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Britain hands tibet to china on silver platter Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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1904: The British Invasion of Tibet
An article by Charles Allen, with an introduction by Alison Reynolds.
Charles Allen is the author of 'Duel In The Snows: The true story of the Younghusband mission to Lhasa' (Published by John Murray, 2004). Alison Reynolds is the Director of Free Tibet Campaign.
Introduction
The following article describes the British invasion of Tibet in 1904; a shady episode which ironically sewed the seeds of the Tibetans' long-standing view of Britain as an old and valued friend. The two countries' historical relationship is the main reason why the UK is one of the few countries not to recognise "one China". China's response to the UK's position on Tibet is to claim that "the myth of 'Tibetan independence' is the product of British attempts to justify the 1904 invasion". The website of the Chinese Embassy in the UK states, "With a view to controlling Tibet, Britain redoubled its efforts ... in cultivating pro-British forces in Tibet and instigating 'Tibetan independence' ... (recalling that part of history) helps people to see the root-cause of Britain's insisting that China only has "suzerainty" not sovereignty over Tibet." (See www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/ceuk_eng/sgsm/t27151.htm)
Free Tibet Campaign is marking the centenary of Britain's invasion of Tibet by calling on the UK to apologise to the Tibetan people, and to honour the longstanding relationship between the two countries by working for an end to the present day occupation of Tibet.
Call on the Prime Minister to apologise for the Invasion of Tibet
The British Invasion of Tibet
This year marks the centenary of one of the most shameful acts of British imperial history: when a British army invaded Tibet and shot its way through to Lhasa, forcing its leaders to agree to a punitive treaty that the British Government almost immediately repudiated. The adventure came to be known as the Younghusband Mission, after its leader, a 40-year-old political officer and explorer named Colonel Francis Younghusband.
The invasion had been sanctioned by a British Government worn down by months of lobbying by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, obsessed by what he saw as Russia's inexorable advance into Asia and determined to 'frustrate their little game'. Knowing Francis Younghusband to be a 'fellow-traveller' who shared his views on Russia's ambitions, Curzon had earlier selected him to negotiate with the Tibetans at Khamba Dzong - and Younghusband, while protesting all the while at the Tibetan's refusal to negotiate, had at the same time done his best to provoke them into an act of hostility that would force the Government of India to intervene. In late October 1903 a trivial border incident involving some Nepalese yak-herders had been declared by Curzon to be 'overt act of hostility' on the part of the Tibetans, and a rattled British Cabinet had given permission for Younghusband's mission to advance to the Tibetan fortress-town of Gyantse - to obtain reparation and then make an immediate withdrawal.
With the appointment of Brigadier General James Macdonald as the escort commander tensions began to develop between Younghusband and Macdonald. Overriding the General's sound advice to wait until spring, Younghusband pushed forward over the Tang La to establish himself and a small escort in the remote settlement of Tuna at an altitude of 15,000 feet, where he sat out two months in appalling conditions until Macdonald had built up sufficient supplies from India to enable the advance on Gyantse to proceed. Had the Tibetan forces made a night attack on his camp, the mission and escort would certainly have been overwhelmed, since the cold froze the oil on the rifle-bolts and caused the two Maxim guns to jam.
Fortunately for Younghusband the seniormost Tibetan military commander, Depon Lhading, was under orders to halt Younghusband's advance but not to offer any violence. Instead of attacking, he divided his army in two and took up positions on either side of the lake of Bam Tso to block the British advance. On 30 March 1904, his supplies now in place, Brigadier General Macdonald brought the main bulk of his forces up to Tuna. On the following day the Maxim gun and the matchlock or mendah - the 'fire arrow' faced each other at the hot springs of Chumik Shenko, resulting in some 500 Tibetan dead and the loss of the Daily Mail correspondent's left hand.
The Tibetans attempted a brave stand at the Red Idol Gorge and were again shot to pieces, after which the invaders proceeded unopposed to Gyantse and its great fortress. Leaving Younghusband's mission ensconced at Changlo Manor, in the shadow of Gyantse Dzong Macdonald returned to Chumbi to build up supplies. An attack on the mission on the night of 5 May took the garrison by surprise but was driven off at the cost of three dead on the one side and 140 on the other. In response to Younghusband's urgent appeal, reinforcements were called in. A battalion of the Royal Fusiliers happened to be stationed near Darjeeling and they were rushed up together with other Indian army units and more field guns, arriving in Gyantse on 28 June. A week later, after Younghusband engineered a break-down in negotiations with the Tibetans, the great rock fortress of Gyantse Dzong was stormed under a barrage of artillery and Maxim gun fire. Two weeks later, in what was for many years the highest military engagement ever fought, the Gurkhas destroyed the last Tibetan opposition up in the snows above the Karo La. When the invading army reached the great lake of Yamdok Tso the Tibetans attempted to reopen negotiations but were rebuffed time and again by Colonel Younghusband. The Tsangpo was crossed in late July and on the afternoon of 3 August 1904 the army pitched its tents outside the gates of the fabled city of Lhasa.
