British Tibet campaign
The British Tibet Campaign (English. British expedition to Tibet ) of British India forces from November 1903 to September 1904 began after the failure of negotiations between British India and the Tibetan government and took place at the time of the struggle between Russia and Great Britain for supremacy in Central Asia instead of ( The Great Game ). He was directed against the diplomatic influence of the Russian Empire on Tibet and took advantage of the fact that Russia was militarily bound due to the tensions with the Empire of Japan and later by the Russo-Japanese War . The fortress of Gyangzê was stormed and Lhasa was taken after the flight of the Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatsho . General James RL Macdonald (1862-1927) and Major Francis Younghusband led the expedition sent by the Viceroy of India , Lord Curzon .
background
From the perspective of British colonial rule, Tibet was one of the most problematic neighboring countries. It was almost inaccessible and ruled by the Dalai Lama and Buddhist monks, who showed indifference to the government in India. Little was known about Tibet from the western point of view and what little was known came from a handful of European explorers and a number of pundits such as Nain Singh , who traveled to Tibet for the British-Indian surveying authority Great Trigonometrical Survey in 1866 and among others until it reached Lhasa.
Tibet was seen as a country that consciously closed itself off from the outside world and whose religious rulers were keen to keep their subjects in ignorance of the outside world. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Tibetan government had shown itself unwilling for more than 20 years to facilitate any trade with India or even to allow the border to be crossed from Sikkim or Bhutan into Tibetan territory. However, a number of Britons have assumed that Tibet is more open to Tsarist Russia. The attitude of many Britons who had influence in British India was summed up by Lord Lansdowne , Viceroy of India from 1888 to 1894 and British Foreign Minister in 1903, to the Russian Ambassador in February 1903:
“We are much more interested in Tibet than Russia. It follows that if there is any sign of Russian activity, we will be forced to take action, and not on the same level, but will surpass the actions of the Russians. Should she send a mission or an expedition there, we would do the same, but in much larger numbers ”
Both the incumbent Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon and the later expedition leader Francis Younghusband not only shared this view, they also felt they were under immediate pressure to act because they were wrongly convinced that the Mongolian Lama Agvan Dorzhiev was with the Russian Empire for the Tibetans negotiate. The reason for these fears, which have prevailed on the British side since 1900, were, among other things, several Russian newspaper reports from 1900 and 1901 that the Lama had delivered a letter from the Tsar to the Dalai Lama in 1900 and Dorzhiev followed him with a delegation of Tibetan monks a year later Russia returned. They had also been informed by the Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi that Russia was delivering weapons to Tibet and that another 200 Mongolian monks lived in Tibet, which would have made it easy for Russia to spy on the country. This information also ultimately turned out to be incorrect.
The failed attempt to establish a diplomatic relationship
Britain's diplomatic efforts to establish trade relations in 1903 failed, not least, as Wade Davis points out, because of a fundamental cultural misunderstanding on the British side.
The mission was entrusted to Younghusband, an experienced explorer who a few years earlier had become the first European to cross the Gobi desert and the Karakoram Mountains on foot. Lawrence James notes, however, that the main reason for transferring the leadership of the expedition to Younghusband was that he, like Lord Curzon, was firmly convinced of a threat to British India from Tsarist Russia. Younghusband was accompanied by Captain Frederick O'Connor, the only person in the British Army who spoke Tibetan, and 500 sepoys . Claude White, actually the political officer in Sikkim, also joined the expedition group in Gangtok. The Chinese-speaking Claude White was to serve as an additional interpreter for the expedition. Younghusband first sent his troops ahead to Tibet, while from July 4, 1903, he waited at the Tibetan border until the British camp below the fortress was set up in Kampa Dzong , a small town just across the Tibetan border. On July 18th he rode in there with all diplomatic honors. Younghusband waited in vain for frustrating months in Kampa Dzong for Tibetan officials to arrive to negotiate with him.
