Britain, China, and Tibet, 19041950
With the aim of
providing an in-depth primary source for the historical status of Tibet
still such a contentious issue a microfiche edition of all
India Office files and classified official print covering relations between
China, Tibet, and the British in the first half of the twentieth century,
has recently been initiated.
* By ANTHONY FARRINGTON
The collection, which will amount to approximately
35,000 pages of data, is being edited by Anthony Farrington, former
Deputy Director of the Oriental & India Office Collections at the
British Library. This involves arranging the material by subject, enhancing
the existing descriptions, and developing an overall guide and index,
for it to be available early in 2002.
The files and related papers that accumulated at the India
Office were composed of a number of sources. Firstly, the Foreign &
Political Department of the British Government of India, responsible
for policy across the northern border of British India reported back
to the Viceroy and to the Secretary of State at the India Office in
London. These highly detailed reports include masses of political, commercial,
and topographical intelligence gathered in the first instance by British
officials such as the Trade Agent at Gartok and the Political Officer
in Sikkim.
Secondly, the Foreign Office in London and its embassy
and consular posts within China forwarded material on Chinese activities
and claims to the India Office that rendered a rather different perspective
from that of British India. Thirdly, there are files from the period
between Indian Independence and 1950, when the new Government of India
attempted to continue its predecessor's policy. Finally, there are additions
of various kinds, in the form of minutes and comments, made by the India
Office Political Department.
The new subject arrangement of the files is emerging as
roughly chronological, beginning with direct British military intervention
in Tibet the Younghusband Mission of 1903-04 followed
by negotiations to keep Tsarist Russia at a distance, and then the return
of the thirteenth Dalai Lama from China to Tibet. There is extensive
coverage of Tibet's break with China after the 1911 Revolution, the
subsequent Simla Conference of 1912, and the McMahon Line delimitation
of the Indo-Tibetan border.
Tibet's internal affairs and British encouragement of
de facto independence throughout the 1920s and 1930s led to a more delicate
relationship with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government during World
War II. Particularly interesting from this period are the files on the
discovery of the fourteenth (and present) Dalai Lama between 1937 and
1939. Ultimately, there is information on the complete reversal brought
about by Indian Independence in 1947, the Communist victory in China,
and the subsequent Chinese invasion of Tibet.
Interesting sidelines to the main thrust of political
events are provided by annual reports on trade relations between Tibet
and India, and by a group of files on British and foreign travellers
and would-be travellers to Tibet. At the time, the Government of India
forwarded travellers' applications for permission to enter the country
to Lhasa and these documents show individuals to have ranged from botanists
and mountaineers to suspect foreign agents and slightly dotty seekers
after truth.
Claims
on Tibet
As a preview of the collection's content, two examples
are offered here. In 1912 the Chinese garrison of Lhasa surrendered
to the Tibetans. A detailed report on the British Mission that organized
their repatriation through India, as well as giving a day-by-day account
of arrangements, has fascinating information on personalities and attitudes.
Chinese Special Commissioner Hai Chu, awaiting their arrival in India,
is described as 'a great disappointment. He did not even take the trouble
to visit the Chinese camp at Kalimpong. In fact, I think his chief aim
was to keep out of the way of the Chinese troops, among whom the impression
was widely spread that he was going off with a large sum of money intended
for disbursement as their back pay'. Chinese military discipline aroused
comment 'on two occasions that I am aware of commanding officers
desired to decapitate men and were surprised and disappointed that this
could not be permitted on British soil. I was astonished to find opium
smoking very prevalent among some units, notably the Resident's Bodyguard
and the artillery detachment, where it was done openly with the cognizance
of and even in the presence of the officers.' The report, which is illustrated
with several pages of photographs, concludes 'One can hardly
expect that the Chinese Central Government will be particularly grateful
for our action. The wounded pride of the self-complacent Young China
Party and a feeling of soreness at the eclipse of the growing Chinese
ascendancy in Tibet may, not unnaturally, to a great extent obscure
their sense of obligation to the Indian Government for what has been
done for their troops.'
The papers on the Tibetan Trade Mission to the USA and
Britain in 1948 provide page after page of agonized minutes, setting
out the way India Office officials saw their current position (by then
revamped as section 'B' of the new Commonwealth Relations Office). Their
despair at what the Foreign Office would claim was the wider picture
becomes nearly tangible.
The brief for Prime Minister Clement Attlee's meeting
with the mission on 3 December 1948 states 'The Chinese Government
have never abandoned their claim that Tibet is a part of China under
their control. An attempt to make this claim a reality at the beginning
of this century met with fierce resistance and finally collapsed at
the time of the Chinese Revolution. Ever since that time Tibet has in
fact been an autonomous state and has always been recognized as such
by the British Government who concluded a treaty with Tibet in 1914.
The attitude of the British Government has been to acknowledge a Chinese
claim of suzerainty over Tibet but to insist in all other respects that
Tibet is an autonomous state with whom they have insisted on having
direct relations. If the Mission should refer to the vexed question
of Chinese claims to the control of Tibet it is suggested that the Prime
Minister should be non-commital.' But behind the scenes, departmental
in-fighting resulted in such minutes as 'It looks as if the Foreign
Office, through sheer inexperience of dealing with Tibet and ignorance
of the history of the business are proposing to cold shoulder a Tibetan
Trade Mission which is due to arrive in the UK in a few days. The situation
unfortunately came to notice rather late and the Southeast Asia Department
(who have been overborne by the China Department and who would quite
welcome our intervention) tell us that any intervention by us now would
have to be at a high level. We must bear in mind that if we accept the
Chinese claims about Tibet we shall have a row with the Government of
India.' *
Anthony
Farrington is continuing as a consultant at the British Library's
Oriental & India Office Collections after 35 years' work in the
archives of the English East India Company. His research interests lie
in source publication, especially EIC documentation for Southeast and
East Asia.
E-mail:
oioc-enquiries@bl.uk