| ----对那些无知、自大、顽固不化的老外，让他看看这里的英文版本，再不然，就让 他看看YouTube这段视频：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9QNKB34cJo，让他也享受 一下不同的宣传攻势。要是他还认为40年代的西藏不是中国的一部份，那就让他看看 1944年美国陆军编辑的中国战场纪录片，片中明确地说明，1944年的中国包括中原、 东北、内门古、新疆和西藏：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOtVQ7cNWY "当我看到电视上的暴乱画面时，我马上就明白了是怎么回事。暴乱的有组织性跟发生在法国的有组织暴乱一模一样。因为我在法国生活了21年，与法国保持密切联系达40多年（，因此可以看得出来）。它们之间唯一的区别是，在拉萨并没有多少普通群众加入到暴乱中。暴徒们的数量少的惊人，却很有组织性。中国在世界上的正面形象受到了损害。 达赖喇嘛一贯做出一副友善和温和的父亲形象。这是个陈旧伎俩，希特勒和斯大林这些独裁者都曾用过。我并不是要拿他与他们做比较，但他在不惜一切，力图夺权时的所作所为就像一个恶魔。他从没有关心过人们的生活，没有考虑过这么做是否违背了佛教非暴力的原则。这是一次失败的政变。现在他却在呼吁国际社会，帮助阻止由他，他本人，一手策划的暴乱！" |
作者：艾瑞克·格兰奎斯特（Eirik Granqvist）教授是世界资深的脊椎动物标本剥制制作师，曾参与多个欧洲自然史、动物学博物馆的景观制作、展览项目，制作了大量姿态生动、造型逼真的动物标本，也曾担任过芬兰两个自然史博物馆的馆长和北欧数个动物学博物馆的藏品管理者。现任国际博物馆协会自然史博物馆及藏品专业委员会(ICOM-Nathist)标本剥制艺术工作委员会主席和国际博协自然史专业委员会资深委员。该作者曾于2006年私人访问过西藏，（资料来源：上海科技馆网站http://www.sstm.org.cn/structure/kpsq/kjgrdxwp?infid=5） "西方媒体宣称中国封锁消息，任何有关拉萨暴乱的消息都传不出去。我对这种明显违背事实的说法非常愤怒，无法忍受这些有关中国的不实报道。因此，尽管我不是记者，我还是撰写了这篇文章。我将这篇文章和另外两篇类似文章一道通过电子邮件传送给了三家西方报纸。它们均收到了我的邮件，但其中两家既没有给我回音，也没有刊登我的稿件，第三家回复我说，希望将我的稿件裁减，许多天后作为普通的'读者之声'刊发。与之相对照的是，它们每天都大量刊发达赖喇嘛的言论，真是形成了反中国的宣传阵势。而我所写的文章对这些'自由的媒体'来说显得对中国太过于友好了。"-艾瑞克·格兰奎斯特
作者2006年访问西藏（照片由作者提供）
作者夫妇2006年访问西藏（照片由作者提供）
作者夫人与藏族导游和藏民在一起（照片由作者提供） 当我看到电视里和中国日报上关于拉萨暴乱的新闻时感到非常吃惊。然而让我最吃惊的并不是暴徒们的野蛮行径，而是在我的祖国，芬兰，媒体是如何报道这个事件的。一位朋友将有关报道扫描后传给了我，我也从网络上查阅了所能找到的相关报道。（注：该作者现在中国） 很少有芬兰人到过西藏，但我和夫人在2006年去过。我们当时是私人旅行，并没有参加旅游团。我亲眼看到了拉萨，并且与当地人进行了交谈。这完全没有任何限制。好吧，（如果说有，）我们有一个可爱而称职的导游，她对我们帮助很多，上午她将我们带到我们想去的地方，而在下午，我们就独自行动了。因此，我觉得，（就西藏问题，）我需要说点什么。 我也对历史感兴趣，在这方面比一般人了解得多。写这篇文章时，我没有任何参考书，都是基于我的记忆。因此如果文章中哪里有点小差错，请原谅。不管怎样，我想这使我的文章具有客观性。我非常清楚，我会因为这件事，因为撰写我认为是事实的东西而受到指责。我会被那些自以为了解真相，实际却并不了解的人指责，被那些没有亲眼目睹事实的人指责。 几个世纪以来，西藏曾经是尼泊尔和中国之间的协约自治区。有时，中国也统治着尼泊尔。因此在那段时期，西藏统治者经常分别娶一位中国妃子和一位尼泊尔妃子，其他妃子就是西藏人了。 五世达赖喇嘛时期，宗教和政治权力集中到了达赖喇嘛一个人身上。西藏进入神权独裁时期，与世隔绝。外人不再允许入藏。 19世纪末，著名的瑞典旅行家斯文·赫定(Sven·Hedin)试图进入拉萨，却被达赖喇嘛礼貌地遣回，赶出西藏。 一位法国女藏学家亚历山德拉·大卫·妮尔(Alexandra David-Néel)则幸运得多。她讲一口流利藏语，装扮成藏族朝圣者的模样进入拉萨。她曾告诉别人，很多次她都非常害怕被发现。她知道，如果被发现，她可能会像其他疑犯或反对者一样，从布达拉宫外墙上"意外跌落"。 |
那时的西藏不是天堂，而是非人道的、独裁的地方！
没落的中国清王朝对西藏的影响力越来越小。北方的俄罗斯帝国和南方的大英帝国对西藏越来越感兴趣。
1903年，一支由杨哈思班（Younghusband）上校率领的英国远征军抵达拉萨。英国人战死4名士兵，却屠杀了超过700名试图阻止他们的西藏人。这些藏人当时的主要拦截手段仅仅是宗教魔法。英国人在拉萨建立了"商务代表处"。中国人将达赖喇嘛撤离到青海高原，在那里他的行动自由受到限制，也许这是为了防止他与英国占领者进行接触。
