Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:19:36.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet's Geopolitical Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Dibyesh Anand
Get access

Abstract

The protests in and around Tibet in 2008 show that Tibet's status within China remains unsettled. The West is not an outsider to the Tibet question, which is defined primarily in terms of the debate over the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China. Tibet's modern geopolitical identity has been scripted by British imperialism. The changing dynamics of British imperial interests in India affected the emergence of Tibet as a (non)modern geopolitical entity. The most significant aspect of the British imperialist policy practiced in the first half of the twentieth century was the formula of “Chinese suzerainty/Tibetan autonomy.” This strategic hypocrisy, while nurturing an ambiguity in Tibet's status, culminated in the victory of a Western idea of sovereignty. It was China, not Tibet, that found the sovereignty talk most useful. The paper emphasizes the world-constructing role of contesting representations and challenges the divide between the political and the cultural, the imperial and the imaginative.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 227 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Addy, Premen. 1984. Tibet on the Imperial Chessboard: The Making of British Policy towards Lhasa, 1899–1925. Calcutta: Academic.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 1997. National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Anand, Dibyesh. 2007. Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Anand, Dibyesh. 2008. Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics. New Delhi: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anand, Dibyesh. n.d. Representing China's Tibet. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Asquith, H.H. Papers. 1913. Bodleian Library, Modern Political Papers, MS Asquith 93.Google Scholar
Bailey Collection. n.d. British Library, India Office Records, European Manuscripts, MSS EUR/F157.Google Scholar
Bartelson, Jens. 1995. Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biersteker, Thomas J, and Weber, Cynthia, eds. 1996. State Sovereignty as Social Construct. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, Peter. 1989. The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing, and the Western Creation of a Sacred Landscape. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bishop, Peter. 1993. Dreams of Power: Tibetan Buddhism and the Western Imagination. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Blum, Susan D. 2002. “Margins and Centers: A Decade of Publishing on China's Ethnic Minorities.” Journal of Asian Studies 61 (4): 1287–1310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bray, John. 2001. “Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Missionary Images of Tibet.” In Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, ed. Dodin, Thierry and Räther, Heinz, 21–45. Boston: Wisdom Publications.Google Scholar
Brook, Timothy, and Blue, Gregory eds. 1999. China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2002. The Mongols at China's Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Candler, Edmund. 1905. Unveiling of Lhasa. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Carlson, Allen. 2005. Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese Sovereignty in the Reform Era. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Caroe Collection. n.d. British Library, India Office Records, European Manuscripts, MSS EUR/F203/18.Google Scholar
Carrington, Michael. 2003. “Officers, Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4 Younghusband Mission to Tibet.” Modern Asian Studies 37 (1): 81–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed.Google Scholar
Cocker, Mark. 1992. Loneliness and Time: The Story of British Travel Writing. London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. 1999. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Das, Sarat Chandra. 1902. Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Dikötter, Frank. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. London: C. Hurst.Google Scholar
Dodin, Thierry, and Räther, Heinz, eds. 2001. Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies. Boston: Wisdom Publications.Google Scholar
Dreyer, June Teufel. 1976. China's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People's Republic of China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1995. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Elliott, Mark C. 2000. “The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies.” Journal of Asian Studies 59 (3): 603–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Mark C. 2001. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelhardt, Isrun. 2002. “The Closing of the Gates: Tibetan-European Relations at the End of the Eighteenth Century.” In Tibet, Past and Present, ed. Blezer, Henk, 229–46. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Farquhar, David M. 1978. “Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch'ing Empire.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 38 (1): 5–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiskesjö, Magnus. 2006. “Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-Building in the Twentieth Century.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 5 (1): 15–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleck, G. 1995. “Tibet and the Universal Postal Union.” Tibetan Review 30 (3): 16–18.Google Scholar
French, Patrick. 2000. Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer. London: Flamingo.Google Scholar
