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TWO RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS AND NEW HORIZONS IN MODERN TIBETAN HISTORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2011

Nicole Willock
Nicole Willock
Affiliation:
Indiana University. E-mail [email protected]
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Extract

While the literature on modern Tibetan history is far from comprehensive, contributions to this field of studies have been formative over the last twenty years. With an ever-increasing availability of Tibetan-language source material along with new theoretical insights, the horizons for understanding modern Tibetan history are still expanding.

Keywords

Tibetan historyCultural Revolution
Type
Review Articles
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 81 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 A nuanced perspective is given on the intricate top-level negotiations between the PLA elite and the Chinese Central Government on policy operations in what is now the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The frictions between the Dalai Lama supporters at the Southwest Bureau led by Zhang Guohua, and the Panchen Lama supporters at the Northwest Bureau under Fan Ming, are representative of the discord within the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on policy implementation.

2 For a critique of the use of the term “Lamaism,” cf. Lopez, Donald, Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 15–45Google Scholar.

3 For another interpretation of Goldstein's works see Jamyang Norbu's “The Black Annals” on his blog “Shadow Tibet”. Norbu has critiqued Goldstein's metanarrative on the historical inevitability of modernization as being a mouthpiece for the CCP. See Jamyang Norbu's blog, http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2008/07/27/black-annals-goldstein-the-negation-of-tibetan-history-part-ii/ as of 10 July 2010.

4 Asad views “modernity as a series of interlinked projects – that certain people in power seek to achieve. The project aims at institutionalizing a number of (sometimes conflicting, often evolving) principles: constitutionalism, moral autonomy, and secularism.” Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 13Google Scholar.

5 Goldstein only applies the name “Tibet” to Central Tibet (dbus gtsang) and explicitly not to the eastern Tibetan ethnographic areas called Domé (Tib. mdo smad) and Kham (Tib. khams) now administratively located across Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. Goldstein, Melvyn, “Change, Conflict and Continuity among a Community of Nomadic Pastoralists: A Case Study from Western Tibet, 1950–1990,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, eds. Barnett, Robert and Akiner, Shirin (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1994)Google Scholar. The monastic scholar Tseten Zhabdrung Jigmé Rigpé Lodro, however, refers to Domé as part of “Tibet, the Land of Snow” (Tib. Bod kha ba can) in a local monastic history written in 1956. “Mdo smad grub pa'i gnas chen dan tig shel gyi ri bo le lag dang bcas pa'i dkar chag don ldan ngag gyi rgyud mngas” in ‘Jigs med chos ‘phags, ed., Tshe tan zhabs drung rje btsun ‘Jigs med rigs pa'i blo gros mchog gi gsung ‘bum, vol. 3 (Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House, 2007), p. 280Google Scholar.

6 Additionally, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in India continues to serve as an excellent resource on all aspects of Tibetan history, culture and society. Some of the most seminal online projects include: Goldstein's Tibet Oral History Archive (forthcoming), the ongoing Tibetan Himalayan Library, and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center.

7 The recent publication of Carole McGranahan's Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010) makes a significant contribution to understanding the Tibetan resistance movement.

8 Ben Jiao earned his Ph.D. at Case Western University under the guidance of Melvyn Goldstein and now works at the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa. Tanzen Lhundrup is Deputy Director of the Social and Economic Institute at the Beijing Tibetology Center, Beijing.

9 “The Nyemo incident” is the official Chinese term for the series of events. The Nyemo incident has been interpreted by different scholars ranging from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) side initially labeling the event as “a counter-revolutionary revolt (and later ‘incident’)” to western academic circles which tend to characterize the events as a “popular revolt of Tibetans against the Han oppressors” (pp. 3–5).

