Tibet

Remote and largely inaccessible until recent times, Tibet never experienced Western colonial rule. Its strategic location, however, incited competition between the Mongols, Manchus, Chinese, Russians, and British for influence or control. China's Qing empire (1644–1912), established when the Manchus conquered China in the seventeenth century, exercised loose suzerainty over Tibet, while allowing it to be essentially self-governing. Tibet achieved de facto independence when the dynasty fell in 1912, although the Republic of China that succeeded the Qing continued to claim Tibet. In 1950, following the Communist victory in China, Tibet was occupied by the Chinese army and incorporated into the People's Republic of China. In 1959 it lost its vestigial autonomy.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Dalai Lama, head of the reformed Geluk (Yellow Sect) branch of Tibetan Buddhism, exercised both temporal and spiritual authority over a theocratic Tibetan government. Each successive Dalai Lama, identified by oracles in infancy, was considered a living buddha, the incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokite?vara.

In the meantime, the Manchus conquered China and established the Qing dynasty. In 1656 the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) visited Beijing and met the Qing emperor Shunzhi (r. 1644–1661). The priest-patron relationship between the two, between a religious teacher and a lay patron, did not imply Tibet's subordination to the Qing. Nevertheless, the death of the Fifth Dalai Lama ultimately led to conflict over control of Tibet between the Manchus and their rivals, the Jungar Mongols, who had established hegemony over Tibet.

In 1720 a Qing army, accompanied by a Manchu-sponsored reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, expelled the Jungars and occupied Tibet. The Manchus established a protectorate, leaving Tibet essentially autonomous under the Dalai Lama while controlling Tibet's relations with its neighbors. A Qing garrison was stationed in Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Two Qing imperial commissioners (ambans) were assigned to Lhasa to protect Qing interests and supervise the oracles identifying new incarnations of the Dalai Lama and other incarnated lamas. Parts of eastern Tibet were placed under direct Qing administration. Manchu hegemony over Tibet eventually weakened, however, as the Qing dynasty went into decline. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Tibet was, for practical purposes, independent.

Few westerners traveled to Tibet before the twentieth century. In 1707 Capuchin friars established a Catholic mission in Lhasa, and the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) lived there from 1716 to 1721. The Catholic mission was abandoned in 1745. Soon the Tibetan authorities closed Tibet to westerners. Nonetheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, two Western empires, British India and Russian Central Asia, abutted Tibet. Despite British suspicions of Russian designs on Tibet, however, Russia had little influence in Lhasa. Britain, on the other hand, was eager to develop trade with Tibet, but the Tibetan government rebuffed British diplomatic contacts. In 1904 a British military expedition commanded by Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) fought its way to Lhasa, forcing the flight of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933) to Mongolia. The British established a consular office in Lhasa, the only Western country to do so. In 1947, upon independence, India inherited the British mission there.

The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 severed Tibet's subordination to China. The new Republic of China was unable to enforce its claim to Tibet as part of its territory. China did, however, continue to control ethnic Tibetan areas in Qinghai Province (Amdo) and Western Sichuan (Kham). In the decades that followed, Tibet isolated itself and did not seek international recognition or diplomatic representation until the 1940s. It also sometimes compromised its claims to independence in its dealings with the Nationalist government in China. The international community generally acquiesced in China's claims to Tibet.

The People's Republic of China, established in 1949, inherited its predecessor's territorial claims. China invaded Tibet in 1950. Tibetan resistance collapsed quickly, and the government of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (b. 1935) signed an agreement recognizing Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement, however, stipulated that Tibet would be self-governing under the Dalai Lama. Nevertheless, the Chinese government undermined the old order by cultivating the Panchen Lama, the second-ranking leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and recruiting Tibetan collaborators. The Chinese organized serfs in Tibet, carried out antireligious propaganda, and recruited and trained Tibetan cadres. Nonetheless, the Chinese government worked officially through the Dalai Lama's government. In most of Tibet, life continued on with little interference by the Chinese authorities through the 1950s.

Resentment over Chinese occupation sparked an uprising and the Dalai Lama's flight to India in 1959. Chinese forces crushed the rebellion and used it as a pretext for ending Tibetan autonomy, imposing martial law, and instituting severe political and religious persecution. In 1964 the Panchen Lama was arrested and imprisoned for fourteen years. After 1966, China's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) reached Tibet, with devastating effects. Monasteries were closed, monks and nuns were forced to return to lay life, and "struggle sessions" were carried out against Buddhist clergy and landlords. Red Guards—militant young Maoist activists—both Chinese and Tibetans, destroyed much of Tibet's cultural heritage.

Cultural and religious liberalization began in the 1980s, but Tibet remains securely under Chinese control. In recent decades a significant number of Chinese immigrants have moved to Tibet, and Chinese now constitute the majority of Lhasa's population.

see also China, After 1945.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fleming, Peter. Bayonets to Lhasa: The First Full Account of the British Invasion of Tibet in 1904. New York: Harper, 1961.

Goldstein, Melvyn C. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Goldstein, Melvyn C. The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Goldstein, Melvyn C., Dawei Sherap, and William R Siebenschuh. A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political Life and Times of Bapa Phüntso Wangye. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Grunfeld, A. Tom. The Making of Modern Tibet, rev ed. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1996.

Shakya, Tsering. The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.