British Expedition To Tibet - Background

Background

The causes of the war are obscure - historian Charles Allen has called the official reasons for the invasion 'almost entirely bogus.' It seems to have been provoked primarily by rumours circulating amongst the Calcutta-based British administration that the Chinese government, (who nominally ruled Tibet), were planning to give it to the Russians, thus providing Russia with a direct route to British India and breaking the chain of semi-independent, mountainous buffer-states which separated India from the Russian Empire to the north. These rumours were confirmed seemingly by the facts of Russian exploration of Tibet. Russian explorer Gombojab Tsybikov was the first photographer of Lhasa, residing in it during 1900—1901 with the aid of the thirteenth Dalai Lama's Russian courtier Agvan Dorjiyev. The Dalai Lama declined to have dealings with the British government in India and sent Dorjiyev in 1900 as an emissary to the court of Czar Nicholas II with an appeal for Russian protection. Dorjiyev was warmly received at the Peterhof and a year later, in 1901, at the Czar's palace in Yalta.

In view of these events Curzon's belief was reinforced that the Dalai Lama intended to place Tibet firmly within a sphere of Russian influence and end its neutrality. In 1903 Viceroy, Lord Curzon, sent a request to the governments of China and Tibet for negotiations to be held at Khampa Dzong, a tiny Tibetan village north of Sikkim to establish trade agreements. The Chinese were willing, and ordered the thirteenth Dalai Lama to attend. However, the Dalai Lama refused, and also refused to provide transport to enable the amban (the Chinese official based in Lhasa), You Tai, to attend. Curzon concluded that China had no power or authority to compel the Tibetan government, and gained approval from London to send a military expedition, commanded by Colonel Francis Younghusband, to Khampa Dzong.

On 19 July 1903, Younghusband arrived at Gangtok, the capital city of the Indian state of Sikkim, to prepare for his mission. A letter from the under-secretary to the government of India to Younghusband on 26 July 1903 stated that "In the event of your meeting the Dalai Lama, the government of India authorizes you to give him the assurance which you suggest in your letter." From August 1903 Younghusband and his escort commander at Khamba Jong, Lt-Col herbert Brander, tried to provoke the Tibetans into a confrontation. The British took a few months to prepare for the expedition which pressed into Tibetan territories in early December 1903 following an act of 'Tibetan hostility' - which was afterwards established by the British resident in Nepal to have been the herding of some trespassing Nepalese yaks and their drovers back across the border. When Younghusband telegrammed the Viceroy, in an attempt to strengthen the British Cabinet's support of the invasion, that intelligence indicated Russian arms had entered Tibet, Curzon privately silenced him. 'Remember that in the eyes of HMG we are advancing not because of Dorjyev, or Russian rifles in Lhasa, but because of our Convention shamelessly violated, our frontier trespassed upon, our subjects arrested, our mission flouted, our represenatations ignored.' The entire British force, which had taken on all the characteristics of an invading army, numbered over 3,000 fighting men and was accompanied by 7,000 sherpas, porters and camp followers. Six companies of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers, and 4 companies of the 8th Gurkhas in reserve at Gnatong in Sikkim, as well as 2 Gurkha companies guarding the British camp at Khamba Jong were involved. The British authorities had thought of the difficulty of mountain fighting, and so dispatched a force with many Gurkha and Pathan troops, who were from mountainous regions. Permission for the operation was received from London, but it is not known whether the Balfour government was fully aware of the difficulty of the operation, or of the Tibetan intention to resist it.

The Tibetans were aware of the expedition. To avoid bloodshed the Tibetan general at Yadong pledged that if the British made no attack upon the Tibetans, he would not attack the British. Colonel Younghusband replied, on 6 December 1903, that "we are not at war with Tibet and that, unless we are ourselves attacked, we shall not attack the Tibetans".

When no Tibetan or Chinese officials met the British at Khapma Dzong, Younghusband advanced, with some 1,150 soldiers, 10,000 porters and labourers, and thousands of pack animals, to Tuna, fifty miles beyond the border. After waiting more months there, hoping in vain to be met by negotiators, the expedition received orders (in 1904) to continue toward Lhasa.

Tibet's government, guided by the Dalai Lama was alarmed by the presence of a large acquisitive foreign power dispatching a military mission to its capital, and began marshalling its armed forces.