British expedition to Tibet
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| The British Expedition to Tibet | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United Kingdom |
 Tibet |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Brigadier J. R. Macdonald Major Francis Younghusband |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 3,000 Combat soldiers 7,000 support troops |
Unknown, several thousands of peasant conscripts | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 202 KIA 411 Other deaths |
Unknown, several thousands | ||||||
The British expedition to Tibet in 1903 and 1904 was an invasion of Tibet by British Indian forces, seeking to prevent the Russian Empire from interfering in Tibetan affairs and thus gaining a foothold in one of the buffer states surrounding British India, under similar reasoning which had led British forces into Afghanistan twenty years before. Whilst British forces were remarkably successful in achieving their aims militarily, politically the invasion was very unpopular back in Britain, where it was virtually disowned post-war. The effects on Tibet, despite higher casualties and some economic disruption, were also not significant, and any changes were not long retained.
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[edit] Road to war
The causes of the war are obscure, and it seems to have been primarily provoked by rumours circulating amongst the Calcutta-based British administration (Delhi was made imperial capital of India in 1911) that the Chinese government, (who nominally controlled Tibet), were planning to turn it over 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 empires to the north. These rumours reached the current Viceroy, Lord Curzon, who decided to counter such a move by sending a diplomatic mission of 500 troops lead by a young officer named Major Francis Younghusband to Khamber Jong, a tiny Tibetan village north of Sikkim to meet Chinese and Tibetan representatives and discuss mutual non-aggression and trade agreements. The expedition arrived in June 1903 but by November no Chinese or Tibetan delegates had arrived and the force was recalled. Curzon decided at this stage to reinforce his message that foreign interference in the region would not be tolerated by dispatching a much larger armed force to the Tibetan capital Lhasa to dictate a treaty to the state's rulers.
Tibet's government, guided by the Dalai Lama was understandably unhappy about the presence of a large acquisitive foreign power dispatching a military mission to its capital, and began marshalling its armed forces. The government was fully aware that no help could be expected from the Chinese government, and so intended to use their arduous terrain and mountain-trained army to block the British path. The British authorities had also thought of the trials mountain fighting would pose, and so dispatched a force heavy with Gurkha and Pathan troops, who came from mountainous regions of British India. The entire British force numbered just over 3,000 fighting men and was accompanied by 7,000 sherpas, porters and camp followers. Permission for the operation was received from London, but it is not clear that the Balfour government was fully aware of the scale of the operation, or of the Tibetan intention to resist it.
[edit] Initial advance
The British army which departed Gnatong in Sikkim on the 11 December 1903 was well prepared for the coming conflict due to its lengthy experience of service in Indian border wars. Its commander, Brigadier J. R. Macdonald wintered in the border country, using the time to train his troops near regular supplies of food and shelter before advancing properly in March, and making over 50 miles before his first major obstacle was presented on the 31 March at the pass of Guru, near Lake Bhan Tso.
[edit] The Battle of Guru
Facing the vanguard of Macdonald's army and blocking the road was a 3,000 strong Tibetan force armed with primitive matchlock muskets and crouching behind rock sangers ready to fire on encroaching British forces. Their general rode to meet with Younghusband and Macdonald, but displayed his inexperience by not fortifying the western side of the pass, leaving his soldiers there exposed in plain view of his opponents. He hoped to prevent bloodshed, as the conflict was not yet a shooting war, and perhaps as a gesture of goodwill appears to have ordered his men to extinguish the fuses on their muskets, the relighting of which is a lengthy and difficult operation. Macdonald refused to accept the warnings of the Tibetan general and dispatched Sikh and Gurkha soldiers to disarm the Tibetan forces, who were unable to resist the advance due to their extinguished fuses, but still refused to give up their arms, resulting in a brawl amidst the sangers which while violent, was not yet deadly.
It was at this stage that war was irreparably declared, although the cause of it has never been established and probably never will be. British accounts insist that the Tibetan general became angry at the sight of the brawl developing and shot a Sikh soldier in the face rather than give up his modern pistol, prompting a violent response from the soldier's comrades which rapidly escalated the situation. The Tibetan accounts differ by claiming that the British tricked the general into extinguishing his troop's fuses and that once this was done the British opened fire first anyway, the fatal shot from the general's pistol only occurring once battle had been joined.
Whatever the truth of the opening round of the battle, the actual fighting did not last long. Once disarmed, the Tibetan forces attempted to retreat, but became entangled with each other and the steep landscape, opening them to disciplined rifle volleys from the Sikh and Gurkha regiments as well as the deadly fire of British Maxim Guns. Despite this withering attack, the Tibetan forces fell back in good order, refusing to turn their backs or run, and holding off cavalry pursuit at bayonet point. Half a mile from the battlefield the Tibetan forces reached shelter and were allowed to withdraw by Brigadier Macdonald. Behind them they left between 600 and 700 fatalities and 168 wounded, 148 of who survived in British field hospitals as prisoners. Amongst the dead was the general whose impetuous and inexperienced decision to extinguish his men's muskets had led to disaster. British losses were just a handful of wounded, including the unfortunate Sikh who had been shot in the face.
