Dissenting voices were ignored, the mission was sent, and as Tibetans continued to resist British demands for opening up negotiations, the mission forced its way to Lhasa. The Dalai Lama fled but the Tibetan government was forced to sign the Lhasa Convention, a treaty that was described by Candler as "the result of an impression, upon the least impressionable People in the world" (in IOR: MSS EUR/F197/108 n.d., 3). Even though Curzon rejected Chinese control as a fiction unhelpful to a modern civilized power such as British India, the Lhasa treaty signed at the end of the invasion did not indicate a defining of Tibet in terms of independence. [50] This is understandable, for the British government was by now clearly averse to "any policy in Tibet which would tend to throw on the British Empire an additional burden" (IOR: MSS EUR/F197/106, 46). In a speech delivered on the signing of the Lhasa Convention on 7 September 1904, Younghusband mentioned "Chinese suzerainty" even though it was not included in any written text:
The Convention has been signed… In the Convention the British Government have been careful to avoid interfering in the smallest degree with your religion. They have annexed no part of your country. They have made no attempt to interfere in your internal affairs. They fully recognise the continued suzerainty of the Chinese Government… You have found us bad enemies when you have not observed treaty obligations and shown disrespect to the British Representative. You will find us equally good friends if you keep the present treaty and show civility. (Ibid., 271)
Tibet was forcefully brought into the international arena. Campbell points out in a memorandum dated 5 April 1906 that the Amban representing the Qing imperial authority refused to sign the Anglo-Tibetan Convention in 1904 on the ground that it "robbed China of her suzerainty" and because the Chinese objected to the British "making any Convention with Tibet" (IOR: L/P &S/18/B157 1906, 178). In fact, Britain signed an Adhesion Agreement with China in 1906 as a follow-up to the Lhasa Convention.
This forced opening of Tibet had significant geopolitical impact as it led to an increased Chinese awareness of vulnerability at its "backdoor" (see Liming 1994; Tuttle 2005). Ironically, the Chinese central government sought to establish firm control over Tibet (first during the immediate aftermath of British invasion, and then from 1949 onward), ignoring its own history of a more loosely defined relationship with Tibet. In an official memorandum titled "Events in China, Korea and Siam, 1908," the change in Chinese stance is recognized unambiguously: "One clear result of her recent policy respecting the Dalai Lama is that China has officially proclaimed herself the Sovereign Power of Thibet, and can no longer evade the full responsibilities of its government" (in Nish 1995, 291). One can therefore see the Sino-Tibetan 1951 Seventeen Point Agreement and the events since then as completing what had been implemented initially in 1908 but was interrupted due to a civil war within China. The Dalai Lama's pleas for help from the British against new aggressive Chinese invasion were not accommodated, even though he appealed to the paternal aspect of British imperialism:
At such a time, when a big and powerful nation is trying to swallow up a smaller and weaker nation, we cannot help appealing to other powerful nations for aid and assistance, which the law of nations should make you feel bound to grant us, being impelled by regard for the duty imposed by the dignity, power and justice of your Mighty Empire. (IOR: L/P &S/10/150 2750 5-7 1908, 24)
However, the collapse of the Qing Imperial dynasty and internal crisis in China offered Tibet the opportunity to remove Chinese troops and establish a state free of Chinese political dominance. Even though the Lamaist state (1913-51) enjoyed de facto independence, there was no serious attempt to recognize it as independent.
Writing the "Chinese Suzerainty-Tibetan Autonomy" Formula
The British throughout the first part of the twentieth century stuck to the formula-Chinese suzerainty-Tibetan autonomy. In a memorandum of 17 August 1912, the British government clarified its stance: "While recognising the Chinese suzerainty, they were not prepared to admit the right of China to interfere in the internal administration of Tibet" (Foreign Office 1920, 41). Thus, "Outer Tibet would become an autonomous state under Chinese suzerainty and British protectorate" (ibid., 43).
The desire not to let support for Tibetan autonomy be interpreted as support for Tibetan independence is reflected in a letter of the India Office dated 11 July 1912 clarifying the British position on Tibet. It was modified internally before being presented to the outside world and stated:
(1) His Majesty's Government, while they have formally recognised the "suzerain rights" of China in Tibet, have never recognised, and are not prepared to recognise, Chinese sovereignty over that country.