10 Makley, Charlene, “Review of On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969,” China Journal 62 (2009), p. 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The following list includes some of the current English-language academic scholarship that draws upon primary source material either in Tibetan or Chinese, or both languages, and simultaneously offers new theoretical insights. On the importance of language and literature in contemporary Tibet, as well as the birth of modern Tibetan literature, see Lauran Ruth Hartley, Contextually Speaking: Tibetan Literary Discourse and Social Change in the People's Republic of China (1980–2000) (Bloomington: Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2003); Hartley, Lauran R. and Schiaffini-Vedani, Patricia, eds., Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Tibetan cultural revival, see Kolås, Åshild and Thowsen, Monika, On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural Survival on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Goldstein, Melvyn and Kapstein, Matthew, Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar. On the modern history of the monastic estate Labrang Tashkyil in eastern Tibet through the lens of gender studies theory, see Makley, Charlene, Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an account of China's “borderlands” focusing on Chinese Republican era politics, see Lin, Hsiao-Ting, Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006)Google Scholar. On the activities of Tibetan Buddhist leaders in Republican era China see Tuttle, Gray, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. For the most comprehensive history of modern Tibet to date, see Shakya, Tsering, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Reprinted from New Left Review, the debates between Tsering Shakya and Wang Lixiong offer insights into a number of issues on modern and contemporary Tibetan history. Lixiong, Wang and Shakya, Tsering, The Struggle for Tibet (London: Verso, 2009)Google Scholar.

12 Ashiwa, Yoshiko and Wank, David L., eds., Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, ed., Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

13 Duara, Prasenjit, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Riedel, Jens with Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 In Mayfair Mei-hui Yang 2008.

15 Stoddard, Heather, “The Long Life of rDo-sbis dGe-bšes Šes-rab rGya-mcho (1894–1968),” Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Fourth Seminar of the IATS (Munich 1985), p. 469Google Scholar. Sherap Gyatso oversaw the translation of important Tibetan texts into Chinese, for example Tsongkhapa's (1357–1419) Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lam rim chen mo).

16 See Liu, Lydia, “The Question of Meaning-Value in the Political Economy of the Sign,” in Liu, Lydia, ed., Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 34–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liu, Lydia, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. Drawing on Liu's theoretical framework, James Liebold demonstrates some of the conceptual confusion caused by the Chinese neologism minzu 民族, used both for “nation” as in Zhonghua minzu, that is, all the “nationalities” of China, and minzu as in ethnic group. See James Liebold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese (New York: Palgrave MacMillan), p. 8. Chinese scholars have duly noted the conceptual confusion induced by this. Chinese intellectuals used minzu and related neologisms to translate a number of different but related terms, for example “nation”, “race”, and “ethnic group”. Indeed Ma Rong thinks it is best to introduce a term for ethnic group, zuqun, and get rid of the status of minzu for ethnic minorities. Rong, Ma, “A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century: ‘De-politicization’ of Ethnicity in China,” Asian Ethnicity 8:3 (October 2007), pp. 201–02Google Scholar. The way in which Tibetans perceive this concept of “minzu” vis-à-vis “renmin” has yet to be adequately treated.

17 Although these studies do not draw upon Liu's theories per se, they give attention to the importance of translation in negotiating various understandings of modernity by Tibetan intellectuals.

18 Goldstein (2007), for example, states: “The Tibetan term for ‘the people’ mimang is actually a neologism that been coined by the Chinese Communists to translate the Chinese term ren min … such a term was needed, because Tibetan had no exact term for “the people” as a collectivity …” (p. 317).

19 The monastic scholar Tseten Zhabdrung Jigmé Rigpé Lodro (1910–1985), a member of the Chinese to Tibetan translation team of the 1954 PRC Constitution, debated with Sherap Gyatso over how to translate renmin in Tibetan. Sherap Gyatso at first argued that bang-mi (Tib. 'bangs mi) “common people” (Chi. baixing ) was the best term, but eventually conceded to Tseten Zhabdrung's suggestion of mi mang (Tib. mi dmangs, Chi. renmin).

20 A copy of a 1943 Chinese–Tibetan bilingual abridged version of Sun Yatsen's great treatise on Chinese nationalism Three Principles of the People (Chi. Sanmin zhuyi) attests to mi ser for “min”. The term minzu zhuyi, often translated in English as the principle of “nationalism” is mi ser gyi rigs rgyud; Weiyuanhui, Meng Zang, Sanmin zhuyi yaoyi (Taipei: Taiwan, 1971), p. 8Google Scholar. The Tibetan language section of the publication information (but not the Chinese language section) states that this translation was undertaken in 1943 by the Frontier Languages Translation Committee (Tib. mtha' mtshams skad yig rtsom sgyur lhan khang) of the Guomindang's Central Organization Department (krung go go ming twang dbyang rtsa ‘dzugs las khung). This 1971 print of the 1943 translation may well be a copy of the text that circulated through Lhasa by late 1944. Cf. Stoddard 1985. I am very grateful to Professor Elliot Sperling for sharing this text as well as communication between him and Professor Gray Tuttle on this important text.