Himalayan Triangle a Historical Survey of British India's Relations with Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan 1765-1950
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Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh Himalayan Triangle A historical survey of British India's relations with Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan 1765-1950 The British Library I 988 0 A K Jasbir Singh 1988 Published by The British Library Great Russell Street London WCIB 3DG British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh Himalayan triangle: a historical survey of British India's relations with Tibet. Sikkim and Bhutan 1765-1950 1. Asia. Himalayas, 1765-1950. I. Ti 11. British Library 954 ISBN 0 7123 0630 7 Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Marc Fitch Fund for a generous grant towards production costs of the maps included in this publication. Maps by John Mitchell Designed by Alan Bartram Typeset in Linotron Bembo by Bexhill Phototypesetters Printed in England on permanent paper g by Redwood Bum Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Maps printed in England by BAS Ltd, Over Wallop, Stockbridge. Hampshire. Contents Foreword by Alastair Lamb I ix Preface I xi The Maps I Between pages 76and 77 Tibet Early contacts, 1772-1846 ( 3 China and Britain: the opening of Tibet, 1847-96 1 7 The Anglo-Chinese Convention, 1890: arrival of Lord Curzon, I 89-8 ( 9 Lord Curzon's Tibetan policy, I 899-1901 I lo Events leading up to the Tibet Mission, 1902-03 1 14 The Younghusband Mission, 190344 1 17 The road to Guru and beyond, I904 1 22 The Lhasa Convention, 1904 1 30 The Panchen Lama: negotiations at Calcutta; the Anglo-Chinese Convention, 1905-6 1 32 The Anglo-Russian Agreement concerning Tibet, 1906-07 1 39 China's Asian policy, 1906-07 ( 42 The Tibet Trade Regulations, 1908 I 44 The XIIIth Dalai Lama, his relations with China and return to Lhasa, 1904-10 ( 46 The Dalai Lama in India, 1910-12 I 49 Challenge in the Assam Himalaya, 1910-13 1 52 Tibet and the Chinese Revolution, 1911-12 ( 58 Status of Tibet under the Chinese Republic, 1912-13 1 62 Preliminaries to the Simla Conference, 1912-13 1 67 The Sirnla Conference, 1913-14 1 70 The McMahon Line 1 77 Tibet and China, 1914-19 1 83 Charles Bell's Mission to Lhasa, 1920-21 ( 88 Tibet's internal affairs, 1921-30 I 89 Closer ties with Britain, 1930-33 ( 96 Death of the XIIIth Dalai Lama, 1933 1 101 Sino-British rivalry in Tibet, 1934-37 I 102 The North-East Tribal Frontier, 193 5-47 ( I 10 The discovery of the XlVth Dalai Lama, 1937-39 1 117 Encroachments on neutrality: China and Tibet, 194-46 1 120 Chinese representation at Lhasa, 1943-45 ( 123 The Tibetan Mission to India and China, 1945-46 1 129 Conspiracy in Tibet, 1947 1 131 Tibet's treaty relations with the National Government of India, 1947 1 132 Tibet: the question of status 1 136 Sikkim Sikkim, the Gurkhas and early contacts with the East India Company, 1768-1 8 16 1 165 The Treaty of Titalia and relations with the East India Company, 1817-26 I 174 Negotiations and the cession of Darjeeling, 1827-40 1 177 Dr Campbell and the Sikkim Darbar, 1841-59 1 182 The Eden Mission and the 1861 Treaty, 1860-62 1 191 Sikkim and attempts to develop the trade route to Tibet, 1863-73 1 197 Internal affairs: increased British influence in Sikkim, 1874-77 1 203 Nepalese encroachments in Sikkim: the Colman Macaulay Mission, 1877-87 1 204 The Lingtu affair, I 888 1 216 The Sikkim Convention, I 890: negotiations regarding trade, pasturage and frontiers, I 891-3 I 218 Anglo-Chinese negotiations; Maharaja Thutob Namgyal, 1894-99 I 224 Curzon's Tibetan policy, its effect on Sikkim, 1900-03 I 238 Sikkim and the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa, 1903-05 1 246 Maharaja Kumar Sidkeong Namgyal: administration of Sikkim, 1906141 249 Maharaja Tashi Namgyal, 1914-46 1 256 Indian independence: Sikkim's Standstill Agreement, 194648 1 258 Post-independence and annexation of Sikkim, 194~75( 262 Bhutan Bhutan and the East India Company: first contacts, 1766-92 1 291 Bhutan, the Gurkhas and the Indo-Nepalese War, 1793-1816 1 296 The Assam Duars and Indo-Bhutanese relations, 1825-38 1 298 The Pemberton Mission, I 83 8 ( 302 Annexation of the Assam Duars, 183H3 1 306 Frontier disputes, 185659 1 308 Annexation of Ambari Falakata, 1860 1 310 Eden's Mission to Bhutan, and its effects, 186344 1 313 The Anglo-Bhutan War and the 1865 Treaty, 186446 1 318 Anglo-Bhutanese relations: demarcation of the Indo-Bhutan frontier, 1867-72 1 32.5 Neutrality in relation to Bhutan's internal affairs, 1873-98 ( 330 The Macaulay Mission and Bhutan, 1885-86 1 332 Bhutan and the Younghusband Mission, 18gg-1904 ( 334 British suzerainty in Bhutan, 1905-07 I 347 Chinese claims to suzerainty in Bhutan, 1908-10 1 349 Charles Bell's Mission