March 10 was the 54th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the beginning of the 14th Dalai Lama's exile from Tibet. In recognition of this, I've been delving into a couple of significant events in Dalai Lama history. Last week we looked at the 8th Dalai Lama and the golden urn; this week's focus is on the 13th Dalai Lama's declaration of independence from China, issued 100 years ago.
The 13th Dalai Lama's declaration begs the question, Was Tibet then part of China? If so, does that give legitimacy to China's claim that Tibet has "always" been part of China?
I've been reading histories written by western historians, trusting them to be objective. The histories of China and Tibet are closely intertwined, but the nature of their relationship is not one that fits neatly into modern political categories.
There is no question that for the past few centuries, Tibet was within China's sphere of influence. Beyond that, it's hard to say what the two countries were to each other. In some ways the Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty treated Tibet as a vassal state, but in other ways they did not. For example, before the 20th century Tibetans paid no taxes or tribute to China. Further, China took little interest in the administration of Tibet, except in two areas -- security and Buddhism.
The Qing emperors had a patron-priest relationship with the Dalai Lama and his school of Buddhism, Gelugpa. Further, the territory of Tibet acted as a kind of security buffer on China's western border. So, from time to time China sent troops to expel invaders from Tibet. However, once the threat was gone, the troops marched back to China.
The Qing emperors also kept officials, called ambans, in Lhasa to act as the emperor's eyes and ears. They were not officially part of the government, but at times they exerted considerable influence. Often the ambans were more keen on helping themselves than on representing the will of the emperor, however.
It's also important to understand that, even as recently as a century ago, the concept of a sovereign nation-state with fixed borders was new to both China and Tibet. Historian Sam van Schaik wrote in Tibet: A History (Yale University Press, 2011):
"Just as the Chinese attempts to colonise Tibet were motivated by the new idea of a nation state with firm borders, so the Dalai Lama's declaration of independence was also motivated by nationalism. The Chinese idea that Tibet was an inseparable part of China, and the opposing Tibetan idea that Tibet was an independent country, were both quite new. In the past there had simply not been a political vocabulary to talk about nations this way."
When the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911 and was replaced by the Republic of China, it was not unreasonable for the 13th Dalai Lama to declare that Tibet's relationship had been with the Qing emperors, not the nation of China. "Nation of China" was a new concept.
Put in modern terms, in some ways the Qing emperors treated Tibet in the same way the United States treated many Latin American (and other) nations during the Cold War -- often meddling in their affairs and even supporting the overthrow of regimes considered insufficiently anti-Communist. But the meddled-with nations were never claimed as "part of" the United States.
Today, the question of Tibetan independence is not a "Buddhist" issue. The 14th Dalai Lama has distanced himself from the Tibetan independence movement and is asking China only to leave Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism alone. Dalai Lama history, however, does shed some light on China's "Tibet" question.
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