Tibet is now firmly embedded in the empire of the People's Republic of China. It has been dragged, willy-nilly, sometimes objecting, opposing and resisting from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. The extent to which coercion was applied by the Chinese in imposing their rule is not easily discovered; estimates vary with the political views of the author. Some of those who most unequivocally praised the Chinese reforms now look rather foolish with the recent admissions of error in its Tibetan policies now being made by Peking. The Chinese in the first years of their takeover, and again since Mao died, have on the whole acted with patience and good sense, though in the years of the Great Cultural Revolution coercion was undoubtedly used. The Chinese have begun to create a better material life, a less harsh standard of living for the Tibetans and also to give relief from superstition and a stultifying and often cruel religion with its huge and parasitical priesthood. As Sir Charles Bell, one of Tibet's warmest friends, pointed out in the 1920s, three-quarters of the total revenues of Tibet were spent on the upkeep of the monasteries and the nobility.
Tibet first became involved with the Western world in the clash between Britain and Russian imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. Russia's imperial expansion had looked eastward, moving with inexorable momentum into the thinly populated areas of Siberia and Central Asia. In 1914 Nansen, the explorer and internationalist statesman, calculated that the Russian Empire had been growing at the rate of fifty-five square miles per day for 400 years. This came at a time when Britain was extending and consolidating her Empire in India and was seeking to protect or enlarge its frontiers. As Peter Fleming in his book,Bayonets to Lhasa , wrote:
There was a marked air of insatiability about Russia's Asiatic policy... Few Englishmen seriously entertained the hope that her eastward progress would be halted by prudence, by exhaustion or by any other cause... At the close of Queen Victoria's reign a clash, sooner or later, between the two Empires seemed highly probable to all, unavoidable to some.
These forward expansive moves were supported by numerous small expeditions to gather information and learn about the unknown lands of Central Asia, to seek ways through unclimbed mountain ranges, to follow old trade routes or unknown rivers, to map wild territories and to enlist the support of unreliable or petty chieftains. Explorers, traders, spies and formal expeditions to local potentates all contributed to these enquiries. Not the least romantic were the native 'pundits' recruited from British India's borders who were trained to cross the frontiers with compasses in their prayer wheels and rosaries of 100 instead of 108 beads to pace out distances, measuring heights by the boiling point of water, and this enabled great areas of unknown country to be accurately surveyed.
This battle of intelligence and counter- intelligence became known as the Great Game, the name given to it by Captain Arthur Conolly who was to be one of its victims, having been publicly beheaded in Bokhara with Colonel Stoddart in 1842. The Great Game was first played in Persia, Afghanistan and the border Khanates of Bokhara, Khiva, Merv, Herat and Khokand. It never led to fighting between Russia and Britain though it often came near, but it did lead to one disastrous and one unsatisfactory campaign by Britain in Afghanistan. The present incursion of the Russians in Afghanistan is a close modern parallel to that past history.' By the 1890s Russian penetration into the Pamirs, the great mountain range north-east of Afghanistan, and into Kashgar, the most western province of the Chinese Empire, moved the area of potential conflict into Tibet. China, which nominally held the suzerainty over Tibet and Kashgar, was weak after 100 years of civil war, foreign exploitation and the disastrouswar of 1894/95 with Japan and was incapable of resisting foreign encroachment.
Until this time, when Tibet became a prize and a pawn in the game of great power diplomacy, it had been an unknown land to European eyes; only a few had penetrated the intimidating mountains and deserts that surrounded it, and, had it not been neighbour to India, one of Britain's strangest campaigns, the Younghusband expedition of 1904, would not have taken place. In all history only one Englishman, the eccentric Thomas Manning, had ever reached Lhasa before this date, and that in 1811.