[edit] The advance continues
Past the first barrier and with increasing momentum, Macdonald's force crossed abandoned defences at Kangma a week later, and on the 9 April attempted to pass through Red Idol Gorge, which had been fortified to prevent passage. Macdonald ordered his Gurkha troops to scale the steep hillsides of the gorge and drive out the Tibetan forces ensconced high on their cliffs. This they began, but soon were lost in a furious blizzard, which cut all communications with the Gurkha force. Some hours later, exploratory probes down the pass encountered fire and a desultory exchange continued till the storm lifted around noon, which showed that the Gurkhas had by chance found their way to a position above the Tibetan troops. Thus faced with fire from both sides as Sikh soldiers pushed up the hill, the Tibetans moved back, again coming under severe fire from British artillery and retreated in good order, leaving behind 200 dead. British losses were again negligible.
It was clear that the mission was going to have to contest almost every pass and village it crossed, a problem Macdonald attempted to solve by splitting his forces, packets of several hundred being dispatched to various points on his route to drive in smaller Tibetan defences to speed the passage of the main force. Two minor actions occurred around this time, one on the 5 May at a fortified farm named Chang Lo involved an assault by an estimated 800 Tibetans on the British garrison of the fort, who were alerted by the cries of the Tibetan war whoops in time to form ranks and drive back the assailants with 160 dead. The other skirmish on the 9 May was possibly the highest action ever fought, when a Tibetan position at the Garo Pass (19,000 feet above sea level) was assaulted by Gurkha troops who climbed a vertical cliff under fire to outflank the Tibetans who were driven back by a charge of Gurkha, Sikh and British soldiers. For once, casualties were more evenly distributed, although the Tibetans still suffered heavily.
In the following two months, Macdonald collected his forces near Chang Lo and cleared minor obstacles with the intention of assaulting the main Tibetan stronghold at Gyantse Jong. Once this obstacle was cleared, the road to Lhasa would be opened, due to the removal of the small Tibetan forces occupying it by the dispersal of the British force. Gyantse Jong was however too tough for a small raiding force to take and it overlooked British supply routes, making it the primary target of Macdonald's army. On 28 June the final obstacle to the assault was cleared when a fortified monastery which covered the approach was taken in house to house fighting by Pathan soldiers.
Tibetan responses to the invasion so far had relied totally on static defences and sniping from the mountains at the passing column neither of which had proved effective, and apart from the failed assault on Chang Lo two months previously that had made no sallies against British positions or any aggressive movements against the besieging army. This attitude was a mix of justifiable fear of the Maxim Guns, and partly faith in the solid rock of their defences, but in every battle they were primarily let down by their poor weaponry and inexperienced leadership.
[edit] The storming of Gyantse Jong
The Gyantse Jong was a massively well protected fortress, which possessed the best Tibetan troops and the country's only artillery as well as forbidding position high over the valley below. The British had no time for a lengthy formal siege and so Macdonald proposed that feints would draw Tibetan soldiers away from the walls over several days before an artillery bombardment with mountain guns would create a breach which would immediately be stormed by his main force. This plan was put into action on the 4 July, when Gurkha troops took several batteries in the vicinity of the fortress by climbing vertical cliffs under fire, a feat they achieved with impressive regularity.
The eventual assault on the 6 July did not go as planned, as the Tibetan walls were stronger than previously believed, and took eleven hours to break through, the breach not being completed until 4:00pm, by which time the assault had little time to succeed before nightfall. As Gurkhas and Royal Fusiliers charged the broken wall, they came under heavy fire and suffered some casualties. After several failed attempts to gain the walls, two soldiers broke through a bottleneck under fire and stormed the walls despite both being wounded. They gained a foothold which following troops exploited, enabling the walls to be taken. Knowing by now the power of British weaponry upon a defeated force, the Tibetans retreated in good order from the fort, allowing the British control of the road to Lhasa, but denying Macdonald a rout and thus remaining a constant threat (although never a serious problem) in the British rear for the remainder of the war.
The two soldiers who broke the wall at Gyanse Jong were both well rewarded. Lieutenant John Duncan Grant was given the only Victoria Cross awarded during the expedition, whilst Havildar Pun received the Indian Order of Merit first class.
[edit] Entry to Lhasa
Younghusband now assumed command of the mission, as the road had been successfully cleared. He took on his procession to Lhasa nearly 2,000 soldiers, all those not required to protect the road back to Sikkim. Crossing several obviously fortified ambush points without incident and recrossing the Garo Pass, the force arrived in Lhasa on August 3, 1904 to discover that the Dalai Lama and all the Tibetan officials had fled. Meeting with the Chinese resident official, who escorted the British into the city with his personal guard, a triumphal procession to the Potala Palace was followed by a dictation of treaty terms, which now included a demanded Tibetan apology for "starting the war". The Tri Rimpoche who governed the city in the Dalai Lama's absence agreed to all articles of the treaty, reportedly cryptically commenting that "When one has known the scorpion (meaning China) the frog (meaning Britain) is divine".