To Younghusband's great disappointment he learned that the young Dalai Lama, had fled. Nevertheless, on 4 September a convention was signed in the Potala. Among its nine articles was one requiring the Tibetans to pay an indemnity of half a million pounds over 75 years, during which time the Chumbi Valley was to be occupied by Britain, and a 'separate agreement' giving the British Trade Agent to be based at Gyantse the right to visit Lhasa for consultations. These two clauses were inserted by Younghusband in defiance of orders, and concealed from his Government until the Treaty had been signed. They were immediately repudiated and Younghusband was ordered to stay on and renegotiate the treaty, which order he ignored.
When Younghusband returned to England in December 1904 he was lauded by the British press, received in private audience by the King, greeted with rapturous applause when he lectured at the Royal Geographical Society in London and at the Scottish Royal Geographical Society in Edinburgh. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh, Bristol and Cambridge. Everywhere he went he was seen as a hero. This was a view shared by nearly all the British officers on the Younghusband Mission. To his aide and interpreter, Captain Frederick O'Connor, Younghusband was 'one of the few specimens of the typical "strong silent man" whom I have ever met. Very quiet, very laconic . . . at once a philosopher and a man of action . . . I never once saw him for a moment even ruffled, far less discomposed or perturbed, by any circumstance or crisis which we had to encounter. An imperturbable exterior covered a strong and steadfast character and a most equable temperament.'
Even after Patrick French's rightly acclaimed biography, published in 1994 Younghusband continues to be perceived as a fundamentally humane, decent man, who, as far as the Tibet adventure is concerned, made one silly mistake: in negotiating with the Tibetans he tried too hard to please his master, Lord Curzon, and asked for too much.
What is so repugnant about the Younghusband Mission is not the botched treaty but the fact that one man could do so much short-term and long-term damage, not out of patriotism - although undoubtedly a part of him did believe that he was acting in Britain's imperial interests - but for essentially selfish motives. As a 20-year-old junior subaltern newly arrived in India Younghusband had vowed 'to make a name for myself', and over the next ten years he went a long way towards fulfilling that ambition, blazing trails in the Western Himalayas and winning the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal. But one goal eluded him: Lhasa - the ultima thule of every self-respecting explorer in the West, what one of his junior officers would later call 'the long-sealed Forbidden City, the shrines of the mystery which had so long haunted our dreams'. Only one Englishman had ever reached Lhasa - the eccentric Thomas Manning in 1811 - and in the previous sixty years almost a score of daring travellers from the West - Russians such as Colonel Prjevalsky, Count Szechenyi, Ruborosvsky and Kosloff; the Americans Rockhill and the Littledales; the Frenchmen Prince Henri d'Orleans, Bonvalot and the ill-fated Duteuil de Rhins; Englishmen such as Deasy, Carey, Wellby and Bower; and, most recently, the great Swedish explorer Sven Hedin - all had dreamed of reaching Lhasa, and none had got within ten days' march of the holy city. FrancisYounghusband had himself planned to journey to Lhasa in disguise in 1889 only to foiled by his commanding officer who had refused to give him any more leave. So when the call came to lead this Tibet political mission Younghusband's twin ambitions - to be somebody and to reach Lhasa - suddenly became possible. Right from the start of the border negotiations, and whatever his orders had to say on the matter, Lhasa became the unstated goal of the mission. What is more, both Younghusband's political assistants on the Tibet Frontier Commission, Claude White and Frederick O'Connor, had also tried and failed to penetrate to Lhasa. So too had the expedition's leading expert on Tibet, Dr Austine Waddell. So the four key men at the sharp end of the Mission were all desperate to get to Lhasa - and that lure of Lhasa spread right through the army. It can be found in practically every diary or contemporary account of the expedition. Captain Arthur Hadow, for example, wrote to his parents of his delight at being selected for the mission: 'I believe we shall march over the Himalayas into Thibet, and possibly to Lhasa, the city of Thibet, in which no white man is allowed to set foot... I am delighted with the whole thing.' Henry Newman of Reuters later wrote: 'We were all delighted to hear of these messages, for we wanted to get to Lhasa, and if the Tibetans caved in and made a treaty there would be no hope of getting to that romantic city.' Lieutenant Bethell of the Gurkhas wrote of the 'psychological push behind us. . . by mid-August the Press was beginning to say, "Well, what are you going to do next?" and to ask for news of Lhasa itself. Not to have gone there would have involved anti-climax; and though this aspect was never, at the time, openly admitted, looking back on it now there seems little doubt that it was a strong factor'.