Tibet had become a unified and powerful state in the seventh century AD and was involved from time to time in wars with China, though in these early days an act of union of the two kingdoms was brought about and was recorded on a pillar in front of the great Potala Palace in Lhasa. Then after a period of decay Tibet became a protege of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan who became Emperor of China in 1279. It was then that Tibet first came under strong priestly influence. The chief priests, whose succession was conveniently secured in a celibate hierarchy by the doctrine of reincarnation, which meant that they were chosen for life in accordance with traditions and ceremonies as reincarnations of their predecessors, were sup- ported by the Mongol rulers, and the third reincarnation at the head of the Tibetan church was named Dalai Lama or Ocean of Wisdom by Altan Khan in 1578. The Dalai Lamas were held to be the reincarnation of Chenrezi, the patron saint of' Tibet. The fifth reincarnation, 'the Great Fifth', Lobsang Gyatso, again with Mongol help, was made the ruler of Tibet in 1642 as well as chief priest. When he visited the Emperor of China he was received as an equal. After the Great Fifth's death in 1680 Tibetan power declined and the Chinese gained the ascendancy. China became the nominal overlord or suzerain of Tibet in 1720 and of the small semi-independent Kingdoms of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, but was unable, because of the immense physical barriers which block off China, to assert her control to any real extent. As a result Tibet continued to be governed in the nineteenth century by the priestly caste headed by the Dalai Lama, and Chinese influence was limited to the presence of a Resident, the Amban, in Lhasa who was supposed to be informed of important matters. Foreigners were rigorously excluded from the country and no other nation except Nepal had a representative there. But as British India expanded northwards the little Himalayan Kingdoms came more and more under British protection and less and less under Chinese.
Curzon, who was Viceroy of India at the turn of the century, was wedded to a Forward Policy and, fearing Russian penetration, wished for closer ties with Tibet and the right to station a British representative in Lhasa. The pretext for forward action came in 1900 when, after repeated failures to get the nominally responsible Chinese to stop border violations by the Tibetans on the Sikkim Frontier, Curzon wrote to the Dalai Lama to invite a settlement of the problem. This was the first example of the unsuccessful attempts by the British to mediate in Tibet. There was no real comprehension by the British that a solution could not be imposed but had to be accepted by both the Chinese and the Tibetans.
The border between Sikkim and Tibet on the Himalayan watershed, at nearly 17,000 feet, was a hostile region, but the rules for trade had been settled by Britain and China in conventions signed in 1890 and 1893. Britain, not for the first time, acknowledged China's suzerainty over Tibet, and China recognised Sikkim as a British Protectorate; the frontier was agreed, trade and grazing rights laid down. The Tibetans, who had not been consulted, paid no attention whatever to these agreements, even if they knew of their existence, ignored the frontier and grazed their yaks at will on the British side. And likewise, the Dalai Lama took no notice of Curzon's letter – indeed it had probably never reached him – and declined to receive a second letter in 1901.
At this point the British began to be suspicious of Russian intentions when news was received that a Buriat Mongol called Dorjieff, a former religious tutor of the Dalai Lama, had been received by the Czar; in June, 1901 he was back in Russia again, with some Tibetan students, and was again received by the monarch. Then in August, 1902 there were strong rumours in Peking of a secret agreement between Russia and China over Tibet which the Russians categorically denied.
British apprehensions about Dorjieff turned out to be largely unfounded, and indeed Russian designs on Tibet were at that time minimal, though Dorjieff was undoubtedly a pro-Russian adviser to the Dalai Lama who probably leaned towards Russia himself.
By the end of 1902 Curzon, exasperated by the humiliating frontier deadlock and fearing Russian designs on Tibet, felt that a mission to Lhasa, with a military escort, was needed. The Chinese government had however by then decided to be helpful, had appointed a new Amban to Lhasa and said that they were willing to negotiate, so Curzon accepted the idea of a meeting at Khampa Dzong, just inside Tibet, with the plan to advance further into Tibet if no agreement was reached. Colonel Francis Younghusband, a keen supporter of Curzon's Forward Policy, who already had had experience of Russian probing in the Pamirs and Kashgar, was appointed head of the mission.
With a small military escort the British expedition entered Tibet from Sikkim on July 4th, 1903. Some slight opposition was offered at the border but the party moved on to Khampa Dzong. After five wasted months there, in which the Tibetans refused to negotiate while the expedition was on Tibetan soil, the decision to advance further into Tibet was taken and a new expedition led by Younghusband left Sikkim for the Chumbi Valley, a finger of Ti.bet protruding between Sikkim and Bhutan. They crossed into Tibet by the Jelep Pass on December 12th, 1903, went down into the Chumbi Ualley, then up again over the Tang Pass at 15,000 feet and out on to the wide Tibetan plateau with the atrocious prospect of spending the winter there. The mission of seven men had started out with an escort of 1,150 soldiers, with four guns and two machine guns, serviced by a swarm of pack animals, porters and coolies commanded by Brigadier-General Macdonald. The expedition did not reach Lhasa for nearly eight months.
The party left on the plateau endured three bitter cold months at 15,000 feet, then advanced to Gyantse, and on the way the first clash with the Tibetans occurred, a pitiful one-sided affair at a wall built across the road. A mass of Tibetans armed with muzzle-loaders, flintlocks and broadswords was routed with a loss of some 600 killed by modern arms, against a British loss of six men wounded. From April until July the expedition was held up at Gyantse, and indeed was under siege for seven weeks. Finally, when Macdonald arrived with reinforcements and the siege had been lifted, the massive fort was taken by an assault in which much heroism was shown and a Victoria Cross earned.
