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Tibet 1924: A Very British Coup Attempt?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

A. C. McKay
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Extract

In the course of my research into the character, role and influence of the British officials in Tibet during the 1904–47 period, it became apparent that previous scholarship had failed fully to confront an issue which would explain the clear decline in Anglo-Tibetan relations during the latter half of the 1920s. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the British officer then in immediate charge of Anglo-Tibetan relations attempted to promote a coup d'état in Tibet, in order to transfer secular power from the Dalai Lama and his court to Tsarong Shape, the forward-thinking Commander-in-Chief of the Tibetan Army. This possibility has been rejected by the leading European historians of the period, but their conclusions are, I will argue, in need of reassessment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 1997 , pp. 411 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1997

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper was carried out as part of a doctoral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, with the assistance of the British Academy, under the supervision of Dr Peter Robb, whose assistance I am pleased to acknowledge. A draft of this paper was presented at the South Asian Studies Seminar, Cambridge University, in March 1995.1 am most grateful to Prof. Alastair Lamb for his expert comments on that paper. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Leverhulme Trust in the preparation of this paper.

References

1 “Manual of Instructions for Political Officers”, by S. H. Butler, 1909, contained within Oriental and India Collection (henceforth OIC; formerly the India Office Library and Records), L/P&S/7/237–526.

2 Williamson, M. D., with Snelling, J., Memoirs of a Political Officer's Wife in Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan (London, 1987), p. 104.Google Scholar

3 Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, KCSI, KCIE (1863–1942). Born in India, the son of an Indian Police Officer, he was educated at Clifton and Sandhurst, and was later Resident in Kashmir. For a recent, comprehensive biography, including a good account of the mission, see French, P., Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London, 1994).Google Scholar

4 Trade Agencies were established at Gyantse and Yatung in Central Tibet, and at Gartok in Western Tibet; British officers were not used at the latter post. See McKay, A. C., “The establishment of the British Trade Agencies in Tibet: a survey”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, II (1992).Google Scholar

5 See McKay, A. C., Tibet and the British Raj: The Frontier Cadre 1904–1947, (London, 1997).Google Scholar

6 Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Frederick Travers O'Connor, CSI, CIE, CVO (1870–1943). Born in Ireland and educated at Charterhouse and the Royal Military Academy Woolwich, he served as Trade Agent Gyantse between 1904 and 1907, and was Political Officer Sikkim for three months in 1921.

7 Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Marsham Bailey, CIE (1882–1967). Bailey, a noted explorer and naturalist, was born in India, the son of an Indian Army Officer. He was educated at Wellington, the Edinburgh Academy, and Sandhurst, and was later British Resident in Kashmir and Nepal. He served as Trade Agent in Gyantse and Yatung between 1905 and 1909, and was Political Officer Sikkim from 1921–8.

8 Sir Charles Bell, KCIE, CMG, CIE (1870–1945). Born in India, he was educated at Winchester and Oxford. Bell served at Yatung and Gangtok at various times between 1904 and 1908, and was Political Officer Sikkim for most of the period 1908–20.

9 File notes by Dane, 2 December 1905, & 30 December 1905, FD, 1906 Secret E Marsh 228–245; India to Secretary of State, 23 January 1906, & file note by Dane, 12 January 1906, FD, 1906 Secret E March 154–191, National Archives of India (hereafter NAI).

10 Lamb, A., The McMahon Line (London, 1966), pp. 134–7.Google Scholar [Lamb's reference, PEF 1908/22, No 1226, O'Connor to India, 3 February 1907, is no longer used.]

11 See, for example, Bell, C., Tibet Past and Present (Delhi, 1992; first published, Oxford, 1924), pp. 184–5, 189.Google Scholar

12 David MacDonald (1870–1962), was half-Sikkimese. After serving on the Younghusband Mission, be became Yatung Trade Agent in 1909, and remained serving there and in Gyantse until 1924. He was Political Officer Sikkim for four months in 1921.

