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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
As Britain saw it, trade was not the prime motivating force for Russian expansion in east Asia or, put another way, the Russian frontiersmen were not driven by the actual amount of their trade there or its future potentialities. While Russia was primarily concerned with the tea trade over land frontiers, Britain was concerned with the seaborne commerce of China. The customs revenue paid to China in the year 1894 worked out as follows:
Judging from the returns of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Organization, British ships carried 83.5% of China's total trade. But Britain's commercial dominance affected her political stance because she wanted to preserve China's stability for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. This was at the root of the political tensions between Britain and Russia which emerged in China after 1860 and especially those which derived from the spate of railway building which took place from 1890 onwards. It would be foolish to deny that intense rivalry did exist in the area from time to time or that detailed observations of the actions of the one were regularly conducted by the other—what we should now call ‘intelligence operations’. But what I shall suggest in this paper is that, despite all the admitted antagonism and suspicion between Britain and Russia in east Asia, Britain regularly made efforts to reach accommodations with Russia in north-east Asia.
This and the previous three papers were given at the Conference of Anglo-Soviet Historians, 1984, held at the Institute of Historical Research, London.
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