1907年，芬兰民族英雄马歇尔·曼纳海姆（Marshal Mannerheim）在进行他著名的穿越中亚的马背之旅期间，拜访了达赖喇嘛。他当时是沙皇俄国军队的上校，他的旅行实际上是一次间谍行为。正因为如此，他才对13世达赖喇嘛产生兴趣。
达赖喇嘛的权力逐渐削弱。1950年，解放军和平进入西藏。看来14世达赖喇嘛在初期之所以接受这个现实，仅仅是想将其作为维持自己神权独裁统治的保障。1954年，他奢侈地扩大和重建了夏宫罗布林卡（Norbulingka Summer Palace）。
然而，中国政府已经决定要废除西藏残酷的神权独裁制度。在这种制度下，反对者们被从布达拉宫上扔下；边境对所有外来者关闭；仅有的学校都是宗教学校。大家都知道，对统治者来说，统治一个低文化水平、对外界一无所知的民族会更容易。在当时，西藏5%的人拥有全部财富，其他人几乎一无所有；约40%的人是僧侣，他们像寄生虫一样，需要其他人喂养。当时的西藏不是天堂！
中国政府决定，应该赋予西藏人民与其他国人一样的权力和相同的社会地位。寺院不应再供养过多的僧侣。
西藏以前只有一些羊肠小道与外界沟通，其他地方与外界隔绝。中国政府很快修建了用于交通的马路。西藏与世隔绝的状态被打破了。
1959年，由于权力地位不断削弱，年轻的达赖喇嘛利用宗教发动了叛乱。这次叛乱最终被制止。达赖喇嘛和一些追随者离开西藏，逃到印度。在那里，他继续挑起事端，妄图重返西藏，恢复中国已不再允许的神权独裁统治。
之后就是全中国都感到痛苦的十年文革时期，中国关上了国门。
现在，拉萨有了现代化的机场和铁路。中国政府对西藏投入巨大。西藏人民的生活水平提高很多。上个圣诞节，我在海南岛看到一些西藏人在庆祝太阳节。我非常幸运地看到一些身着传统服饰的藏族老年妇女和她们的丈夫一起在沙滩上散步，藏族年轻人则穿得像其他年轻人一样，享受着沙滩生活。
达赖喇嘛重新掌权的可能性降低了，他的人民不再跟随他。中印两国正在发展合作，密切友谊，印度以后必然不会为承认达赖喇嘛而破坏中印关系的发展。达赖喇嘛再进行反对中国的活动，不大可能得逞了。
因此最近，当他看到有可能损害中国现有良好国际形象，煽动联合抵制北京奥运时，达赖喇嘛开始了全球游说活动。
拉萨暴乱是精心准备的。一些制革工人非法跨越边境，去见达赖，以接受他的指令。一群外国登山者在边境拍摄到了一次不幸的意外。一名越境者被射杀，另一名在越境后公开宣称想要去见达赖喇嘛。我是在（去年）11月份，来中国之前，在电视里看到了这个节目。
中国已经不是封闭的国家了。如果不是为了干非法勾当，没有必要非法越境。你只需要申请一本护照和必要的签证，就可以从边境站合法过境。或者采取更方便的方式，只需乘坐班机，从拉萨飞到加德满都就行了。
拉萨那里没有和平示威，只有野蛮打砸。一些年轻人周密策划，在多个地点，在同一时间开始暴乱，以便使警察和消防队无所防备，无法同时奔赴多个地点。他们做到了！他们不分青红皂白，见东西就砸。所有能被打碎的东西在最短的时间里就被打烂。他们用汽油燃烧弹到处放火，焚烧停驶的汽车。18名普通市民和1名警察被无情杀害。这名警察已接到命令，不许武力反击，避免引发国际指责！
当我看到电视上的暴乱画面时，我马上就明白了是怎么回事。暴乱的有组织性跟发生在法国的有组织暴乱一模一样。因为我在法国生活了21年，与法国保持密切联系达40多年（，因此可以看得出来）。它们之间唯一的区别是，在拉萨并没有多少普通群众加入到暴乱中。暴徒们的数量少的惊人，却很有组织性。中国在世界上的正面形象受到了损害。
达赖喇嘛一贯做出一副友善和温和的父亲形象。这是个陈旧伎俩，希特勒和斯大林这些独裁者都曾用过。我并不是要拿他与他们做比较，但他在不惜一切，力图夺权时的所作所为就像一个恶魔。他从没有关心过人们的生活，没有考虑过这么做是否违背了佛教非暴力的原则。这是一次失败的政变。现在他却在呼吁国际社会，帮助阻止由他，他本人，一手策划的暴乱！
2006年，当我访问西藏时，我吃惊于那里宽松的环境和拉萨街头寥寥无几的警察。我满眼看到的都是西藏人，而非汉人。环境非常安宁，人们生活幸福。那里没有令人压抑的感觉。我没有感受到在苏联非人性的制度垮台前，曾在苏联和及其卫星国所多次感受到的那种压抑。 拉萨人非常友好，他们想与我攀谈，多数情况下由于我不懂汉语或藏语而无法沟通。但我不时可以遇到一些讲一点英语的藏人。我感到，他们希望与我攀谈的原因，只是出于对外国人正常的好奇心。
我之前听说，在拉萨宗教受到压制，但我却看到宗教繁荣发展；我之前听说，太多汉人进入西藏，现在拉萨已没有几个藏人，但我却看到在那里藏人比汉人多得多。难道那些汉人都藏起来了？
西方媒体宣称中国封锁消息，任何有关拉萨暴乱的消息都传不出去。我对这种明显违背事实的说法非常愤怒，无法忍受这些有关中国的不实报道。因此，尽管我不是记者，我还是撰写了这篇文章。我将这篇文章和另外两篇类似文章一道通过电子邮件传送给了三家西方报纸。它们均收到了我的邮件，但其中两家既没有给我回音，也没有刊登我的稿件，第三家回复我说，希望将我的稿件裁减，许多天后作为普通的'读者之声'刊发。与之相对照的是，它们每天都大量刊发达赖喇嘛的言论，真是形成了反中国的宣传阵势。而我所写的文章对这些'自由的媒体'来说显得对中国太过于友好了。（陈涛译）
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后记：文章中提到的那份报纸最终将作者的文章在"读者之声"栏目予以登载。该文发表后，作者收到很多来信，对他横加指责、出言侮辱。而他笑说"这真是一个认清真正朋友的机会，因为真朋友不会质疑你的话的真实性，而对非真正的朋友或敌人来说，再多的解释也无济于事。"