13 McKay, , Tibet, p. 102.Google Scholar

14 See Bailey, F. M., Mission to Tashkent (London, 1946).Google Scholar

15 Re informants, see White to India, 25 July 1906, FD, 1906 External B August 180–181; Secret Service accounts, FD, 1908 Establishment B December 164–195, NAI. Re Bailey's journey to Sadiya, see FD, 1912 Secret E January 65–92, NAI. This file is classified as it contains a map, but the “Index for Foreign Proceedings for the Year 1912”, lists this file in two entries, one of which is obviously a misprint, giving the amount involved as 1,000 and 10,000 rupees respectively. Access to the Indian archives has led me to reassess my view that Bailey was not an intelligence officer in 1911; see McKay, , The Establishment, p. 417.Google Scholar Given that the Government of India curtailed Bailey's Assam exploration in 1911, and considered that he had spent too long in Russian Central Asia, there must be a suspicion that Bailey's intelligence activities were not solely on behalf of the Government of India, whose interests by no means always coincided with those of Whitehall.

16 Bell to India, 6 February 1921, L/P&S/11/195–1468, OIC.

17 Re Russian infiltration, see Snelling, J., Buddhism in Russia (Shaftsbury, 1993), pp. 212;Google Scholar Re Haldinov [Hodenof/Haldinoff], see Ludlow diary entry, 13 November 1924, MSS Eur D979; Bailey's Lhasa diary, various entries, MSS Eur F157–214, OIC; F&PD Index 1922–23, F.No 619–X, NAI; Bailey to India, 2 September 1924, 371–10291–4178 (1924) Foreign Office. Alex Andreyev of the St Petersburg Cultural Foundation is currently researching Soviet activities in Tibet during this period; see “The Bolshevik intrigue in Tibet”, paper delivered at the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz, 1994.Google Scholar

18 McGovern, W., To Lhasa in Disguise (London, 1924), p. 39.Google Scholar

19 The modernisation of Tibet is a central theme of Goldstein, M., A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (London, 1989).Google Scholar

20 Ludlow diary entry, 22 September 1924, MSS Eur D979, OIC. Re Tsarong, see in particular, Spence, H., “Tsarong 11, the Hero of Chaksam, and the modernisation struggle in Tibet, 1912–1931”, The Tibet Journal, XXVI/1 (1991).Google Scholar

21 MacDonald, D., Twenty Years in Tibet (Delhi, 1991, first published London, 1932) p. 303;Google Scholar draft letter, Bailey to W. M. Hardy [a missionary on the Eastern Tibetan frontier], undated, c. December 1932, Foreign Office 1842–1842–10.

22 Pereira to Bailey, 13 December 1922, MSS Eur F157–238, OIC.

23 Kashag to Bailey, 29 October 1922, L/P&S/11/235–2906, OIC. Rai Bahadur Sonam Wangfel Laden La (1876–1937), was a Sikkimese. He was a nephew of the pandit Urgyen Gyatso, who carried out a number of intelligence-gathering missions in Tibet in the late nineteenth century.

24 File note by E. B. Howell, 9 March 1923, Home Department 1923, file No 42 (v) Part B, NAI; so keen were the Government of India to use him that the ambitious Laden La was able to demand promotion to Superintendent as a condition of acceptance.

25 Gyantse Annual Report, 1923–24, L/P&S/10/218–2418, OIC; India to Government of Bengal, 31 August 1923, Home Department 1923, File No. 42 (V) Part B, NAI.

26 Bailey to India, 28 May 1924, 371–10233–2275 (1924), Foreign Office.

27 Bailey had served as Intelligence Officer in 1912–13 under Nevill on the Dibong Survey mission into hostile Abor country in Assam. Nevill had subsequently turned a blind eye to Bailey's evasion of bureaucratic obstacles to his exploration of the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra; see Bailey, F. M., No Passport to Tibet (London, 1957), pp. 31–40.Google Scholar Bailey's Lhasa Mission diary can be read as implying that Nevill accompanied him to Lhasa, although there is no other evidence of this; see diary entry of 18 July 1924, MSS Eur F157–214, OIC.

