Abstract: This dissertation examines the presence of three British consular officers (Louis Magrath King, Oliver Robert Coales & Eric Teichman) in the border regions of western China and eastern Tibet during the politically volatile and precarious decade following the 1911 Chinese Republican revolution. Situating their activities in the broader context of the so-called ‘Great Game’ era, this study looks in particular at the relationship between the political and military intelligence gathering and scientific exploration activities which were pursued by these three officials. The dissertation argues that ‘knowledge gathering’ was central to the process of empire and that peripheral borderland regions were of key importance to the metropole centre of the British imperialist project. The subsequent dissemination of such intelligence obtained in borderland regions blurred the lines between the scientific and political, the private and public, and thereby served manifold ends in which individual players were key elements in creating and directing imperial agency.

Keywords: Imperialism, frontiers, borderlands, knowledge gathering, science, empire, diplomacy, intelligence, China, Tibet, India, Britain, Russia, The Great Game