当中国朋友表示担心他回国后安全时，他回答："不用担心！他们也只能说些坏话而以！西藏永远是中国的一部分，尽管这个事实在1950年前被很多人忽视了。它以前是，现在仍然是中国的自治区。我很高兴有机会到了那里，修正了我的看法"。他表示，他现在唯一的愿望就是能让更多人，尤其是西方国家的人民了解中国和西藏的真实情况。
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《The Riots in Lhasa》 by Eirik Granqvist
“The western medias announced that China had cut all information and that articles about the riots could not be sent out! I got mad about all the apparently incorrect information and wrote this article and two other similar ones although I am not a journalist but just because I could not stand all the bad things about China that was told. I sent them by e-mail without problems and they arrived well but two newspapers did neither respond neither publish what I had written. The third answered and wanted a shorter version that was published many days later as a normal ‘readers voice’. What Dalai Lama had said was largely published every day together with a real anti-China propaganda. What I had written was apparently too China friendly for the ‘free press’.”I was very shocked by what I had seen in the television and been reading in China daily about the riots in Lhasa. The most that shocked me was anyhow may be not the cruel events by themselves but how the medias in my country of origin, Finland, reported the events. A friend ha**canned and sent me articles and I have checked also myself what can be found at Internet.Very few Finnish people have ever visited Tibet, but I was there together with my wife in 2006. This was private persons and not as a part of a group-travel. I have seen Lhasa with my own eyes. I have been talking and chatting with people there. This was without any restrictions. Okay, we had a lovely and very competent guide that helped us much and took us where we wanted to go in the mornings but in the afternoons we were alone. Therefore I think that I have something to tell.
I am also interested in history and know more than people in general. When writing this, I do not have any reference books so I write out of my memory. If I do a small mistake somewhere, I beg your pardon. Anyhow, I think that this gives my writing an objectivity. I am well aware of that I will be accused for this and that for writing what I think is the truth. I will be accused by those who think that they know but do not know and by those that haven’t seen by their own eyes.
