Continuing the series on Tibetan history with an article on the early twentieth century.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Tibet was trapped between much more powerful neighbours all around. Tibetan leaders had continued to resist approaches from the British Empire located in its Indian colonies, understanding that the British were only interested in Tibet as a route to the riches of China – or else to deny the country to the Russians, who were then suspected, with some justification, of having designs of their own on India. When the British began to feel that Tibet’s ostensible ruler, China, was not controlling her well enough, a military-ambassadorial mission was sent to Tibet to achieve an agreement, by force of arms if necessary. Force of arms did prove necessary and, in the subsequent fighting, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee to China. The Lhasa treaty of 1904 was another in a long series of unequal treaties forced upon unwilling parties by much stronger colonial powers.
However, fortunately or not for the Tibetan people, who were not consulted in any case, the British achieved a separate treaty in 1906 with the China. This treaty recognised China as the suzerain of Tibet and limited British influence accordingly. The Dalai Lama fled again, in 1910, to India. However, Chinese control was this time short-lived because, taking advantage of the 1911-2 Chinese Revolution, the Tibetans rose up and expelled all Chinese from their country. Tibet was an independent country until 1951, although independence did not bring much in the way of economic or social development. It was ended in 1951 when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army felt itself ready to take Tibet back into the Chinese fold – this was the ‘Liberation of Tibet’ on Communist lines from its, from Chinese Communist Party perspective, sadly backwards feudal-religious misery. The invasion was planned in 1949, enacted the following year and ended by an agreement in 1951 which provided supposed autonomy for Tibetan people and respect for its religion, at the cost of accepting Chinese presence in Lhasa and throughout the country in both military and political formats.
Tibetan people had been influenced surprisingly little by neighbouring Chinese and had adopted comparatively few cultural institutions from them. This marked Tibetan and Chinese as quite alien to each other. With Chinese interests placed resolutely above Tibetan ones, it made the psychic dislocation faced by the Tibetan people all the more severe.
The Introduction to the History of Tibet may be found here and it also lists other articles in this series.
