The British Empire and Tibet 1900-1922

Wendy Palace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134278633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

In August 1904 Sir Francis Younghusband's invasion force reached the forbidden city of Lhasa. The British invasion of Tibet in 1903 acted as a catalyst for change in a world transformed by revolution, war and the rise of a new order. Using unofficial government sources, private papers and the diaries and memoirs of those involved, this book examines the impact of Younghusband's invasion and its aftermath inside Tibet.

1 The Younghusband invasion, 1900–1904

The secret waits for the insight of eyes unclouded by longing; Those who are bounded by desire see only the outward container. from The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

In 1900 Tibet was a ‘waiting secret’, an undefined region of exotic reputation and stark physical and climatic contrasts about which the British knew very little. In 1904 (the year that the Younghusband expedition finally entered the forbidden city of Lhasa), leading experts like Eric Teichman of the China Consular Service divided the country into three distinct zones, all subject to varying degrees of political control by the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa and the Manchu government in Peking.

The first zone, where the Dalai Lama’s spiritual and temporal power was uncontested and which Teichman called the kingdom of Tibet, extended north as far as Kokonor and east as far as the ancient Burmese frontier with China. Included in this zone were the states of Chamdo, Draya, and Nyarong, which had only recently reverted to direct Tibetan control after years of Chinese occupation. At Lhasa, the capital, the Manchu had installed a representative, or amban.

The second zone, known to the China Service as East Tibet and to the Tibetans themselves as Kham, included the states of Chala, Batang and Litang, which bordered China and which the Manchu claimed as part of their extensive empire. Within this zone lay the wealthy state of Derge which, like Chamdo, Draya and Nyarong, had also recently reverted to the political control of Lhasa.¹ The nature of Chinese political control in East Tibet was purely nominal since the Manchu took only a limited interest in what they regarded as the outer reaches of their Empire. The area had long ago been left to the provincial governments of Sichuan to administer and their interest in the region waxed and waned according to the whims of their successive viceroys. Except in Derge, the Dalai Lama could expect to exercise little political control in East Tibet and even here his spiritual supremacy was partly challenged by the abbots of its many powerful monasteries who, for the most part members of the ancient Red Hat sect, naturally resisted any interference from the newer reformist Gelug-pa or Yellow Hat sect to which the Dalai Lama belonged. This did not affect his ability to move freely in the region, however, since the Dalai Lama was much loved and venerated by the local people and was also useful to the Red Hat abbots who were able to exploit their connections with Lhasa as a means of reinforcing their own public credibility.² Apart from a few major cities and towns, and the network of trade routes crossing it, this area was largely uninhabited and often real power was concentrated in the hands of local chieftains and brigands who both terrorised and protected the local population.

The third zone, referred to by Teichman as Kokonor, was a vast, mainly desert region peopled by nomadic tribes of mixed Mongolian and Tibetan blood. Like East Tibet it was effectively controlled by various native chieftains, but here the Manchu had a second amban, based at Sining, near the great Tibetan monastery of Kumbum, an important religious centre and place of pilgrimage.

Although the Chinese ambans at Lhasa and at Sining were the official representatives of the Manchu court, by 1900 their ability to function efficiently was dangerously undermined by the collapsing Manchu dynasty and the Boxer Protocol of 1901 which had divided China up amongst the western powers and Japan. The kingdom of Tibet was known to be a theocracy with a dual system of government composed, in equal parts, of ecclesiastical and secular officials who met together in a National Assembly or Tsongdu summoned periodically by the Dalai Lama himself. Beyond this little was known or understood about the workings of the Tibetan system since few westerners had ever visited Lhasa in circumstances where they had had time or opportunity to study its customs.