Tibet was for centuries an autonomous concordat between Nepal and China. Sometimes China ruled Nepal as well. The king of Tibet used therefore to have one Chinese wife and one Nepalese and then a number of Tibetan ones. With the fifth Dalai Lama, the religious and the political power were unified under the rule of one person, The Dalai Lama. Tibet became a theocratic dictatorship and closed itself for the rest of the world. No foreigners were anymore allowed in.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the famous Swedish traveller Sven Hedin made an attempt to reach Lhasa but wa**ent politely back, out of Tibet by Dalai Lama.
A French woman, Alexandra David-Néel was more successful. She visited Lhasa dressed as a Tibetan pilgrim and she was fluent in the Tibetan language. She told how she was afraid many times that she should be discovered and then she knew that she like other suspects or opponents should “happen to fall down” from the walls of the Potala palace.
Tibet was not a paradise. Tibet was an inhuman dictatorship!
The weakened Chinese Qing Dynasty had more and more lost its influence in Tibet. Tibet became more and more interesting for the Russian empire in the north and the Britis***he south.
In 1903 a British army expedition directed by the colonel Younghusband reached Lhasa. The British lost 4 soldiers but slaughtered more the 700 Tibetans that tryed to stop them, mainly by magic. The Britis***alled “a commercial representation” in Lhasa. The Chinese evacuated Dalai Lama to the Qinghai plateau where he hade limited rights of move, probably for preventing him from having contacts with the British occupants.
The Finnish national hero, Marshal Mannerheim, visited him there in 1907 during his famous horseback trip through central Asia. He was then a colonel in the Tsar Russian army and his trip was in reality a spy trip. Therefore the 13th Dalai Lama was interesting.
The power of Dalai Lama was weakened. In 1950 the PLA marched in to Tibet without war. The 14th Dalai Lama seems at the beginning to have accepted this just as a security for his power as the theocratic dictator he was. He enlarged and restructured the Norbulingka Summer Palace in a luxury way in 1954.