[edit] Conclusion to the campaign
The British mission departed in late September 1904, after a ceremonial presentation of gifts. In the event, neither side could be too unhappy with the outcome of the war. Britain had "won" and had received the agreements it desired, but without actually receiving any tangible results. The Tibetans had lost the war but had seen China humbled in its failure to defend their client state from foreign incursion, and had pacified the invader by signing an unenforceable and largely irrelevant treaty. Damage to civilian life and property was virtually nil, and there are no contemporary reports of looting or wanton destruction by the soldiers of either side. Captured Tibetan troops were all released without condition upon the war's conclusion, many after receiving medical treatment. Some Chinese historians of a much later date have attempted to portray this as a series of savage massacres of unarmed men during a vicious war of expansion, but apart from the controversial opening battle at Guru, such tragedies did not occur, the war instead being conducted with the minimum possible bloodshed, all British commanders keeping a keen eye towards London, where their actions were thoroughly scrutinized at the distance of some weeks.
It was in fact the reaction in London which was fiercest in condemnation of the war. By the Edwardian period, colonial wars had become increasingly unpopular, and public and political opinion were unhappy with the waging of a war for such slight reasons as those provided by Curzon, and with the opening battle, which was portrayed in Britain as something of a deliberate massacre of unarmed men. It was only the support given to them by King Edward VII that provided Younghusband, Macdonald, Grant and others with the recognition they did eventually receive for what was quite a remarkable feat of arms in taking an army across the rooftop of the world, driving through courageous defenders through freezing weather in impassable positions and achieving all their objectives in just six months, losing just 202 men to enemy action and 411 to other causes. Tibetan casualties have never been calculated, but must have reached the several thousands over the course of 16 major and minor actions, including two battles.
[edit] Force composition
The make-up of the opposing armies explains a lot about the outcome of the ensuing conflict. The Tibetan soldiers were almost all rapidly impressed peasants, who lacked organisation, discipline, training and motivation. Only a handful of their most devoted units, composed of monks armed usually with swords and jingals proved to be effective, and they were in such small numbers as to be unable to reverse the tide of battle. This problem was exacerbated by the generals who commanded the Tibetan forces, who seemed in awe of the British and refused to make any aggressive moves against the small and often dispersed convoy. They also conspicously failed to properly defend their natural barriers to the British progress, frequently offering battle in relatively open ground instead, where Maxim Guns and rifle volleys took a terrible toll.
By contrast, the British and Indian troops were highly experienced veterans of mountainous border warfare on the North-West Frontier, as was their commanding officer. Amongst the units at his disposal in his 3,000 strong force were elements of the 8th Gurkhas, 40th Pathans, 23rd and 32nd Sikh Pioneers, 19th Punjab Infantry and the Royal Fusiliers, as well as mountain artillery, engineers, Maxim Gun detachments from four regiments and thousands of porters recruited from Nepal and Sikkim. With their combination of experienced officers, well-maintained modern equipment and strong morale, they were able to defeat the Tibetan armies at every encounter.
[edit] Aftermath
Tibet was in fact not just unwilling to fulfill the treaty placed before them; they were also unable to perform many of its stipulations. Tibet had no sizable international trade commodities and already accepted the borders of her neighbours, so required no major alterations to her political stance. An attempt to enforce some of the treaty was made in 1906 by a peaceful British mission which again failed to enforce a change in the Tibetan political scene. In 1910, the Tibetan government was attacked by China, in the grip of the tensions which ended the Qing Dynasty and brought on the Xinhai Revolution. Although the Chinese forces departed once more in 1913, the First World War isolated Tibet and reduced Western influence and interest there with the communist takeover in Russia. In 1950, neither Britain nor India were able or willing to become involved in the fall of Tibet.
[edit] Bibliography
- Candler, Edmund The Unveiling of Lhasa. (Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd ?1905)
- Carrington, Michael Officers Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4 Younghusband Mission to Tibet, Modern Asian Studies 37, 1 (2003), PP 81-109.
- Fleming, Peter Bayonets to Lhasa (ISBN 0-19-583862-9, reprint 1986).
- French, Patrick Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (ISBN 0-00-637601-0, reprint 1997).
- Hopkirk, Peter The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (ISBN 1-56836-022-3, reprint 1994).
- Herbert, Edwin Small Wars and Skirmishes, 1902-18 (ISBN 1-901543-05-6, 2003)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] See also
- History of Tibet
- Red River Valley, a 1997 Chinese dramatization of the events of the British expedition to Tibet
