo-China as well as British Burma, which bordered on India. Furthermore, both the British and the Russians regarded rivalry in China as an extension of the ‘Great Game’, a form of cold war bluff and intrigue, that was played from the Balkans to the Khyber Pass and beyond.