The Chinese decided anyhow to finis***he cruel theocratic dictatorship under which the opponents fell down from Potala. The borders where during this dictatorship closed for all foreigners and the only schools where the religious ones. It is well known that it is easier to rule a population with a low education and is ignoring the outside world. In Tibet, about 5% of the population owned everything and the rest literally nothing. About 40% of the Tibetans were monks and nuns living as parasites on the rest of the population that had to feed them. Tibet was not a paradise!
Now China decided that the Tibeta**hould have the same rights and place in the society as the rest of the country’s population. The monasteries should be emptied from their excessively large monk and nun populations.
Tibet could earlier be reached only by some horse trails and was for the rest insulated. The Chinese built rapidly a trafficable road. The insulation was broken.
In 1959, the young Dalai Lama caused a peoples upraising, using the religion as power since he was loosing his own powerful position. The upraising was however stopped, may be in not a too clever and smooth manner. Dalai Lama then left Tibet and his fellow citizens and escaped to India wherefrom he has continued to fight for his come back and reinstall the theocratic dictators***hat China will never allow again.
Then followed the ten years of Cultural Revolution that was an unhappy time for all China that closed itself to the rest of the world.
Now Lhasa has a modern airport and a railway. China has invested a lot in Tibet. The standard of living has been raised a lot in Tibet and last Xmas I have seen Tibeta**pending sun-holidays on Hainan Island! Very lucky looking old women in traditional dresses walking on the beach with their husbands and the youngsters dressed like other young people enjoying the beach life.
The possibilities for Dalai Lama to take back his power has diminished and he does not anymore have the population with him. China and India are developing their cooperation and with the closer friendship, India will for sure also not more admit Dalai Lama to disturb this development. His possibilities to act against China will be diminished.
Therefore he undertook recently an around the world diplomatic travel since he ha**een the possibility of harming the now good international image of China and provoking boycotts of the Olympic games in Beijing.
The Lhasa riots where very well prepared. Curriers where crossing the borders illegally for to see Dalai Lama and get his orders. A group of foreign mountain climbers filmed recently across the border an unlucky incident when one of these curriers got shot and another that crossed the border openly declared that he wanted to go to see the Dalai Lama. I have seen that in television just before I left for China in November.
China is no longer a closed country. There is no need for illegal border crossings if you are not doing something illegally! You just ask for a pa**port and take the necessary visas and cross the border at a legal border crossing or better, just take a regular flight from Lhasa to Kathmandu!
There where no peaceful demonstrations in Lhasa that where brutally knocked down! Young men went to action after a well prepared scenario at many places at the same time so that police and fire brigade should be taken by surprise and unable to act everywhere at the same time. This wa**uccessful! People where just knocked down without differences and all what could be broken was broken in the shortest possible time. With Molotov cocktails, fires where lit and fire cars where stopped. 18 normal citizens where killed without feelings and one police. The police had order to not respond with firearms for not being internationally blamed!
When I have seen the filmed riots in television, my diagnosis was immediately clear. The scenario was the same that I had seen many times of organized riots in France since more the forty years of tight familiar contacts and 21 years of living there. The difference was only that less ordinary people seemed to take part in Lhasa. The rioters where surprisingly few but well organized! China’s positive image in the world should be damaged!
Dalai Lama is acting as the friendly and peaceful father. This is an old trick that also dictators like Hitler and Stalin used. I am not comparing him with them but he is acting like a demon when he tries to take back his power at any cost, not once caring for human lives and against Buddhistic non-violence principles. It was a try to do a coup d’ètat that failed. Now he is asking for international help for to stop the violence that he, himself had planned!
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The British Invasion of Tibet
This year marks the centenary of one of the most shameful acts of British imperial history: when a British army invaded Tibet and shot its way through to Lhasa, forcing its leaders to agree to a punitive treaty that the British Government almost immediately repudiated. The adventure came to be known as the Younghusband Mission, after its leader, a 40-year-old political officer and explorer named Colonel Francis Younghusband.