By 1900 British curiosity about Tibet had developed for a number of reasons. Firstly, at a time when Great Game rivalry between Britain and Russia in Central Asia had resulted in rapid forward movements towards Tibet by both countries, Tibet’s status and the precise nature of her relationship with neighbouring Himalayan states, as well as with Russia, presented a problem to the British, who suspected collusion between the Dalai Lama and the Russian Tsar. This situation seemed especially significant after 1900 when rumours began to circulate about a secret treaty between Tibet and Russia under which the Russians had allegedly promised to provide military support to the Dalai Lama in the event of foreign invasion. In the climate of the time it was impossible for Britain not to view this as an attempt at annexation by their Russian rivals.³ Although Russian ministers had given firm assurances that no such treaty existed, the Tibetans began to behave as though they had Russian support and, by 1902, their confidence had grown to such an extent that they were openly flouting the 1893 Trade Agreement, conducted on their behalf, but without their knowledge, by Chinese and British representatives for the purpose of regulating trade on the volatile Indo-Tibetan frontier. In 1902 (and probably in ignorance of these arrangements), Tibetan traders had broken the Agreement by entering land in British-held Sikkim, sparking a crisis which the British viceroy, Lord Curzon, then deliberately chose to exploit. The official British line on this occasion was that the 1893 Trade Agreement was legally binding because Tibet was under Chinese suzerainty, a fact that had been previously confirmed to British satisfaction by the Chefoo Treaty of 1876 upon which most of their calculations about Tibet were based.⁴ When the Chinese proved unable to control Tibetan incursions into Sikkim however, alarm bells rang in London and led to the beginnings of a re-evaluation of Tibet’s status vis-à-vis China and the start of what some began to refer to as the ‘Tibetan problem’.

Few people in Britain at the start of the twentieth century were aware of Tibet’s great imperial past when, for over two centuries, her fierce armies had carved out a vast empire in Central Asia. When this crumbled around 832 BC Tibet had become a unified, predominantly Buddhist state, engaged in active diplomatic dialogue with the neighbouring Himalayan states of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, as well as with Mongolia, China and Russia. When Kublai Khan established a foothold in Tibet in the second half of the thirteenth century, Buddhism became the main religion in his eastern Mongolian empire, creating the strong political and religious bonds between the leaders of Mongolia and Tibet which still existed in 1900 but about which the British were largely unaware.⁵ This strong Buddhist alliance had spread across Central Asia, making it possible for Russian Buriat monks like Aghvan Dorjiev to make contact with the Dalai Lama and even become an important member of his household during the 1890s, a relationship quite incomprehensible to the British, who considered Dorjiev’s nationality of much greater significance than his religion.⁶ This shared religion also made it much easier for Japanese Buddhists like Kawaguchi Ekai and Nomi Kan to travel inside Tibet and, after Japan signed a formal Alliance with Britain in 1902, they were able to provide useful information to their allies in London. Apart from a few Japanese sources, and the information acquired at great personal risk by Indian pundits travelling in disguise in Tibet between 1865 and 1888, there was little opportunity for the British to discover much about the country, let alone determine its status.⁷

If few people in Britain appreciated the complex nature of political relations in Central Asia, even fewer knew of or understood the chö-yön which was a fundamental part of Tibet’s relations with China, confirmed when the Fifth Dalai Lama had been invited to visit Peking in 1653, soon after the Manchu dynasty came to power. This symbolic relationship was similar to that which existed between the rulers of Mongolia and Tibet and bound Tibetan Dalai Lamas and Manchu emperors together in a pact of mutual support. Under the cho-yon the Manchu emperors agreed to defend Tibet in the event of foreign invasion in return for the Dalai Lama’s personal spiritual protection.⁸ Since British policy-makers were ignorant of this arrangement it was difficult for them to appreciate why the Manchu administration continued to operate inside Tibet at a time when their control was visibly weakening, leading them to the inevitable conclusion that the Chinese could no longer be trusted to protect Tibet from Russian intrusions. British perceptions about Tibet were therefore based upon a number of errors and misconceptions about the nature of Tibetan politics and culture which clouded their judgement and would have grave and widespread consequences for the Tibetans as time went on and as the Chinese increasingly misrepresented and exaggerated the nature of their claim to the country.