A year had now passed since the first expedition had entered Tibet and no progress of any kind towards a settlement had been made, the Tibetans confining themselves to urging Younghusband to return to India. Furthermore, though this was then unknown to the expedition, the Russian threat had receded as the result of the ruinous war with Japan which had broken out in February, 1904. Britain moreover was eager to find a rapprochement with Russia and her ally, France, against the growing German menace.
Younghusband, who was eager to press on, at last got reluctant permission to proceed to Lhasa as the only means of reaching an agreement. So the force moved on and reached the capital on August 3rd, 1904. The expedition which entered Lhasa comprised. 91 British officers and civilian officials and 532 British warrant officers, non-commissioned officers and men, a total of 623. In addition, there were 1,998 officers, warrant officers, NCOs and men of the Indian Army. The expedition was accompanied by 1,450 'followers' and 3,451 mules and ponies. The Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia accompanied by Dorjieff and did not return until long after the British had left. Authority disintegrated in Lhasa; there was much coming and going behind the scenes, the Nepalese envoy, the Chinese Amban and the Tongsa Penlop, the ruler of Bhutan, all urging the Tibetans who were left in charge with the Dalai Lama's seals of office to make accommodation with the invaders.
At last the Tibetans yielded to the British terms presented by Younghusband. In these he exceeded his remit by demanding, in addition to the clause prohibiting Tibetan intercourse with any foreign powers, the occupation of the Chumbi Valley for seventy-five years as security for the payment of a large indemnity and the right to install a commercial agent in Gyantse with access to Lhasa. On September 7th the treaty was signed quite amicably and with some ceremony in the gigantic Potala Palace, and on the 23rd the British withdrew from Lhasa.
The Amban advised the Chinese government to denounce the Dalai Lama and reduce him to the priesthood which they readily did, so setting an example for their Communist successors. At the same time London was displeased with Young- husband's 'treaty' and so were the other European Powers. The agreement was diluted by the Cabinet in London and the indemnity reduced by two-thirds to be paid in three years, but the British Agent in Gyantse remained. The Chinese derived most from the agreement which strengthened their power over the demoralised Tibetans but they did not ratify it until 1906, gaining thereby Britain's re-admission of their suzerainty and denial of negotiating rights with Tibet except through them.
So ended the first visit of white men to the Forbidden City, since two French priests had got there nearly sixty years before, and for its inhabitants the first sight of wheeled traffic – the two- wheeled carts of the expedition. No signs of Russian influence were found, and next to nothing was achieved for Britain for so much death, valour and hardship except, rather surprisingly, the founding of a genuine friendship between the British and the Tibetans.
The end to the Great Game came with the signing of the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 which put all these sensitive border countries out of bounds – unless it could be regarded as having restarted in 1979 with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1907 agreement both Britain and Russia agreed to negotiate with Tibet only through China.
When the Younghusband expedition left Tibet a power vacuum was created in Lhasa by the absence of the Dalai Lama. China immediately took advantage of this and began to assert her authority in spite of the extreme difficulty of communications which made it easier and safer to go from Peking to Lhasa via Calcutta and Darjeeling than overland. A Chinese High Commissioner was appointed who arrived in the autumn of 1906 and tried to claim suzerainty over Sikkim and Bhutan. Chinese policy of reforms and interference with the customs and religion gave rise to Tibetan revolts in 1905 and 1908 just as they did fifty years later; the protests were met with coercion and military force. It is of interest that in 1909 the Chinese asked permission of the Government of India to send a small army to Tibet through India; this request was refused, As an attempt to pacify Tibet, China had reinstated the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1909, receiving him with honour after he had done homage to the Emperor in Peking. By February, 1910 Chinese troops, who had already taken over much of what had been regarded as part of eastern Tibet, reached Lhasa and once more the Dalai Lama fled, and again he was deposed by the Chinese. Tibetan troops held off Chinese pursuit at the Tsang-po River and the Dalai Lama made good his escape, this time to India where he was courteously received but promised no help. Indeed Britain stated that they would recognise China as the de facto government of Tibet. Then China raised the stakes by declaring their sovereignty as opposed to suzerainty over Tibet in June, 1910, and later, Yuan-Shih-Kai, first president of the Chinese Republic, was to proclaim Tibet as being on an equal footing with the provinces of China proper. China in fact overplayed her hand in Tibet in 191I3 just as she did in the 1960s, alienating the Tibetans by interfering with their religion and up- setting their customs while improving their material prosperity, reducing corruption and improving the administration of justice.