The invasion had been sanctioned by a British Government worn down by months of lobbying by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, obsessed by what he saw as Russia’s inexorable advance into Asia and determined to ‘frustrate their little game’. Knowing Francis Younghusband to be a ‘fellow-traveller’ who shared his views on Russia’s ambitions, Curzon had earlier selected him to negotiate with the Tibetans at Khamba Dzong - and Younghusband, while protesting all the while at the Tibetan’s refusal to negotiate, had at the same time done his best to provoke them into an act of hostility that would force the Government of India to intervene. In late October 1903 a trivial border incident involving some Nepalese yak-herders had been declared by Curzon to be ‘overt act of hostility’ on the part of the Tibetans, and a rattled British Cabinet had given permission for Younghusband’s mission to advance to the Tibetan fortress-town of Gyantse - to obtain reparation and then make an immediate withdrawal.
With the appointment of Brigadier General James Macdonald as the escort commander tensions began to develop between Younghusband and Macdonald. Overriding the General’s sound advice to wait until spring, Younghusband pushed forward over the Tang La to establish himself and a small escort in the remote settlement of Tuna at an altitude of 15,000 feet, where he sat out two months in appalling conditions until Macdonald had built up sufficient supplies from India to enable the advance on Gyantse to proceed. Had the Tibetan forces made a night attack on his camp, the mission and escort would certainly have been overwhelmed, since the cold froze the oil on the rifle-bolts and caused the two Maxim guns to jam.
Fortunately for Younghusband the seniormost Tibetan military commander, Depon Lhading, was under orders to halt Younghusband’s advance but not to offer any violence. Instead of attacking, he divided his army in two and took up positions on either side of the lake of Bam Tso to block the British advance. On 30 March 1904, his supplies now in place, Brigadier General Macdonald brought the main bulk of his forces up to Tuna. On the following day the Maxim gun and the matchlock or mendah - the ‘fire arrow’ faced each other at the hot springs of Chumik Shenko, resulting in some 500 Tibetan dead and the loss of the Daily Mail correspondent’s left hand.
The Tibetans attempted a brave stand at the Red Idol Gorge and were again shot to pieces, after which the invaders proceeded unopposed to Gyantse and its great fortress. Leaving Younghusband’s mission ensconced at Changlo Manor, in the shadow of Gyantse Dzong Macdonald returned to Chumbi to build up supplies. An attack on the mission on the night of 5 May took the garrison by surprise but was driven off at the cost of three dead on the one side and 140 on the other. In response to Younghusband’s urgent appeal, reinforcements were called in. A battalion of the Royal Fusiliers happened to be stationed near Darjeeling and they were rushed up together with other Indian army units and more field guns, arriving in Gyantse on 28 June. A week later, after Younghusband engineered a break-down in negotiations with the Tibetans, the great rock fortress of Gyantse Dzong was stormed under a barrage of artillery and Maxim gun fire. Two weeks later, in what was for many years the highest military engagement ever fought, the Gurkhas destroyed the last Tibetan opposition up in the snows above the Karo La. When the invading army reached the great lake of Yamdok Tso the Tibetans attempted to reopen negotiations but were rebuffed time and again by Colonel Younghusband. The Tsangpo was crossed in late July and on the afternoon of 3 August 1904 the army pitched its tents outside the gates of the fabled city of Lhasa.
To Younghusband’s great disappointment he learned that the young Dalai Lama, had fled. Nevertheless, on 4 September a convention was signed in the Potala. Among its nine articles was one requiring the Tibetans to pay an indemnity of half a million pounds over 75 years, during which time the Chumbi Valley was to be occupied by Britain, and a ’separate agreement’ giving the British Trade Agent to be based at Gyantse the right to visit Lhasa for consultations. These two clauses were inserted by Younghusband in defiance of orders, and concealed from his Government until the Treaty had been signed. They were immediately repudiated and Younghusband was ordered to stay on and renegotiate the treaty, which order he ignored.
