Chahars

The Oirat and the Khalkha disintegrate once more into insignificant and quarrelsome tribal groupings after the death of Dayan in 1543.

The Torgut subclan of the Oirat is now perhaps the most vital of the Mongol peoples.

The Torgut raid frequently across the Urals into the Volga Valley, which has been conquered by the new Muscovite empire.

Farther east the Khalkha roam the region north and south of the Gobi; the Ordos Mongols and the Chahar Mongols become loosely grouped in a confederation holding most of Southern Mongolia.

The boundaries of territories ruled by the Uzbeks remain relatively stable.

The Mongols, throughout this period of discord among them, nonetheless share a continuing hostility to the Ming.

The struggle is maintained principally by the Khalkha.

Although the title has become almost meaningless, the line of the khans has continued in the Chahar tribe, the leader of which becomes the rallying point for the conflict against China.

The first distinction between northern and southern Mongolia had been made during the 1750s, as a result of Manchu administrative policies.

The southern provinces—Suiyuan, Chahar (or Qahar), and Jehol (or Rehol), known as Inner Mongolia—have been virtually absorbed into China.

The remainder of the region—the northern provinces, which have become known as Outer Mongolia—is considered an "outside subordinate" by the Manchus, and it is largely ignored.

After another one hundred years, however, China again becomes alarmed by Russia's expansionist policy and colonial development in the regions north and west of Outer Mongolia.

Increased Chinese activity in Outer Mongolia results in some economic and social improvements, but it also reveals to the Mongolians the possibilities of playing off the two great empires against each other.

Chinese merchants and moneylenders have become ubiquitous, and the extent of Mongol debt has become enormous by the early nineteenth century.

The debt situation, combined with growing resentment over Chinese encroachment, gives impetus to Mongol nationalism by the beginning of the twentieth century.

During the period of Chinese dominance, Mongolia not only experiences a century of peace, but it becomes an increasingly theocratic society.

Buddhism relatively early had absorbed shamanism, and the result is a unique local religion.

By the mid-nineteenth century, however, turmoil in China, caused by internal rebellion and by pressures from the West, had resulted in a breakdown of the increasingly expensive administrative apparatus in Outer Mongolia.

Mounting debts and higher taxes, which lead to a growing impoverishment of Outer Mongolia, has gradually rekindled traditional Mongol dissatisfaction with the Manchu overlord.

Rioting, Mongol troop mutinies, and other anti-Chinese incidents occur with increasing regularity in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

Outside help is sought from Russia in 1900, when a mission—which fails—is sent to St. Petersburg.

Hereafter, reform-minded Chinese leaders abolish many old social and political proscriptions, and, despite Mongol resentment of the idea and of continued Chinese repression, preparations are being made for constitutional government when revolution breaks out in China.