Early 20th century The
Qing dynasty (1644–1912)
controlled modern-day Mongolia,
Tuva, Western Mongolia, and
Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia, which had joined the Qing in 1636 as allies rather than conquered subjects,
Outer Mongolia was given more autonomy,
nomadic rights, and its own Buddhist center. Having colonized
Buryatia in the 17th century, and the
Amur Basin in 1862, the
Imperial Russian government pursued policies in support of a "long-range expansionist policy intended to one day strip control of Mongolia away from China". China's early republican leaders used slogans like
Five Races Under One Union, democracy, and
meritocracy to try to persuade all of the Mongols to join the new republic. However, they were never really able to hide their condescension towards the frontier peoples. In the summer of 1911, Mongolia's princes had already decided to declare independence and turn towards Russia for support. They gathered with Russian representatives in
Ulan Bator and persuaded Russia to defend Mongol autonomy within China. The Russians understood this autonomy to apply only in Outer Mongolia, but the princes interpreted it as sanctifying a Greater Mongolia of Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Eastern Mongolia, and
Tannu Uriankhai (Tuva). The Inner Mongolian prince
Gungsangnorbu corresponded with the
autonomous government in Ulaanbaatar about the possibility of a Greater Mongolia. They found that they had sharp disagreements about such a state, owing to the Inner Mongols' agricultural lifestyle and orientation towards China, contrasted with the Outer Mongols' nomadic lifestyle and orientation towards Russia. Mongols have at times advocated for the historical Oirat Dzungar Mongol area of Dzungaria in northern Xinjiang, to be annexed to the Mongolian state in the name of Pan-Mongolism. Legends grew among the remaining Oirats that Amursana had not died after he fled to Russia, but was alive and would return to his people to liberate them from Manchu Qing rule and restore the Oirat nation. Prophecies had been circulating about the return of Amursana and the revival of the Oirats in the Altai region. The Oirat Kalmyk
Ja Lama claimed to be a grandson of Amursana and then claimed to be a reincarnation of Amursana himself, preaching anti-Manchu propaganda in western Mongolia in the 1890s and calling for the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Ja Lama was arrested and deported several times. However, he returned to the Oirat Torghuts in
Altay (in Dzungaria) in 1910 and in 1912 he helped the Outer Mongolians mount an attack on the last Qing garrison at
Kovd, where the Manchu Amban was refusing to leave and fighting the newly declared independent Mongolian state. The Manchu Qing force was defeated and slaughtered by the Mongols after Khovd fell. Ja Lama told the Oirat remnants in Xinjiang: "I am a mendicant monk from the Russian Tsar's kingdom, but I am born of the great Mongols. My herds are on the Volga river, my water source is the Irtysh. There are many hero warriors with me. I have many riches. Now I have come to meet with you beggars, you remnants of the Oirats, in the time when the war for power begins. Will you support the enemy? My homeland is Altai, Irtysh, Khobuk-sari, Emil, Bortala, Ili, and Alatai. This is the Oirat mother country. By descent, I am the great-grandson of Amursana, the reincarnation of Mahakala, owning the horse Maralbashi. I am he whom they call the hero Dambijantsan. I came to move my pastures back to my own land, to collect my subject households and bondservants, to give favour, and to move freely." Ja Lama built an Oirat fiefdom centered around Kovd, he and fellow Oirats from Altai wanted to emulate the
original Oirat empire and build another grand united Oirat nation from the nomads of western China and Mongolia, but was arrested by Russian Cossacks and deported in 1914 on the request of the Mongolian government after the local Mongols complained of his excesses, and out of fear that he would create an Oirat separatist state and divide them from the Khalkha Mongols. Ja Lama returned in 1918 to Mongolia and resumed his activities and supported himself by extorting passing caravans, but was assassinated in 1922 on the orders of the new Communist Mongolian authorities under
Damdin Sükhbaatar. The part Buryat Mongol
Transbaikalian Cossack Ataman
Grigory Semyonov declared a "Great Mongol State" in 1918 and had designs to unify the Oirat Mongol lands, portions of Xinjiang, Transbaikal, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Tannu Uriankhai, Khovd, Hu-lun-pei-erh and Tibet into one Mongolian state. From 1919 to 1921, a Chinese army led by
Xu Shuzheng occupied Outer Mongolia. This period ended when White Russian General Baron
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg protected independence of Mongolia, who deported the Chinese occupation army from Outer Mongolia The Han percentage of the industrial labor force dropped from 63 percent to 10 percent in 1932.