When Younghusband returned to England in December 1904 he was lauded by the British press, received in private audience by the King, greeted with rapturous applause when he lectured at the Royal Geographical Society in London and at the Scottish Royal Geographical Society in Edinburgh. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh, Bristol and Cambridge. Everywhere he went he was seen as a hero. This was a view shared by nearly all the British officers on the Younghusband Mission. To his aide and interpreter, Captain Frederick O’Connor, Younghusband was ‘one of the few specimens of the typical “strong silent man” whom I have ever met. Very quiet, very laconic . . . at once a philosopher and a man of action . . . I never once saw him for a moment even ruffled, far less discomposed or perturbed, by any circumstance or crisis which we had to encounter. An imperturbable exterior covered a strong and steadfast character and a most equable temperament.’
Even after Patrick French’s rightly acclaimed biography, published in 1994 Younghusband continues to be perceived as a fundamentally humane, decent man, who, as far as the Tibet adventure is concerned, made one silly mistake: in negotiating with the Tibetans he tried too hard to please his master, Lord Curzon, and asked for too much.
What is so repugnant about the Younghusband Mission is not the botched treaty but the fact that one man could do so much short-term and long-term damage, not out of patriotism - although undoubtedly a part of him did believe that he was acting in Britain’s imperial interests - but for essentially selfish motives. As a 20-year-old junior subaltern newly arrived in India Younghusband had vowed ‘to make a name for myself’, and over the next ten years he went a long way towards fulfilling that ambition, blazing trails in the Western Himalayas and winning the Royal Geographical Society’s Founder’s Medal. But one goal eluded him: Lhasa - the ultima thule of every self-respecting explorer in the West, what one of his junior officers would later call ‘the long-sealed Forbidden City, the shrines of the mystery which had so long haunted our dreams’. Only one Englishman had ever reached Lhasa - the eccentric Thomas Manning in 1811 - and in the previous sixty years almost a score of daring travellers from the West - Russians such as Colonel Prjevalsky, Count Szechenyi, Ruborosvsky and Kosloff; the Americans Rockhill and the Littledales; the Frenchmen Prince Henri d’Orleans, Bonvalot and the ill-fated Duteuil de Rhins; Englishmen such as Deasy, Carey, Wellby and Bower; and, most recently, the great Swedish explorer Sven Hedin - all had dreamed of reaching Lhasa, and none had got within ten days’ march of the holy city. FrancisYounghusband had himself planned to journey to Lhasa in disguise in 1889 only to foiled by his commanding officer who had refused to give him any more leave. So when the call came to lead this Tibet political mission Younghusband’s twin ambitions - to be somebody and to reach Lhasa - suddenly became possible. Right from the start of the border negotiations, and whatever his orders had to say on the matter, Lhasa became the unstated goal of the mission. What is more, both Younghusband’s political assistants on the Tibet Frontier Commission, Claude White and Frederick O’Connor, had also tried and failed to penetrate to Lhasa. So too had the expedition’s leading expert on Tibet, Dr Austine Waddell. So the four key men at the sharp end of the Mission were all desperate to get to Lhasa - and that lure of Lhasa spread right through the army. It can be found in practically every diary or contemporary account of the expedition. Captain Arthur Hadow, for example, wrote to his parents of his delight at being selected for the mission: ‘I believe we shall march over the Himalayas into Thibet, and possibly to Lhasa, the city of Thibet, in which no white man is allowed to set foot… I am delighted with the whole thing.’ Henry Newman of Reuters later wrote: ‘We were all delighted to hear of these messages, for we wanted to get to Lhasa, and if the Tibetans caved in and made a treaty there would be no hope of getting to that romantic city.’ Lieutenant Bethell of the Gurkhas wrote of the ‘psychological push behind us. . . by mid-August the Press was beginning to say, “Well, what are you going to do next?” and to ask for news of Lhasa itself. Not to have gone there would have involved anti-climax; and though this aspect was never, at the time, openly admitted, looking back on it now there seems little doubt that it was a strong factor’.
The ‘Lhasa factor’, combined with personal ambition drove Younghusband to deceive both himself and his masters, and with hugely damaging consequences for Tibet and its peoples.
