Tibet as outside the Modern Geopolitical Imaginary

In the eighteenth century, Tibet was seen as a possible backdoor to China as well as a potential trading partner. ^[48] There were a few Europeans (mostly Christian missionaries) who had traveled and lived in Tibet and Lhasa before and after the British attempts to establish a relationship in the second half of the eighteenth century. While their accounts fed into the image of Tibet held by the British, their role was merely to arouse curiosity. The main focus of expanding British colonialism was on exploring the possibility of commercial interactions (see Cammann 1951). Even before the first-ever official attempt to establish relations with Tibet through George Bogle, the following observation was made about Tibet (in the Extract of Bengal Secret Consultations of 9 May 1774): "They are represented as a quiet people numerous and industrious, living under a well regulated Government, having considerable intercourse with other Nations, particularly with the Chinese & Northern Tartars, and possessing at home the principal means of Commerce, Gold and Silver in great abundance" (IOR: H/219 1768-84, 336; emphasis added).

This view is bolstered by Bogle (in Markham 1876) as well as Turner (1971/1800). Both official travelers to Tibet also made observations about Chinese influence in Tibet. Bogle in a letter in February 1775 mentions that while Teshoo Lama was influential, the real seat of government was Lhasa, and the "Emperor of China is paramount sovereign"; in another letter he further clarifies:

The Emperor of China is acknowledged the sovereign of the country, the appointment to the first officers in the state is made by his orders, and in all measures of consequences, reference is first made to the court at Pekin, but the internal government of the country is committed entirely to natives, the Chinese in general are confined to the capital, no tribute is extracted, and the people of Thibet except at Lahasa, hardly feel the weight of a foreign yoke. (IOR: H/219 1768-84, 354, 397-98; emphasis added)

Turner, in a letter dated 2 March 1784, points out that in Tibet there is an "acknowledgement of the supremacy of the Chinese government" (IOR: H/219 1768-84, 485). But there was no serious attempt to name Sino-Tibetan relations in precise terms. Representations of Tibet did not feed into political actions. There could be various explanations for why British imperialists did not seek to define Tibet at this moment. The empire in India itself was in the process of initial expansion and consolidation. Large parts of Asia and Africa remained outside European control and hence were seen as open space for inquiry. Tibet did not hold any special value. For the British, India and China did.

The nineteenth century witnessed a closure of Tibet to the Europeans. Some travelers did manage to get in (see Woodcock 1971), but there was no official interaction between Tibet and the rising and consolidating British empire in India. By the end of nineteenth century, British India had within itself the cis-Himalayan regions of Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Assam, some of which in turn had politico-religious relations with Tibet. Tibet saw these regions as under its influence. For British India this had a dangerous implication for the security of its northern frontiers and hence required clarity. But within the traditional Tibetan worldview, there was no imperative to define boundaries. McGranahan identifies five key features that made traditional Tibetan systems of statehood different from modern European systems: local determination and sanctioning of boundaries; sovereignty and boundary not coterminous; overlapping zones between polities; no imperative for an external ratification of rules; and privileging of power relationships between territory and center over territorial integrity (2003, 268).

Observations by Indian spies who had been active in the second half of the century pointed to continuing Chinese dominance. For instance, Sarat Chandra Das, who managed to reach Lhasa in disguise in the 1880s, argued that the "political relations between Tibet and China are now so intimate that the Imperial Residency established at Lhasa in the first quarter of the last century has converted Tibet from a protected state into a dependency of China" (1902, 178). But Tibetans refused to honor any Anglo-Chinese agreement concerning them without justifying their action by using a modern vocabulary of sovereignty or independence.

The British blamed this on the backwardness of Tibetan religion, narrow priestly interests, Chinese jealousy, and a lack of understanding of genuine friendly motives of the British (see Engelhardt 2002). The Times reported in 1885, "We hear complaints everywhere of the stagnation of trade. Here is a large market if we only insist on admission… Tibetans… are debarred from intercourse with India through sheer ignorance and the tenacity of tradition" (in Walker 1885, 27). Macaulay in his 1884 report blamed Cornwallis, who had succeeded Hastings as the governor- general of the East India Company, for not helping Tibetans in the Gorkha war in 1792 and thus contributing to their "closed" nature; he laments that had Hastings been in charge, he "would have required no pretext [for military action] beyond the fact that an unprovoked act of brigandage had been committed on a helpless child" (1972, 71; emphasis added). Paternal imperialism prevented the actors of the time to comprehend Tibetan actions in terms of fear deriving from an understanding of the violence of modern imperialism. Aris, on the basis of his study of a late-eighteenth-century Tibetan text, argues that a positive sympathy can be detected for the undefeated Marathas and their long oppositional stand against both the Mughals and the British (1994, 12)-this surely indicates some awareness among Tibetans of the nature of imperialism in India.

By the start of the twentieth century, the undefined Tibet was no longer an unmapped land to the north of the Himalayas but had come to be perceived as a buffer state, a state that could act as a buffer against the new threat on the horizon-Russian imperial expansion in Central Asia. ^[49] Tibet acquired new importance within the "Great Game," and the British sought to have a friendly state to buffer British India from hostile forces in the north. Chinese imperial power was in decline and seen more as a nuisance.