(2) H. M.'s Govt. does not admit the right of China to intervene actively in the internal administration of Tibet. (IOR: L/P &S/10/265 1912, 47) [51]
Even when Morley was projecting the British as an "honest broker" in the Simla Talks (BOD MS Asquith 93 1913, 235), the British did not really care about the suzerainty-sovereignty issue so long as their interests were being met. In a secret memorandum dated 3 December 1924, J. P. Gibson made it clear:
The Tibetan desire to come to a permanent settlement with China is reasonable; but I doubt whether the Govt of India will allow Major Bailey to say that they will approach the Chinese Govt at the first favourable opportunity… so long as no Chinese attack is made on the Tibetan frontier, we would much prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. (IOR: L/P &S/10/718 1917, 74; emphasis added).
As Willoughby pointed out, Chinese "suzerainty (however shadowy) has been constantly admitted by us" (1924, 199). Colonel Weir's recommendation to make "friendly overtures" to China to secure at least "semi-independence" for Tibet was rejected because, as a British Indian bureaucrat cautioned in 1929, there was the "danger of China being baited into action" if "we flaunt our connection with Tibet in her eyes" (IOR: L/P &S/10/1113 1924, 15, 151). Of course, this simple British policy formula was a contested one. There were tensions between British India emphasizing Tibetan autonomy and British Home government in London exercising caution under the influence of Foreign Office (see McGranahan 2003; McKay 1997; Palace 2005). But even pro-Tibetan British officials, who tried to create a sense of nationalism among Tibetans (see McKay 2001), were careful in not encouraging Tibetan assertion of de jure independence. Chapman wrote in 1940, "We do not want to encourage the Tibetans to become once more a warlike nation; but in these days a country must be able to defend itself, and it has always been our policy to assist Tibet to maintain her position as an independent autonomous State under the nominal suzerainty of China" (1992, 110). In a letter dated 23 March 1912, the Viceroy had argued that for the security of British India the "geographical position of Tibet renders it absolutely necessary [that the] country should continue [to be] kept in state of political isolation" (IOR: L/P &S/10/265 1912; emphasis added). Here, Exotica Tibet was a good ally for the British imperial policy. A "forbidden kingdom," the "mysterious Tibet," and "closed Tibet"-these representations suited British interests for they effectively depoliticized the British imperial writing of Tibet's geopolitical identity in ambiguous terms. Ambiguity of geopolitical Tibet, nurtured by Exotica Tibet, was an asset for the British imperial policy.
Britain found the scenario of effectively independent Tibet coupled with British international rhetorical commitment to Chinese suzerainty convenient and avoided any change to this status quo so as not to offend China. For instance, in February 1917 in response to the India Office's letter demanding a vigorous protest at the inclusion of Tibet in the Chinese parliament, the Foreign Office wrote on behalf of Balfour:
The Chinese Government are extremely sensitive on the subject of the Tripartite Convention of 1914. That they have any intention of signing that instrument there is no reason to believe nor do His Majesty's Government possess at the present moment any means of forcing them to do so. It would therefore appear that a protest so strongly worded as that suggested would serve no purpose but would, on the other hand, produce extreme irritation in the Chinese Gove
rnment and Parliament at a moment when China is particularly well disposed towards this country and is even contemplating throwing in her lot with the Allied cause. (IOR: L/P &S/11/68 1913; emphasis added)
As a stable government in China emerged with the communist victory and the British withdrew from India, the "Chinese suzerainty-Tibetan autonomy" formula had reached a dead end. As pointed out earlier, China since the start of the twentieth century had always maintained its sovereignty over Tibet, and now it was in a military position to enforce it and "liberate" Tibet. The British, with the end of the empire in India, no longer conceptualized Tibet as strategic. India, with its anti-imperialist nationalism, saw Tibet as a remnant of British imperialism in the region (Norbu 1997). The belated Tibetan attempts to gain international support for a recognition of their independent status in the late 1940s came to nothing (see Shakya 1999; see also Fleck 1995) as "Tibet's" geopolitical identity got translated from suzerainty-autonomy to sovereignty-autonomy. Sautman argues that there is nothing exceptional about the Tibetan case, for "long suzerainty provides the basis for territorial sovereignty in relation to other states" (2002, 93). Whatever the international rights and wrongs of this translation, it is clear that the use of the modern conception of sovereignty was new and alien to traditional Sino-Tibetan relations (see Sperling 2004).