Britain’s own involvement in Tibet had begun around 1774 when Warren Hastings of the British East India Company had sent a commercial mission under the leadership of George Bogle to the Sixth Panchen Lama at Shigatse, the second most important political and spiritual centre in Tibet. Bogle’s lack of knowledge about the relationship between Tibetan religious leaders, together with the wealth and sophistication that greeted him at the Panchen Lama’s palace at Tashilunpho, led to genuine confusion about the Lama’s role and function within the Tibetan hierarchy, and, over time, it became convenient for the British to promote the more compliant Panchen Lama and his successors as the true rulers of Tibet with whom India might successfully trade, a process facilitated by the inability of many Dalai Lamas to survive to reach their majority.⁹ In reality religious links between the Panchen Lama at Shigatse and the Dalai Lama at Lhasa were strong yet subtle, the former acting as a spiritual mentor to the Dalai Lama, while the latter was the acknowledged religious and secular ruler of Tibet. This delicate balance of power and the complex interplay between Church and State, regarded as medieval and quite alien to British thinking, created huge problems for them when genuine attempts began to be made to make formal contact with the Dalai Lama in 1900.

British interest in Tibet was further stimulated at this time by the relationship that developed between two men who never met and whose arrival on the political scene during the 1890s provided an impetus for dramatic change. Thubten Gyatso, who became Tibet’s Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1894, was the first to attain his majority and to rule the country effectively since the seventeenth century. George Nathaniel Curzon, a member of the British aristocracy and, at forty, the youngest ever viceroy of India, came to his post in 1899 already an acknowledged expert on Central Asian Affairs.¹⁰ It was the lack of dialogue between these two powerful men that transformed Anglo-Tibetan relations. This was partly the result of Curzon’s personal paranoia about Russian intentions towards Tibet, and partly the result of conditions within the Tibetan state itself.

By 1900 the relationship between the Ninth Panchen Lama and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was already strained, and true co-operation between them was prevented by their very different temperaments and by their relative closeness in age. The Ninth Panchen Lama was slightly younger than the Dalai Lama and far less worldly, a fact forcefully brought home to the Lhasa government in 1902 when, according to custom, he travelled to the capital to receive the Dalai Lama’s blessing. Their failure to bond on this occasion deepened the growing rift between Lhasa and Shigatse, the Panchen Lama having recently enjoyed greater independence from Lhasa than would otherwise have been the case had the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s predecessors lived to obtain their majority. Thubten Gyatso’s arrival had also exacerbated tensions inside Lhasa itself, giving greater hope to those who wished to free their country from Chinese influence, while upsetting those who welcomed what they regarded as Chinese protection.¹¹

Although well travelled in Central Asia, like most of his contemporaries, Curzon was quite unacquainted with the internal workings of the Tibetan state. However, this did not prevent him having his own plans for Tibet whose mineral wealth and access route to south-west China he considered a vital source of potential revenue for the rapidly depleting Indian coffers. In more obvious power-political terms he also saw the possibility of establishing Tibet as a buffer state between India and Russia, both as a means of thwarting Russian aspirations and as a real solution to the costly Great Game rivalry which continued to dominate British policy in Central Asia. In this context therefore, and as the direct representative of Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, he saw no reason why he should not deal directly with the Tibetan ruler as one head of state to another, and without recourse to the Chinese who, in his opinion, had already proved themselves to be unworthy as intermediaries.

Curzon’s idea was to approach the Dalai Lama by means of a peaceful mission to Lhasa which he hoped might iron out any past misunderstandings between Britain and Tibet and lift the ban on foreign travellers which they had imposed. He hoped that such a mission might also discover once and for all whether rumours that the Russians had agents in Lhasa were true and, if so, whether this meant that they really had political designs on Tibet which could threaten existing British interests in the Himalayas. His mistake was to assume that the Dalai Lama would accept the British viceroy as an equal or that the Tibetans would want to become politically involved with Britain.