Then as fears were growing in India about the appearance of a great empire fully armed on its northern borders, China was faced with the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911. Just as the Russian Empire had been ruined by the war with Japan, so the Chinese Empire fell into chaos with the end of the monarchy, The Chinese army in Tibet revolted; some sold arms to the Tibetans, others went off marauding. The Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa in 1912, proclaimed Tibet's independence and expelled the rest of the Chinese army, which was unpaid and mutinous. The last remnants were repatriated through India. China did not accept that Tibet was an independent state but could do nothing about the situation.
Leading from strength once more, Britain sought to improve and assert her position on the north-eastern frontiers of India, and moved forward with military patrols from the hitherto accepted but undefined border with Tibet, the Inner Line, in the foothills of the Brahnaputra Valley. They penetrated up through the tribal territories in the jungles of the steep southern slopes of the Himalayas to the 'natural' boundary of the Himalayan watershed.
Britain then called a conference in Simla in 1913 to try to achieve a settlement between China and Tibet and also effectively to establish her forward policy gains by treaty. The British delegation was led by Sir Henry McMahon and while it found the Tibetans ready to agree, the Chinese, in spite of their weak position, were reluctant. The first British objective was to get Chinese agreement to divide Tibet into two zones, Inner and Outer, just as Mongolia had been divided by treaty with Russia the year before. While all Tibet was to continue under Chinese suzerainty, they were to have no administrative rights in Outer Tibet, which would have given India a buffer state on her northern border. The Chinese, however, would not accept the agreement because they would not acknowledge the proposed boundary between Tibet and western China, so although the Chinese delegate initialled an agreement, his Government repudiated his action and refused to ratify the treaty, Britain therefore signed anagreement with the Tibetans only, as a result of which the frontier with India was agreed to lie along the watershed north of the tribal territories, on the so-called 'McMahon Line'; this also included in India a piece of Tibetan territory, the Tawang Tract. China refused to acknowledge any bilateral agreement between Tibet and Britain and thus at no time recognised the McMahon Line, sowing the seeds of trouble with independent India nearly fifty years later.
Matters simmered down, and although no Chinese government, Imperial, Republican, Nationalist or Communist, ever failed to proclaim its overlordship of Tibet, in fact Tibet enjoyed virtual self-government, with internal frictions, for nearly forty years.
During the First World War the Dalai Lama, who had become very pro-British, immediately offered King George V 1,000 troops, and special prayers and services were offered for the Allied cause. In 1916 the Dalai Lama sent a message to the King, saying:
Tibet, being a nation of priests, has not been able to do much for the British Government during the war in the way of military assistance. But we have held religious services for the British from time to time in the leading monasteries. And we have transferred privately to the credit of the British Government a number of the services held for the Tibetan Government. Had we held them all for the British, our people would have suffered needless alarm.
These services, which cost money, continued to the end of the war. The Lamas in fact prophesied that the Germans would lose the war. In the period of the First World War a truce prevailed with China in eastern Tibet, broken by a Chinese advance in 1917 which Tibet beat off, recapturing indeed some places lost earlier.
Between the wars Tibet, looking apprehensively on the world perhaps and noting the destruction of the independence and religion of Outer Mongolia by the Russians, continued on the old lines, maintained its medieval feudal and religious practices and rigorously excluded strangers.
Because of civil strife and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Chinese under Chiang Kai Shek were unable to assert themselves, although the rulers of Tibet after the death of the great Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933 were driven to agree to a Chinese mission being established in Lhasa and later, in 1936, a British-Indian mission also. The Communists came to power in 1949, and in 1950 the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army moved into Tibet from the north, building a road as it advanced. Resistance was minimal and in 1951 the Dalai Lama, the Fourteenth, who had just assumed power at the age of sixteen, agreed to collaborate. An agreement was made and the Chinese proceeded at first with caution and restraint: religious life was left alone, though some usages were changed and the status of the second potentate in Tibet, the Panchen Lama, who had been more pro-Chinese, was increased. Some modernisation was begun and a 16,000 kilometre programme of road building began, including roads to- wards the frontier with India. The first convoy of trucks from China arrived in Lhasa on Christmas Day, 1954.