DELEGITIMIZING TRADITIONAL SINO-TIBETAN "INTERNATIONAL" RELATIONS
The failure of the British to understand the existing complex Sino-Tibetan relations had as much to do with their heady faith in the superiority of European norms as with their conflicting interests in the region. Where does this leave indigenous modes of interaction between China and Tibet? The "intent expressed by both sides through this relationship was not founded on the present-day under standing of sovereignty and interstate relations, influenced for the most part by the West" (Schmitz 2004, 48). The nature of the Tibetan state was interlinked with Sino-Tibetan relations.
Traditionally, political actors interpreted and understood their interstate relations in vocabularies familiar to them. Sino- Tibetan intercourse was no exception. The same relations could have been understood by the Chinese imperial officials in Confucian tributary terms and by the Tibetans as Buddhist mchod-yon. This does not validate the primacy of either worldview but reveals the complexity of the issue involved. Grounding the interaction in some universally accepted terms was unnecessary within the Chinese as well as the Tibetan worldview.
Personal, moral, religious, and political overtones were a significant part of the relations. While some have argued that mchod-yon, "patron-priest relations," was the main characteristic of the Sino-Tibetan world (see Klieger 1994), others have clarified that this was more about personal relationships between rulers and not about statehood (see Barnett 1999). Shakya points out that the concept indicates that the Tibetans viewed the Chinese emperor only as a secular institution, which is far from the case-Manchu emperors, for instance, were often referred to as Jampeyang Gongma, the incarnation of Manjushri, defining them not as merely secular patrons but as occupying a space within a Buddhist pantheon exercising some measure of secular authority in Tibet (1999, xxiii). The link between China's imperial dynasty and Tibet had a pronounced religious character and
is an example of the purely Central Asia concept of Patron and Priest in which the temporal support of the lay power is given in return for the spiritual support of the religious power… It is an elastic and flexible idea and not to be rendered in the cut-and-dried terms of modern western politics. There is no precise definition of the supremacy of one or the subordination of the other; and the practical meaning of the relationship can only be interpreted in the light of the facts of the moment. (Richardson, in Addy 1984, 27)
However, it is clear from observations of all nineteenth-century commentators and travelers that there was a definite political dimension to the relation too. Political dominance by the Chinese imperial dynasty was founded on a military supremacy even though for the most part China did not assert its dominance in politico-military terms. And throughout modern history, the relationship evolved depending on the internal and external situation in Tibet. Sperling argues rightly that it is a fallacy to underplay the political dominance entailed within the concept of mchod-yon (2004). Li points out that "the patronage relationship between China and Tibet in a Buddhistic sense is not comparable to any Western system and no exact equivalent can be found in Western terminology. At least, the Chinese part as a patron, who is supposed to give and not to take, should not be construed as a sign of weakness or as a sort of bribery" (1954, 215-16).
And yet, the patron derived a lot of symbolic resources from its priest. Tibetan Buddhism, with the support of senior Tibetan lamas, was seen as a sobering and controlling factor and a useful ally in the diverse Qing empire. And at the same time, the Qing imperial dynasty saw the Tibetan religious hierarchy as coreligionists and hence the senior lamas as integral to its own well-being. Tibet was a tributary state but it was a special one because of the charismatic lamas' dominant influence in Buddhist Central Asia (Norbu 1990).