to Bhutan: the Treaty of 1910 1 352 Bhutan in treaty relations with the Crown, 1911-45 1 354 The end of the British connection: status of Bhutan, 194650 1 365 Bibliography Original sources ( 383 Printed Books in European Languages (IOL) I 384 Appendix: Brief notes on other archival sources in Britain, India, Sikkim, Bhutan and China 1395 Foreword For more than three centuries the British were involved with India, at first only as merchants and then increasingly as imperial rulers. By the middle of the 19th century the existence of the Indian Empire was one of the central fixed points in British colonial and foreign policy; and nothing demonstrated more clearly the new diminished British world role following the Second World War than the departure from India in 1947. The importance of India to the understanding of British history over the greater part ofthe modern era cannot be questioned. By what may justly be called a miracle the central corpus of source material for the study of this great subject has remained intact and undivided in London in the India Offlce Library and Records. In this book Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh explains for the benefit of all scholars one section (and a relatively small one at that) of this great wealth of documents, that dealing with British contacts with Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet from the 1760s until the end of British rule in 1947. When I started working on this material in 1953 as part of my research for my doctoral dissertation at Cambridge on the subject of British relations with Tibet from the 18th century until the Younghusband Expedition of 1904, the India Ofice Library had not moved from its old premises in Whitehall and the papers were still arranged in a manner better suited for the functions of Whitehall bureaucracy than the methods of an academic historian. Indeed, it was often easier to approach the India Off~cematerial through the copies that were sent to the Foreign Ofice and available in the Public Record Ofice (then still housed in the pseudo-medieval splendour of Chancery Lane). All this is now changed. The India Offlice Records have been sorted out and listed. Some of the adventure may have been removed from research, but also a great deal of needless labour. Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh's work, plus her guide to source materials published as a companion volume to Himalayan Triangle, would have been of enormous value to me had I had them to hand when I was doing research for my PhD. In the early 19~os,at least so it seemed to me, the subject on which 1 was working and which is also the subject of Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh's book was one of great interest but little practical importance. The Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau to their north did not appear to constitute one of the pivots of global policy. Indeed, what appealed to me most about the whole region (a tiny comer ofwhich I was able to visit in 1955) was that it represented a world in which the nuclear and mechanised horrors of the 20th century could be forgotton for a while. Unfortunately, this vision was to prove (indeed the process had already so started) to be quite false. The landscape covered in the present book is far from marginal to world history. It represents the interface between the two most populous nations on earth and marks the site of one of the most complicated boundary disputes ever to disturb the peace of nations. There have been two major, though related, issues involved in the India Oflice Records covered in this book (as well as a large number of relatively minor matters), namely the international status of Tibet (and the Chinese rights, or lack of rights, there) and the nature ofthe Sino-Indian boundary as it had evolved during the period of British rule in India. In that both are to a great extent problems of history, the records of the India Office are of enormous importance in their understanding if not necessarily in their solution. These documents which Amar Kaur Jasbir Singh has listed and commented upon, and which in 1953 I rather naively thought were obscure, are probably amongst the most important of the records of the British Indian Empire for those who have to deal with the practical affairs of the contemporary world. Their significance, however, is not always easy to understand; and it is here, above all, that Amar KaurJasbir Singh has made her contribution to the whole subject, based upon a sound sense of history combined with many years of devoted study of the archives in her care. There is a certain irony in the fact that the India Office Library and Records, an institution which serves as a memorial to a dead empire, in fact is of great interest to empires which are very much alive.