A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

The Buddhist Mongols 171
Chinese protection.The emperor Kang-hsi (r.1661–1722) set out to
counter Galdan’s advance, and in 1690 the two armies clashed between
Urga and Kalgan, some 300 kilometers north of Beijing.The Chinese
won, partly thanks to the cannon made for them by Jesuit missionaries.
Galdan withdrew from Mongolia and the Khalkha princes returned to
their dominions.The next year, 1691, at Dolon Nor – a town some 250
kilometers north of Beijing in the southeastern corner of Inner
Mongolia – the Manchu emperor received their homage as his vassals.
This act officially established Manchu suzerainty over the eastern
Mongols living in Mongolia proper.
The tribes living in what would evolve into Inner Mongolia had been
annexed since the rise of the Manchus as early as 1644.For Inner
Mongolia, incorporation in the Chinese empire proved a permanent
arrangement, on both the political and demographic levels: politically, it
outlasted the Manchu Dynasty beyond its demise in 1911 and exists
today as the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of the People’s
Republic of China; demographically, the Mongol population has been
swamped by Chinese settlers.In Outer Mongolia too, Chinese suzerainty
lasted until the twentieth century – until 1911 or later dates
depending on interpretation, the latest terminus being 1945 – but without
the demographic transformation that befell Inner Mongolia.
Galdan Khan, after a second and equally unsuccessful attempt against
China in 1696, withdrew his forces and died a year later.This time the
Manchu emperor pursued the Oirats all the way to Hami, which he
occupied as a foretaste of the offensive that half a century later would
lead to the fall of the Jungar empire and the establishment of Sinkiang
as a Chinese possession.Galdan was succeeded by his nephew Tsevang
Rabdan (1697–1727); like his predecessor, the new khan clashed several
times with Kang-hsi, but there was a significant difference: it was the
Manchu emperor who took the offensive and attacked the Mongol.The
first important conflict that had long-lasting effects was their fight over
the control of Tibet, where internal convulsions led to the installment of
a Chinese-supported Dalai Lama in 1710.This provoked Oirat intervention.The
troops sent by Tsevang Rabdan occupied Lhassa in 1717
and achieved an initial success against a Chinese army, but were then
defeated by a second Manchu expeditionary force, which in 1720
enthroned a new Dalai Lama and set up Tibet as China’s protectorate
with two imperial residents to supervise the Buddhist theocrat’s rule.
This event came close to being paralleled in Sinkiang itself, where
another confrontation between the Oirats and the Manchus was taking