The "confusion" about Sino-Tibetan relations arises partly out of the nature of the Tibetan state. It was not a state in the modern European sense simply because it was not a modern European state. The model of sovereign statehood that is the dominant vocabulary for collective political self-expression today is a product of decades of violent scripting upon the shifting sands of diverse and ambiguous political communities. Traditional Tibet could not be cartographi-cally and geopolitically mapped in modern times without recourse to epistemic and military coercion. This is what happened through the activities of European imperialism and then modern Chinese state making. McGranahan rightly argues that the traditional Tibet state did not conform to either the "colonial model" or the "united model" (as claimed by the Tibetan government in exile) but was a "contested" state that, if mapped, would "have to be a series of maps demonstrating change over time, and including the 'hard' lines of modern nation-states, graphical indication of contested territories, and gradual shading to designate areas of stronger and weaker connections to Lhasa, as well as the historically expansive borders of Tibet" (2003, 287).
The strangeness of Tibet as a state was not a result of the odd, irrational, fantastic, mystical, Tibetan way of being. In fact, there was nothing "strange" about Tibet. It was the universalization of specific particularistic European ideas through imperialism and decolonization that rendered the Tibetan state as strange and different and an anomaly by 1950. In his detailed study of the Tibetan state, Samuel reveals that "Tibet was a society that combined the literacy and rationality that we associate with centralized states with the subtle exploitation of shamanic processes more familiar from stateless and tribal peoples" (1993, 577; see also Samuel 1982, 1994).
This does not mean there was no Tibet before British imperialism and then the modern Chinese state constructed it. There certainly was the place of Tibet (even though it was not called as such), which had its own lived, competing, and complex histories and realities. But it could not be easily translatable into modern politico-legalistic terms. Even when China had "the upper hand" (Bataille 1992, 33), Tibet "enjoyed local autonomy over domestic matters" (Grunfeld 1987, 57), and more significantly, on the basis of simple experienced reality, Tibetans considered themselves not to be a part of China (Barnett 1999). The use of "Tibetan" as a category as different from "Chinese" itself may be a commentary on the separate Tibetan identity. While not being clear about the boundaries of Tibet, all foreign travelers seem to find it easy to differentiate between Tibetans and Chinese (for instance, Pratt 1892).
What Ward wrote in 1941 is an indicator of the alienness of the modern European conception of distinct geopolitical identity in the Tibetan context:
The Tibetans are a realistic people. They do not understand trigonometry. But they have solid understanding of their own culture, and its natural environment. So while the India government talks… about a natural frontier based on the positio
n of peaks in relation to one another and to remote astral bodies, the Tibetan walks over the passes and descends the India side of the Assam Himalayas until he reaches a point where trees of a certain kind cease, or crops of a certain kind fail, or where the summer temperature is too high for him, or there are too many flies. That, to him, is the natural frontier of Tibet. It is slightly fluid, and vague, and it bears no relation to the stars; but it is practical. There he stops, and marks the spot by building, not a fort, but a monastery to the greatest glory of his religion. (BOD MS Or. Aris 18 n.d., 232-33)
However, the traditional fuzzy setup of the Tibetan state and Sino-Tibetan relations became problematic when the sociocultural and political environment was altered. This occurred first with the arrival of Western colonial powers in Asia and second with the transformation of the traditional Confucian-dominated Chinese polity toward a more Europeanized political system, which produced Republican China and the growth of Chinese nationalism (Shakya 1999, xxiii). Since the early twentieth century, as the Chinese learned the modern European diplomatic language, they began to assert their relationship in terms of sovereignty. Tibetans, on the other hand, were late in adjusting to the modern world and refused to comply with treaties between British India and China concerning Tibet.
Thus, it was a "forceful interpretation of Sino-Tibetan relations in terms of European international law and praxis of (British) imperialism" (Norbu 1990, 67; emphasis in original) that lies at the genesis of the Tibet question, not some intractable nationalist and historical conflict between the Chinese and the Tibetans. The Westernization of international relations made it inevitable that when China gained control over Tibet in 1951 there would no longer exist the traditional symbolic relationship but rather an absolute rule. For the first time in its history, through the Seventeen Point Agreement, [52] Tibet acknowledged Chinese sovereignty in writing, leaving no space for an ambiguous term like "suzerainty." The internationalization of the Westphalian international order based on sovereign statehood had a differential effect on Tibet and China-it allowed the regional hegemon (China) to assert and exercise control over Tibet.
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