The immediate circumstances leading to the despatch of the Younghus- band expedition have been well explored, but, briefly, the facts are these. In August 1900 Curzon sent a personal letter to the Dalai Lama which was returned unopened six months later. In June 1901, employing the services of the Bhutanese spy, Ugyen Kazi, he sent a second letter which was also returned unopened, this time on the grounds that the messenger had been unable to find an official of suitable rank and reliability to carry it on to Lhasa. It was impossible to tell whether Ugyen Kazi was telling the truth or had simply lost his nerve, but with the Russians advancing relentlessly further into Central Asia, and in the knowledge that the Chinese could do nothing to influence the Tibetans, Curzon decided that the only way forward was to despatch a mission to the Dalai Lama as soon as possible, with or without Tibetan permission, and in the hope that such a move would not be interpreted as a hostile act either in London or in Lhasa.

It was against this background that the Younghusband expedition set out to cross the border into Tibet in June 1903 to negotiate with the Tibetans at Khamba Jong, a fort just inside the Tibetan border with Sikkim. The mission was led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, at forty a veteran of the Chitral expedition on India’s turbulent north-west frontier, and a man personally known to Curzon.¹² His team had been handpicked for their devotion to Curzonian forward policy and for their willingness to face whatever dangers they might meet once inside Tibet. From the start this was more than the mere commercial venture it purported to be. Mission members, each with a military or Civil Service background, had an additional role to play in collecting and collating information, and scientific experts were called in to examine the geology, fauna, and flora that was discovered as the expedition moved further into the Tibetan hinter-land.¹³ It was soon clear to those Tibetans monitoring the situation from Shigatse, that the mission was interested in doing more than it claimed. What was even more sinister to them was the size of the accompanying military escort, soon to be the main bone of contention between the British and Tibetans in the coming months as Younghusband moved ever closer to Lhasa, his ultimate goal.

As well as impacting on Britain’s relations with Tibet, China and Russia, the Younghusband expedition acted as a catalyst for changes inside the various branches of the British Foreign Service involved with Asia, provoking alarm in London and exposing the tensions surrounding anything that might be labelled ‘imperial’ activity that were surfacing at the turn of the century. Inside the British Parliament the Liberal Opposition, left-wing Radicals, and Irish Nationalists made great play of the fact that the mission was obviously a military one because of the size of its military escort. They also argued that the escort itself had contravened the Government of India Act of 1858 forbidding all ventures of an aggressive military nature on India’s borders. For many the need to end such expensive entanglements in Central Asia and seek rapprochement with Russia was being dangerously compromised by the expedition which, as it moved further into Tibet, also began to antagonise the Russians.¹⁴ The situation was further complicated by extensive press coverage of events, particularly from The Times and the Daily Mail, who had each sent their own correspondents to cover the story and who regularly returned detailed and often colourful accounts of what was happening to whet the appetites of their growing readership.¹⁵ When the exasperated Tibetans eventually attacked Younghusband at Guru in March 1904, wider international public opinion turned against the British completely as photographs of ill- equipped Tibetan dead and wounded littered the front pages of the world’s press. On top of recent castigation over their conduct in the Boer War, this was an humiliation which the British could not afford to tolerate if they wanted to retain their premier international status in a modern world increasingly critical of this type of imperialistic aggression.¹⁶

Inside Balfour’s Unionist Cabinet in London there were already grave misgivings. Having very reluctantly allowed Younghusband to set out in the first place, they had then been forced to agree to his requests for an advance from Khamba Jong to Gyantse, the nearest large town before Lhasa itself, in order not to appear to withdraw and so endanger British lives. However, they had tried to forestall any possible attempt by Curzon to annex Tibet by issuing a telegram on 6 November 1903 in which British policy was clearly stated. The ‘November telegram’ forbade any permanent occupation of Tibet or any attempt to install a British representative at...