Friedman, Edward, ed. 1995. National Identity and Democratic Prospects in Socialist China. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” Journal of Asian Studies 53 (1): 92–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladney, Dru C. 2004. Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1995. “Tibet, China and the United States: Reflections on the Tibet Question.” Occasional paper, Atlantic Council of the United States. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ealac/barnett/pdfs/link4-goldstn.pdf [accessed September 22, 2008].Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C, with , Gelek Rimpoche. 1989. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannum, Hurst. 1996. Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights. Rev. ed.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harcourt, Lewis (Viscount), Papers. n.d. Bodleian Library, Modern Political Papers, MS Harcourt 589.Google Scholar
Herberer, Thomas. 1989. China and Its National Minorities: Autonomy or Assimilation? London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hervey, Mrs 1853. The Adventures of a Lady in Tartary, Thibet, China, & Kashmir. London: Hope and Co.Google Scholar
Hevia, James L. 1995. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hinsley, F. H. 1986. Sovereignty. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ho, Ping-ti. 1967. “The Significance of the Ch'ing Period in Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies 26 (2): 189–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Ping-ti. 1998. “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's ‘Reenvisioning the Qing.’” Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1): 123–55.Google Scholar
Hoffman, John. 1998. Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hostetler, Laura. 2001. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR). 1768–84. “Correspondence and Reports Relating to Assam, Bhutan, China, Lhasa, Nepal and Tibet from George Bogle and Lt Samuel Turner, 16 Mar 1768–2 Mar 1784.” British Library, Home Office Miscellaneous Series, H/219.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR). 1885. “Report of a Mission to Sikkim and the Tibetan Frontier with a Memorandum on our Relations with Tibet by Colman Macaulay.” British Library, Political and Secret Department Miscellaneous Records, L/P&S/20/D129.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR). 1904. “Papers Relating to Tibet.” British Library, V/4 Parliamentary Papers HoC, V Cd. 1920.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR). 1905a. “Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of Tibet, Part III.” British Library, Political and Secret Miscellaneous Records, L/P&S/19/FO Confidential 8415.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1905b. “Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of Tibet, Part IV.” British Library, Political and Secret Miscellaneous Records, L/P&S/19/FO Confidential 8509.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1905c. “Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of Tibet, Part V.” British Library, Political and Secret Miscellaneous Records, L/P&S/19/FO Confidential 8510.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1908a. “Tibet: The Dalai Lama, 1904–13.” British Library, Political and Secret Separate (Subject) Files, L/P&S/10/147.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1908b. “Tibet: Infringement of Treaties, Frontier Questions, Chinese Troops, 1904–13.” British Library, Political and Secret Separate (Subject) Files, L/P&S/10/150 2750 5–7.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1910. “Military Report on Tibet.” British Library, Military Department and War Staff Records, L/MIL/17/14/92.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1912a. “China and Tibet, 1912.” British Library, Political and Secret Separate (Subject) Files, L/P&S/10/265.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1912b. “Tibet: Parliamentary Questions, Apr–Jul 1912.” British Library, Political and Secret Annual Files, L/P&S/11/15 File P 1701.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1912c. “Tibet: Question of Direct Communications.” British Library, Political and Secret Annual Files, L/P&S/11/24.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1913. “Tibet: Exchange of Presents between the Dalai Lama and King George V, May 1913–Sep 1914.” British Library, Political and Secret Annual Files, L/P&S/11/64 File P 3937.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1917. “Tibet: Proposed Revision of 1914 Convention, 1922–30.” British Library, Political and Secret Separate (Subject) Files, L/P&S/10/718.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1928. “Tibet: Anti-British Propaganda at Chungking.” British Library, Political and Secret Annual Files, L/P&S/10/1228.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1943–46. “Status of Tibet: Publicity by China and HMG, May 1943–June 1946.” British Library, Political (External) Files and Collections, L/P&S/12/4196.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1945–46. “Status of Tibet: HMG's Policy, Oct 1945–Feb 1946.” British Library, Political (External) Files and Collections, L/P&S/12/4195A.Google Scholar
India Office Records (IOR).1946–49. “Status of Tibet: HMG's Policy, Feb 1946–Feb 1949.” British Library, Political (External) Files and Collections, L/P&S/12/4195B.Google Scholar
James, Alan. 1986. Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Klieger, P. Christiaan. 1992. Tibetan Nationalism: The Role of Patronage in the Accomplishment of National Identity. Meerut: Archana Publications.Google Scholar