As happened in the past, Chinese reforms in Tibet met with considerable resentment and opposition with guerrilla action in several places which finally broke out into a brief open revolt in 1959 in Lhasa, during which the Dalai Lama withdrew to India, where he has continued to make his home in spite of attempts from time to time to encourage him to return and so bless, as it were, the Chinese takeover. After the 1959 rebellion, the Chinese set to work to dismantle the Lamaist Government and modernise the archaic structure of Tibet. They took over the huge estates of the monasteries and landlords, turned the lamas out to do productive work, freed the thousands of serfs, abolished share-cropping, set up schools and provided improved medical care, built roads and small factories and drafted in thousands of Chinese cadres and settlers. In 1965 Tibet became an Autonomous Region of China, and under the Great Cultural Revolution of 1966/67 changes were pushed ahead at breakneck speed. During this time of revolutionary ardour, excesses undoubtedly occurred and mistakes were made. On top of all this China made use of its new Tibetan roads to inflict a short sharp military punishment on India in 1962 to assert its claims to the proper frontier between the two countries. Then to the amazement of the world, which was expecting an advance on Calcutta, China withdrew within its claim lines, where it has remained ever since.
Since 1976 the Chinese Government has shown some inclination to relax the stern régime of the late Chairman Mao and has now begun to admit that many of the policies enforced on. Tibet were indeed wrong, such as the insistence on grain growing as against animal husbandry and the imposition of forced labour.
A facet of the post-Mao relaxation has been the decision to let selected foreign visitors into Tibet. It is probably true to say that in all the centuries until the end of 1979 fewer than 1,200-1,250 Westerners had ever reached Lhasa and of these 623 came and went with the Younghusband expedition. In 1979 the first tourists were admitted to Tibet; now in 1980 tours have been arranged and Lhasa is no more the Forbidden City.
The Chinese presence in Tibet today is everywhere conspicuous and by their own admission 200,000 Hans, as the Chinese like to be called, have settled in Tibet, 60,000 of them in Lhasa, matching the Tibetan population there in numbers, apart from the army whose numbers in Tibet are not reveaIed. Much building has taken place in the western part of the city for occupation by the Chinese, while the Tibetans continue to live in the rather squalid east end. Religious worship is tolerated and the 'Cathedral' in Lhasa is open on three mornings a week.
The Chinese have also begun to make an effort to preserve most of the essential buildings and monuments, the Potala, the 'Cathedral', the Summer Palace and the two great monasteries of Drepung and Sera, though at both the monks are reduced in numbers to a small fraction of their original strength. On the other hand, the monastery of the State Soothsayer near Drepung is a government office, while the old Turquoise Bridge, over a stream below the Potala, is disfigured and likely to be destroyed by its conversion into a fertiliser warehouse with the addition of a lean-to. The western gate to the city with its great chortens, holding religious relics, has been pulled down and also the old medieval medical buildings on Chagpo-ri, Iron Hill, to make way for a military post.
Without doubt the transition from the old days and the pressures on their religious life, corrupt and cruel as many aspects of it undoubtedly were, have been bewildering and painful to many Tibetans, and the Chinese now admit that mistakes have been made. For the Chinese takeover has meant rapid and enforced modernisation for Tibet, a better standard of living, some advances in agriculture, a degree of industrialisation, the first air service to Peking (inaugurated in 1956) and improved health care: it has also, of course, meant an appalling upheaval in the traditional way of Tibetan life. The next generation may well find this adjustment easier, particularly if, as seems likely, some of the pressures are relaxed.
Meanwhile this 'farthest goal of all travel' remains a most fascinating and substantial place to visit, less perhaps than it may have been fifteen years ago when the old medieval way of life was still to be seen, but still different from anywhere else, if only for the dominating presence of the huge Potala Palace with its gold roofs and the Jokhan 'Cathedral' also brilliantly adorned. Perceval Landon, the Times correspondent with Younghusband, said this about the view of the Potala, a fitting note on which to end:
If the traveller knows that the cathedral doors are hopelessly shut to him his wisest course would be to sit a day or two upon this spur of Chagpo-ri [hill] and then depart, making no further trial of the town; for he will never catch again that spell of almost awed thanksgiving that there should be so beautiful a sight hidden amongst these icy and inaccessible mountain crests and that it should be given to him to be one of the few to see it.
Notes on Further Reading:
Perceval Landon, Lhasa , two volumes (London, 1905); Francis Younghusbans, India and Tibet (London, 1910); Peter Fleming, Bayonets to Lhasa (London, 1961); Stuart and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain (London, 1964); Hans Suyin, Lhasa The Open City (London, 1977).
- Peter Allen is a former Chairman of ICI, a traveller and author.