Tibet, China & India, 1914-1950: A History of Imperial Diplomacy PDF
Preview Tibet, China & India, 1914-1950: A History of Imperial Diplomacy
CORRECTIONS P.52, lines 17 & 21, and p.55, line 39: northeast should read northwest. P.459, lines 28—30: Captain Lax was an Officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps; and the two American enlisted men had been injured while baling out over the "Hump". TIBET, CHINA AND INDIA 19141950 TIBET, CHINA & INDIA 19141950 A History of Imperial Diplomacy ALASTAIR LAMB ROXFORD BOOKS 1989 © Alastair Lamb, 1989 First published in 1989 in Great Britain by Roxford Books, Hertingfordbury, Hertfordshire. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers. ISBN No 0 907129 03 X „ , ... C'OLi "D Sr Ko 2 V:\ V, ^ Printed in England on permanent paper @ by Redwood Burn Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Typeset by Eurotype 2000 Ltd, Hertford. Hertfordshire. CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi I INTRODUCTION: THE SITUATION IN 1914 1 II FROM MCMAHON TO TEICHMAN, 19141917 28 III TEICHMAN, CHAMDO AND RONGBATSA, 52 19171919 IV EASTERN TIBET AND ANGLOCHINESE 83 NEGOTIATIONS, 19191920 V THE KANSU AND BELL MISSIONS TO LHASA 106 AND ARMS FOR TIBET, 19191922 VI BAILEY AS POLITICAL OFFICER IN SIKKIM, 141 19211928 VII THE WEIR MISSIONS, AND THE CRISIS IN 177 EASTERN TIBET, 19281933 VIII THE DEATHS OF THE 13TH DALAI LAMA 225 AND THE 9TH PANCHEN LAMA AND THE RETURN OF A CHINESE PRESENCE IN LHASA, 19331937 IX THE FIRST GOULD MISSION AND THE 270 DISCOVERY OF THE 14TH DALAI LAMA, 19361940 X THE WAR, 19401945 299 XI BORDER QUESTIONS, 19141947: FROM 350 LADAKH TO SIKKIM XII BORDER QUESTIONS: THE MCMAHON LINE 401 AND THE ASSAM HIMALAYAS, 19141936 XIII BOUNDARY QUESTIONS: THE GENESIS OF 439 THE NORTHEAST FRONTIER AGENCY, 19361945 XIV THE FINAL YEARS OF THE BRITISH INDIAN 477 EMPIRE, 19451947, AND THE END OF THE OLD TIBET, 1950 BIBLIOGRAPHY 536 MAPS 558 INDEX 568 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over thirtyfive years ago I started research for a Doctoral Dissertation in the University of Cambridge on the subject of British relations with Tibet from the latter part of the 18th century until the Younghusband Expedition of 1904. The result was published in 1960 as Britain and Chinese Central Asia: the Road to Lhasa 1767 to 1905 (revised edition in 1986 under the title British India and Tibet 1766 1910); and it was followed in 1966 by the two volumes of The McMahon Line which took the story from 1904 to 1914. The present book completes the narrative up to the moment of the British departure from India in 1947 with what amounts to a postscript up to 1950. In this year the last British official to be directly involved in relations with the Government of Tibet, Hugh Richardson, was withdrawn from Lhasa. He had, in fact, been acting on behalf of the independent Government of India since 1947; but he does represent the end of an apostolic succession dating back to the time of Sir Charles Bell when the narrative in this book begins. 1950, moreover, marked a fundamental change in the pattern of AngloChinese relations. Great Britain, once one of the Great Powers in China, was now not even fully recognised as a sovereign state by the new Communist regime; and its Embassy for some years was seen through Chinese eyes as the office of a "negotiating agent". 1 ha^.&eneraI stained here the WadeGiles system of Romanisa Uon of Chinese used in the previous volumes rather than shift to the current pinyin for two main reasons. First: a change in system now would make if far more difficult to refer back from the present book to the previous volumes. Second: WadeGiles or something very like it was usually used in the sources upon which this book is based. While ere is no great problem in applying the new system to Chinese place JZ?8' f T"0' i alWayS bG Said for names of Persons om rv Chinese characters are not available). For venfonCTenV, I the traditional English thus PekTn "h agre6S "f"116" W'th Wade"Gil" nor Chinese usage: hus Peking has remained Peking rather than have been permitted wordTlT* mt° Pmg °r Beijing'In the transliteration of Tibetan words I have in most cases adopted either the form generally used in Richardson 7T ^ r m by recent ^ ^ H.E Richardson, H. Harrer, G.N. Patterson, Rinchen Dolma Taring and VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa (who are not always in exact agreement). For words in Indian languages, including place names, I have on occasion used a form common during the British period (Himalayas for Himalaya, Ganges for Ganga and so on). Apart from the archival and secondary sources, to which reference is made in the notes, I derived a considerable amount of information from discussions with people who were actively involved in the conduct of policy with or relating to Tibet in the period covered by this book. I would particularly like in this context to remember with gratitude the late