28 Despite the best efforts of Goldstein to compare accounts of these events, they remain contradictory; and there is little point in repeating them here; see Goldstein, , A History, pp. 121–37.Google Scholar

29 Bailey's Lhasa Mission diary, various entries, MSS Eur F157–214; Ludlow diary, various entries, September 1924, MSS Eur D979, OIC.

30 Copy of press communiqué dated 14 October 1924, L/P&S/10/1088–1417, OIC.

31 See, for example, Klein, I., “British imperialism in decline: Tibet, 1914–1921”, Historian, XXXIV.1 (1971);Google Scholar also see Spence, , Tsarong, p. 48.Google Scholar

32 I am indebted to Dr Michel Hockx and his wife Yu Hong, who recalled that at school in China she had been taught that the British attempted a coup in Tibet in the 1920s. This led me to examine Furen, Wang and Wenqing, Suo, Highlights of Tibetan History (Beijing, 1984), pp. 159–60.Google Scholar This states briefly that the British “cultivated a clique of pro-British military officers headed by Tsha-rong [sic] … to use these troops to stage a coup … When the conspiratorial group was ready to strike in October 1924 the scheme leaked out. The Dalai Lama took prompt measures. Tsha-rong and other group members were removed from office or otherwise punished”. No sources are given. Aside from the misdating, the account appears consistent except in one key area: if there was such a coup attempt, it was under Bailey's direction, possibly with the assistance of other frontier officers. It did not involve the “British” [Government], and was contrary to the general trend of British policy there at that time.

33 Richardson, H., Tibet and its History (Boston, 1984, first published London, 1962), p. 137;Google Scholar Lamb, A., Tibet, China and India 1914–1950, (Hertingfordbury, 1989), pp. 162, 175;Google Scholar Goldstein, , A History, pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

34 Ludlow diary entry of 19 September 1926, MSS Eur D979, OIC; FD Index 1924–27, File No. 38 (2)–X, NAl. A request to the Indian Department of External Affairs for access to this file was refused in 1994.

35 Dalai Lama to Norbu Dhondup, cited in Norbu to Bailey, 7 October 1924, MSS F157–240; Laden La to Bell, 5 September 1925, MSS Eur F80 5a 97, OIC.

36 Ludlow diary entry, 26 July 1924, MSS Eur D979; Ludlow to Bailey, 3 November 1926, MSS Eur F157– 241; MacDonald to Bell, 3 February 1930, MSS Eur F80 5a 92, OIC. McGovem, W., To Lhasa, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

37 Various correspondence, 1927, L/P&S/10/1088; Norbu Dhondup to Bailey, 2 October 1931, MSS Eur F147–240, OIC. It should be noted, however, that Norbu and Laden La were rivals.

38 Norbu Dhondup to Bailey, 1 September 1927, MSS Eur F157–240. John Noel, photographer on the early Everest expeditions, wrote in another context that “the opinions which Major Bailey quotes as coming from the Tibetans are entirely from himself … Government refers all matters to him and he practically dictates any answer he wishes”; Noel to RGS. Secretary, Arthur Hinks, 22 May 1925, Royal Geographical Society, Everest Collection, EE 27/6/13.

39 Re the Panchen Lama's character, see Lamb, A., The McMahon, pp. 18–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 With the Panchen Lama fleeing into exile after tax-demands from Lhasa, there was considerable ill-feeling towards Lhasa there.

41 Bailey to India, 18 July 1925, & 4–6 October 1925, L/P&S/10/1088–2679, OIC; Goldstein, , A History, pp. 126–30.Google Scholar

42 Diary entry of F. P. Mainprice, 15–19 October 1943, Mainprice papers, Cambridge South Asia Library.

43 Richardson, H., Tibet, p. 129.Google Scholar