Questions concerning the nature and structure of the kingship among the nomadic peoples on the Central Eurasian steppes have remained largely unanswered because of the scarcity of their own written records, with an exception of genealogy, and the inevitable bias against them inherent in the historical materials produced by the sedentary civilizations which greatly suffered from their depredations. Modern scholarship in China and Russia in particular, for obvious political reasons, presents a highly distorted historical picture of the nomads, who had very much to do in the evolutionary process of their nations.
Presented here is a case study of the kingship among the Torguts, who are more commonly known as the Volga Kalmyks. Always a member in the Four Oyirad tribal federation, the tribe was highly active all over Central Asia and Eastern Europe for almost two centuries, 1606-1771. Their activity deeply affected international politics played among the Jöchid khanates in the area, the Russians, the Osmans, the Lithuanians-Poles and the Swedes. All the while, however, they maintained close-knit marital alliances with other Oyirad brethren such as the Dzungars and the Khoshuts to their east. Their religious ties with Lhasa, the center of Tibetan Buddhism, were especially strong, so much so that their first khan Ayuuki received his title from the Dalai Lama regime directly after the crushing defeat at Juun Modu in 1696 of Galdan, a Dzungar chief who was khan of the Four Oyirad.
Ubashi Khan, a great-grandson of Ayuuki, left the Volga steppe and returned to the old pastures on the Ili with his Torgut tribesmen in 1771. His decision to seek protection under Emperor Ch'ien-lung rather than Catherine the Great effectively established the legitimacy of the Manchu emperorship inherited ultimately from the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan. At least it was the way the Manchu emperor felt at that time.