The Tibetans, on the other hand, had no interest in a dialogue, especially not in one that should take place on their own territory. They insisted there would be no negotiations until British troops withdrew beyond the border with Tibet. A negotiation was also not possible because the 13th Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatsho had withdrawn to a three-year meditation and without him no major decisions could be made. The British expedition passed the waiting time with hunting, horse racing and collecting plants. After several months of in vain waiting, the British representatives were ordered back to India. For the Tibetans, however, their success turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory . The British took the first opportunity to assert their interests by force of arms.
The Tibet campaign
occasion
Towards the end of 1903 a small group of Tibetan soldiers crossed the border, stole a herd of Nepalese yaks and drove them into Tibet. Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India and thus ruler of 300 million men and women, was a welcome occasion to inform the British government on November 3, 1903 of an act of hostility on the part of the Tibetan military and to entrust Younghusband with a military expedition to Tibet. The London Cabinet was not happy about this but eventually agreed to a limited military expedition. In his history of British colonial rule in India, Lawrence James comes to the conclusion that it was ultimately a typical incident in which decision-makers on the ground involved the British government in a border war that it had previously tried to avoid.
The assignment to Younghusband was to penetrate as deeply as possible into Tibetan territory, but in no case further than the fortress of Gyangzê , halfway to Lhasa . This show of British strength was intended to force the Tibetans to the negotiating table. The Russian government protested against this practice.
At the beginning of December the British gathered a total of 5,000 men in Darjiling and Gangtok . Most of them were Gurkhas and Sikhs , but also pioneers, engineers, artillery and machine gun units of the regular army, as well as military police, medical staff, experts in telegraph services and diplomats. They were accompanied by a handful of journalists who were supposed to report on the project for British newspapers. The military expedition was accompanied by 10,000 porters and 20,000 yaks who were supposed to ensure the supply of the troops. On December 13th, Younghusband crossed the Jelep La Pass near Kalimpong , which led into the Tibetan highlands. They followed the Chumbi valley towards Gyantse for three weeks and then reached the Tibetan plateau. Younghusband decided to set up his winter camp here. His military commander, General James MacDonald of the Royal Engineers, thought the position Younghusband had chosen was too exposed in the face of the winter weather. He withdrew again into the Chumbi Valley while the diplomatic part of the expedition, accompanied only by a small military unit, stayed on the high plateau and negotiated with the Tibetans. The Tibetans insisted that the Mongolian Lama Dorzhiev was only staying with the Dalai Lama for religious reasons, that there was no diplomatic relationship between Tibet and the Russian Empire, and that there was no alliance between these two countries. Wade Davis points out that by then the British were too committed to accept this as the true truth. In March, Younghusband ended the negotiations and decided that the expedition should advance further towards Lhasa, although one could be sure that the Tibetans would give up their non-fighting behavior if they made further advance.
The Guru massacre
At the end of March, the British troops crossed a flat plain and came across several thousand Tibetan soldiers at Guru's. Some sat on ponies, armed with old-fashioned muzzle - loaders , slingshots, axes, swords and spears. The British marched towards this gathering of Tibetan soldiers in the formation typical of the British Army: First the infantry, behind them the artillery and the Maxim machine guns on the sides. The British expectation that the Tibetan troops would withdraw in the face of clear British arms superiority was not fulfilled. Eventually the two troops faced each other and General James MacDonald gave the order to disarm the Tibetans. When one of the British soldiers grabbed the reins of one of the Tibetan generals, the latter drew his pistol and shot the soldier in the face, whereupon the Maxim machine guns opened fire. Davis calls the success of the British one of those further, effortless victories of a colonial power against hopelessly inferior locals and compares it to the Battle of Omdurman . The Tibetans did not surrender in this battle, but withdrew slowly, while the British did not cease firing for some unknown reason. While eight soldiers and one journalist were wounded on the British side, more than six hundred Tibetans died and countless others were injured.
The massacre already caused horror among those present. Younghusband called the incident horrific, one of the British officers wrote to his mother that he hoped he would never again have to shoot men who were simply going away and Henry Savage Landor , one of the British correspondents present, mentioned the incident in his report to London The slaughter of thousands of helpless and defenseless locals that must be repugnant to anyone who is a man.