Lt.Col. F.M. Bailey and the late Captain G.A. Nevill who talked to me at considerable length about their experiences. The late Karunakar Gupta urged me over a number of years to complete this narrative which I had virtually abandoned at 1914. During his last two periods of research in England he provided me with copies of material he had unearthed in the India Office Library and Records and the Public Record Office; and when I finally did start on this book I soon realised that Karunakar Gupta had laid down for me some extremely useful foundations. I am indeed sad that I cannot express my gratitude to him in person. Another scholar who freely discussed with me his researches into the history of British relations with Tibet was the late Sir John Addis. I very much appreciate his making available to me the result of his work in Harvard during the course of which he discovered the strange history of the publication of the text of the Simla Convention in Aitchison's Treaties. I am also very grateful to that doyen of Chinese scholarbureaucrat Tibetan specialists, Liu Shengqi, for telling me about his time in Lhasa. When I started serious research on a subject which I had not touched for nearly two deacdes, I found the unstinting help of Rajkumari Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh of enormous value. Without her encouragement I would probably not have persevered to the end; and without being able to discuss with her the sources in the India Office Library and Records, of which she possesses a unique understanding, I would certainly have missed a great deal of importance. She also read the typescript of this book and came up with a number of most useful suggestions, some of which I have followed and some I have not. The conclusions to which I have come, of course, are my own; and Rajkumari Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh must be blamed for none of them. Her two books, both of which appeared while this work was nearing completion, Himalayan Triangle and A Guide to Source Materials in the India Office Library and Records for the History of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan 17651950, have been extremely useful to me. For the subject of this book, in the main the history of Tibet as seen through British eyes, there are two major archival sources in London, the Foreign Office records preserved in the Public Record Office and vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS the India Office and Government of India records in the India Office Library and Records. The India Office Library and Records collec tion contains the key material emanating from the process of British administration in India to which has been added relevant material sent either by the Foreign Office in London to the India Office or direct to India by the British diplomatic representation in Peking. The Foreign Office records contain little of the internal Indian material while the bulk of the Foreign Office material concerning Tibetan affairs is in the India Office archives. For this, and other technical reasons, while I have consulted both archives, I have except in a very few instances referred to both India Office and Foreign Office documents in the context of the India Office Library and Records. My research in the India Office Library and Records was greatly helped by its Deputy Director, Martin Moir, to whom I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude. I must also thank the staff at the Libraries of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Chatham House, the Royal Geographical Society and the University of Cambridge for various supererogatory services. I would also like to thank Rajesh Borkhataria for his unstinting assistance in the mastery of the electronic wizardry with the aid of which this book was written. My father, Sir Lionel Lamb, whose experience of British diplomacy in China is surely unique and who was directly involved in Anglo Chinese relations for some 30 years of the period covered in this book, was an unfailing source of advice and information, particularly about personalities both British and Chinese. His knowledge of the convoluted politics of Szechuan in the 1920s was especially valuable. He must not, however, be blamed for any interpretation of events or assessments of character which I may have made: these are mine alone. As in everything that I have written, I owe a great debt to my wife, Venice, who in this instance not only read the book in typescript,' designed it and advised on other aspects of its production, helped with the index and drew the maps, but also provided constant encouragement throughout the three years during which it was gestating. Unpublished Crowncopyright documents in the India Office Records and Public Record Office reproduced/transcribed in this StatnaToffice. PermiSSi°n °f ^ °f Her MaJe^'S Alastair Lamb, Hertford, March 1989. viii
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