World War II The
Soviet-led
Outer Mongolian Revolution of 1921 fixed independent Mongolia's present borders to include only Outer Mongolia, Out of concern that China would be provoked, this proposed addition of the Oirat Dzungaria to the new Outer Mongolian state was rejected by the Soviets. The unsatisfied leaders of Outer Mongolia would often encouraged and support
vigilantes who attempted to
ethnically cleanse the
Han Chinese from Inner and Eastern Mongolia; In 1943, the British
Foreign and Commonwealth Office predicted that the
Soviet Union would promote the idea of a Greater Mongolia to detach China's Inner Mongolia and East Mongolia from Chinese influence. A year later, the then-Soviet satellite
Tuvan People's Republic was annexed by into the
Russian SFSR. During the
Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, Outer Mongolian troops occupied both Inner and Eastern Mongolia, and Japanese collaboratist leaders like
De Wang were kidnapped to Outer Mongolia to be inculcated with pan-Mongolist ideals. Perceiving an imminent threat to China's territorial integrity,
Chiang Kai-shek signed an agreement with the Soviets during the Mongolian occupation which gave Chinese recognition of Outer Mongolian independence. In return for the fulfillment of this longtime Soviet foreign policy goal, the agreement stated that Mongolian independence would only be effective "within [Outer Mongolia's] existing frontiers". The Outer Mongolian troops subsequently withdrew from China. In 1947, Chiang renewed his claim on Outer Mongolia in response to alleged Mongolian incursions into Chinese
Xinjiang during the
Pei-ta-shan Incident. China and the Soviet Union applied different ethnic policies to their Mongol minorities. While the Soviet Union encouraged local identities – Buryat instead of Buryat-Mongol, and
Kalmyk instead of Kalmyk-Mongol, China encouraged its Mongols to deemphasize their tribal and local identities and to identify simply as "Mongol". The Mongolian communist government promoted the idea that all Mongols should be assimilated to the Khalkha subgroup, rejecting the idea of an inclusive Greater Mongolia state as disloyal to Mongolia. The
Sino-Soviet split from 1960 led Mongolia to align with the power they perceived as less threatening, i.e. the USSR, and to publish provocative pan-Mongol pieces in the Mongolian state press. During the 1980s, China-Mongolia relations improved with the exchange of
Mongolian wrestling teams and
Mikhail Gorbachev's pledge to withdraw Soviet troops from Mongolia. A surge in pan-Mongol sentiment resulted in a series of "Unite the Three Mongolias" conferences in
Ulan Bator, as well as government-funded organizations for "international Mongol cultural development". In 1992, Mongolia's foreign ministry published an extensive list of territory it claimed to have "lost" to various areas in China and Russia in border demarcations in 1915, 1932, 1940, 1957, 1962, and 1975. At the same time, three main criticisms of pan-Mongolism emerged in Mongolia. The first emphasized Mongolian nationalism, which argued that Mongolia needed to integrate its existing non-Mongol minorities, such as its
Kazakhs, rather than to expand outside of its borders. The second expressed a belief in the superiority of the
Khalkha Mongols as the most racially pure Mongols ("Khalkha-centrism"), looking down on the Buryat and Inner Mongols as Russian and Chinese "half-breeds", respectively. Khalkha centric nationalists discriminate against Oirat and Buryats from Russia and Inner Mongols from China, viewing them as agents of Russia and China respectively. In 1994, China and Mongolia signed a treaty wherein both promised to respect each other's
territorial integrity. Various small organizations in Mongolia advocate a Greater Mongolia. ==References==