Lhasa
The Tibetan troops withdrew further north and British troops followed them. There were a number of small skirmishes and finally a two-month siege of the fortress of Gyangzê, during which the British suffered ten casualties and the Tibetans about five thousand. On August 3, 1904, Younghusband reached Lhasa , which so far had only been reached by a few Europeans.
Lhasa turned out to be a great disappointment: The Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatsho had interrupted his retreat to meditate and fled into exile in Mongolia. He didn't return until five years later. Younghusband found it difficult to find people on site to negotiate with. An attempt to replace the Dalai Lama with the Panchen Lama Thubten Chökyi Nyima failed. After mediation by Ugyen Wangchuk , the future king of Bhutan, who had accompanied the British military expedition, Younghusband ultimately found four members of the Tibetan cabinet, the so-called Kasgar, to whom he could dictate his terms. Signed September 7, 1904, these agreements gave the British control of the Chumbi Valley for the next 75 years, allowed free access to Lhasa for a British commercial agent, and prohibited Tibetans from negotiating with other foreign powers unless the UK had previously agreed.
Younghusband found no traces of Russian activity in Tibet: there was no arsenal or railroad. Indeed, the Mongolian lama Agvan Dorzhiev seemed nothing more than a simple monk. Edmund Chandler, who had accompanied the expedition for the Daily Mail , stated to his readers that the idea that British colonial rule could be endangered by an advance of Tsarist Russia into geographically isolated and so inaccessible Tibet was absurd. On September 23, 1904, the British expedition left Tibet because they feared the beginning of winter.
It was not until April 1906 that the Lhasa Treaty was confirmed by the Chinese government, and instead of the Tibetans, it paid war compensation to the British Empire. The Chinese government thus documented its unchanged claim to sovereignty over Tibet ( suzerainty ).
Aftermath
The alleged threat to the British-Indian borders from Tsarist Russia, which was the actual cause of the British campaign in Tibet, proved to be non-existent as early as 1907. In his history of the British-Indian colonial empire, Lawrence James even speaks of an implosion of the threat posed by Russia that was comparable to the end of the Cold War in the last 20 years of the 20th century. In August 1907, under pressure from France, Russia buried its disputes with Great Britain and promised to leave the borders of British India untouched.
literature
- Wade Davis: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest. Vintage digital. London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84792-184-0 .
- Karl-Heinz Golzio, Pietro Bandini: The fourteen rebirths of the Dalai Lama. The rulers of Tibet - how they come back, how they are found, what they have left behind. OW Barth, Bern et al. 1997, ISBN 3-502-61002-9 .
- Patrick French: Younghusband. The Last Great Imperial Adventurer . HarperCollins, London 2004, ISBN 0-00-637601-0 . (English).
- Hopkirk Peter : The Great Game. On Secret Service in High Asia. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., London 1990. ISBN 0-7195-4727-X . (English).
- Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. Abacus, London 1997, ISBN 0-349-11012-3 .
- Gordon T. Stewart: Journeys to Empire. Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774-1904. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-73568-1 .
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ a b Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. P. 390
- ↑ Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. P. 390 and p. 391. In the original the quote is We are much more closelyinterest than Russia in Tebet, it followed that, should there be any display of Russion activity in that country, we should be obliged to reply by a display of activity not only equivalent to, but dispatcher that made by Russia. If they sent a mission or an expedition, we should have to do the same, but in greater strength.
- ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 52.
- ↑ a b c d e Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 55.
- ↑ Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. P. 391.
- ^ A b c Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P.56.
- ↑ Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. , P. 391
- ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 57.
- ↑ a b c d e Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 58.
- ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 59.
- ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 60.
- ^ Hopkirk Peter: The Great Game. On Secret Service in High Asia. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., London 1990. Pages 509-512, 517-519
- ↑ Lawrence James: Raj. The Making of British India. , P. 392.