Klieger, P. Christiaan. 1997. “Shangri-La and Hyperreality: A Collision in Tibetan Refugee Expression.” In Tibetan Culture in the Diaspora, ed. Korom, Frank J. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, Alastair. 1960. Britain and Chinese Central Asia: The Road to Lhasa, 1767 to 1905. London: Routledge and Paul.Google Scholar
Lamb, Alastair. 1986. British India and Tibet, 1766–1910. Rev. ed.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Landon, Perceval. 1905. Lhasa: An Account of the Country and People of Central Tibet and of the Progress of the Mission Sent there by the English Government in the Year 1903–04. London: Hurst and Blackett.Google Scholar
Liming, S. 1994. “The Younghusband Expedition and China's Policy towards Tibet, 1903–1904.” In Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, ed. Kvaerne, Per, 59–68. Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.Google Scholar
Lopez, Donald S. Jr. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackerras, Colin. 2003. China's Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation. London: RoutledgeCurzon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGranahan, Carole. 2003. “Empire and the Status of Tibet: British, Chinese, and Tibetan Negotiations, 1913–1934.” In The History of Tibet, vol. 3, The Modern Period: 1895–1959: The Encounter with Modernity, ed. McKay, Alex, 267–95. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
McKay, Alex. 1997. Tibet and the British Raj: The Frontier Cadre, 1904–1947. Richmond: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
McKay, Alex. 2001. “‘Kicking the Buddha's Head’: India, Tibet and Footballing Colonialism.” In Soccer in South Asia, ed. Dimeo, Paul and Mills, James, 89–104. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Lamb, Alastair. 2003. “19th Century British Expansion of the Indo-Tibetan Frontier: A Forward Perspective.” Tibet Journal 28 (4): 61–76.Google Scholar
Mehra, Parshotam. 1979. The North-Eastern Frontier: A Documentary Study of the Internecine Rivalry between India, Tibet and China. Vol. 1, 1906–1914. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Millington, Powell. 1905. To Lhassa at Last. London: Smith, Elder.Google Scholar
Norbu, Dawa. 1990. “The Europeanization of Sino-Tibetan Relations, 1775–1907: The Genesis of Chinese ‘Suzerainty’ and Tibetan ‘Autonomy.’” Tibet Journal 15 (4): 28–74.Google Scholar
Norbu, Dawa. 2001. China's Tibet Policy. London: Curzon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palace, Wendy. 2005. The British Empire and Tibet, 1900–1922. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Perdue, Peter C. 2005. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petech, Luciano. 1950. “The Mission of Bogle and Turner according to the Tibetan Texts.” T'oung Pao, 2s, 39: 330–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawski, Evelyn S. 1996. “Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies 55 (4): 829–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Hugh, Papers. n.d. Bodleian Library, Department of Oriental Collections, MS Or. Richardson 35.Google Scholar
Ruegg, D. Seyfort. 1991. “Mchod yon, yon mchod, and mchod gnas/yon gnas: On the Historiography and Semantics of a Tibetan Religio-Social and Religio-Political Concept.” In Tibetan History and Language, ed. Steinkellner, Ernst, 329–51. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien.Google Scholar
Sautman, Barry, and Dreyer, June Teufel eds. 2006. Contemporary Tibet: Politics, Development, and Society in a Disputed Region. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Shakya, Tsering. 1985. “Tibet and the League of Nations.” Tibet Journal 10 (3): 48–56.Google Scholar
Shakya, Tsering. 1999. The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947. London: Pimlico.Google Scholar
Sperling, Elliot. 2004. The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics. Washington, D.C.: East-West Center. http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/PS007.pdf [accessed September 22, 2008].Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1997. “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia.” Modern Asian Studies 31 (3): 735–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teichman, Eric. 1922. Travels of a Consular Officer in Eastern Tibet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, Thomas. 1852. Western Himalaya and Tibet: A Narrative of a Journey through the Mountains of Northern India during the Year 1847–48. London: Reeve and Co.Google Scholar
Thongchai, Winichakul. 1994. Siam Mapped. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Samuel. 1971. An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet. New Delhi: Manjushri.Google Scholar
Tuttle, Gray. 2005. Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Waddell, L. A. 1905. Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903–1904. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Walker, R. B. J. 1990. “Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the Horizons of Contemporary Political Practice.” In Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community, ed. Walker, R. B. J and Mendlovitz, Saul H, 159–68. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waller, Derek. 1990. The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Weber, Cynthia. 1995. Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Younghusband Collection. n.d. British Library, India Office Records, European Manuscripts, MSS EUR/F197.Google Scholar
Younghusband, Francis. 1910. India and Tibet: A History of the Relations Which Have Subsisted between the Two Countries from the Time of Warren Hastings to 1910; with a Particular Account of the Mission to Lhasa of 1904. London: John Murray.Google Scholar