The 'Lhasa factor', combined with personal ambition drove Younghusband to deceive both himself and his masters, and with hugely damaging consequences for Tibet and its peoples.
What also helped to make this invasion easier was the British perception of Tibet at that time, largely shaped by the writing of Dr Waddell, the expedition's Tibetologist, and the author of The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism: a groundbreaking study but one that created an image of Tibetan Buddhism as a perversion of the original teachings of Gautama Buddha and of the priest-monks of Tibet as a corrupt body of devil-worships exercising a malign influence over the country. 'A parasitic disease,' he calls it, 'a cloak to the worst forms of oppressive devil-worship, by which the poor Tibetan was placed in constant fear of his life from the attacks of thousands of malignant devils both in this life and in the world to come, and necessitating never-ending payments to the priests of large sums to avert these calamities'. This negative judgement undoubtedly helped to fuel the prejudices of Younghusband and many of his officers, making it easier for them to treat the Tibet lamas sent to negotiate with contempt.
Dr Waddell's other contribution to the expedition was his role as the chief looter. For example, After the fall of Gyanste Dzong the commissariat department searched all the buildings at Pelkor Chode and found three thousand maunds of atta or ground flour hidden in the main monastery - a much-needed addition to the army's fast dwindling supplies. But according to Major William Beynon, its officers also unearthed a cache of hidden treasure. 'Yesterday I got two really good things,' wrote Beynon to his wife on 7 July
Ross 2nd Gurkhas was in the big monastery here and was looking for grain with his coolie corps when one of his men was stoned by a Lama. They caught the beggar and tied him up & gave him 20 lashes on the spot and then told him if he didn't show where the grain was hid he would be shot. So he showed them two places very cleverly hidden - but when Ross began to get the things out he found instead of grain that the man had shown him where the monastery's plate & robes were kept. Ross reported to the General who told him he might keep what he liked and to send the rest to the man who collects for the British Museum. Ross & Wigram who were working together took something and asked me to help myself, so I selected a very nice hanging silver censor and a gilt one - neither of them very valuable but very quaint design - and I also took two lamas' robes & some silk embroidery, which I am sending home to you through King Hamiltons.
This sanctioned plundering was subsequently hushed up, and no wonder, for it is difficult to square it with the claims made by Dr Waddell and General Macdonald that monastic sites were 'most religiously respected'. But yesterday's plunder is today's research material, and ironically, that plundering undoubtedly helped enlarge the outside world's understanding of Tibet's Vajrayana religion. It also has to be seen in context: nasty as that invasion was it pales into insignificance when compared with the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army's intervention in 1951 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-67.
Far more serious is the claim that the British invasion did incalculable political damage by laying Tibet open to a reassertion of Chinese authority. Its leading proponent was Charles Bell, an assistant political officer in Sikkim under Claude White who later became an administrator of the Chumbi Valley during its brief period of British rule. Bell also became a close friend and ally of the 13 Dalai Lama and it was his belief that 'By going in and then coming out again, we knocked the Tibetans down and left them for the first comer to kick. We created a political vacuum, which is always a danger. China came in and filled it, destroying Tibetan freedom, for she feared that if we came again we should keep the country. And Russia, in conformity with her warning, advanced into Mongolia, without any intention of retiring as we had retired from Lhasa.' The opposing argument put forward by Bell's critics is that the political vacuum created by the British invasion ended with the 13th Dalai Lama's final return to Lhasa in 1910. The Tibetans then turned against the Chinese, threw out the Amban (Chinese Resident in Lhasa) and declared their country independent. Tibet's real tragedy is that it then failed to build on that independence. Despite the 13th Dalai Lama best efforts, Tibet's monastic and aristocratic hierarchies refused to modernise, clinging to their privileges and their isolationism. During the later years of the 13th Dalai Lama's rule Britain came to be seen as a friend of Tibet and her influence was maintained through the person of the Trade Agent in Gyantse. But after the 13th Dalai Lama's death in 1933 the old Tibet very quickly reasserted itself and the links with British India were cut. A series of ineffectual regents who ruled Tibet during the 14th Dalai Lama's infancy and minority allowed China to reassert its control, culminating in the 'liberation' of Tibet by the Chinese People's Army in 1951.
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