What also helped to make this invasion easier was the British perception of Tibet at that time, largely shaped by the writing of Dr Waddell, the expedition’s Tibetologist, and the author of The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism: a groundbreaking study but one that created an image of Tibetan Buddhism as a perversion of the original teachings of Gautama Buddha and of the priest-monks of Tibet as a corrupt body of devil-worships exercising a malign influence over the country. ‘A parasitic disease,’ he calls it, ‘a cloak to the worst forms of oppressive devil-worship, by which the poor Tibetan was placed in constant fear of his life from the attacks of thousands of malignant devils both in this life and in the world to come, and necessitating never-ending payments to the priests of large sums to avert these calamities’. This negative judgement undoubtedly helped to fuel the prejudices of Younghusband and many of his officers, making it easier for them to treat the Tibet lamas sent to negotiate with contempt.
Dr Waddell’s other contribution to the expedition was his role as the chief looter. For example, After the fall of Gyanste Dzong the commissariat department searched all the buildings at Pelkor Chode and found three thousand maunds of atta or ground flour hidden in the main monastery - a much-needed addition to the army’s fast dwindling supplies. But according to Major William Beynon, its officers also unearthed a cache of hidden treasure. ‘Yesterday I got two really good things,’ wrote Beynon to his wife on 7 July
Ross 2nd Gurkhas was in the big monastery here and was looking for grain with his coolie corps when one of his men was stoned by a Lama. They caught the beggar and tied him up & gave him 20 lashes on the spot and then told him if he didn’t show where the grain was hid he would be shot. So he showed them two places very cleverly hidden - but when Ross began to get the things out he found instead of grain that the man had shown him where the monastery’s plate & robes were kept. Ross reported to the General who told him he might keep what he liked and to send the rest to the man who collects for the British Museum. Ross & Wigram who were working together took something and asked me to help myself, so I selected a very nice hanging silver censor and a gilt one - neither of them very valuable but very quaint design - and I also took two lamas’ robes & some silk embroidery, which I am sending home to you through King Hamiltons.
This sanctioned plundering was subsequently hushed up, and no wonder, for it is difficult to square it with the claims made by Dr Waddell and General Macdonald that monastic sites were ‘most religiously respected’. But yesterday’s plunder is today’s research material, and ironically, that plundering undoubtedly helped enlarge the outside world’s understanding of Tibet’s Vajrayana religion. It also has to be seen in context: nasty as that invasion was it pales into insignificance when compared with the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army’s intervention in 1951 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-67.
Far more serious is the claim that the British invasion did incalculable political damage by laying Tibet open to a reassertion of Chinese authority. Its leading proponent was Charles Bell, an assistant political officer in Sikkim under Claude White who later became an administrator of the Chumbi Valley during its brief period of British rule. Bell also became a close friend and ally of the 13 Dalai Lama and it was his belief that ‘By going in and then coming out again, we knocked the Tibetans down and left them for the first comer to kick. We created a political vacuum, which is always a danger. China came in and filled it, destroying Tibetan freedom, for she feared that if we came again we should keep the country. And Russia, in conformity with her warning, advanced into Mongolia, without any intention of retiring as we had retired from Lhasa.’ The opposing argument put forward by Bell’s critics is that the political vacuum created by the British invasion ended with the 13th Dalai Lama’s final return to Lhasa in 1910. The Tibetans then turned against the Chinese, threw out the Amban (Chinese Resident in Lhasa) and declared their country independent. Tibet’s real tragedy is that it then failed to build on that independence. Despite the 13th Dalai Lama best efforts, Tibet’s monastic and aristocratic hierarchies refused to modernise, clinging to their privileges and their isolationism. During the later years of the 13th Dalai Lama’s rule Britain came to be seen as a friend of Tibet and her influence was maintained through the person of the Trade Agent in Gyantse. But after the 13th Dalai Lama’s death in 1933 the old Tibet very quickly reasserted itself and the links with British India were cut. A series of ineffectual regents who ruled Tibet during the 14th Dalai Lama’s infancy and minority allowed China to reassert its control, culminating in the ‘liberation’ of Tibet by the Chinese People’s Army in 1951.
