Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, KCSI, KCIE (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942, Dorset[1]) was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered chiefly for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, which he led, during which a massacre of Tibetans occurred,[2] and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and President of the Royal Geographical Society.
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Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree, British India (now Pakistan) to a British military family, being the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband[3] and his wife Clara Jane Shaw. Clara's brother, Robert Shaw, was a noted explorer of Central Asia.
As an infant, Francis was taken to live in England by his mother. When Clara returned to India in 1867 she left her son in the care of two austere and strictly religious aunts. In 1870 his mother and father returned to England and reunited the family. In 1876 at age thirteen, Francis entered Clifton College, Bristol. In 1881 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and in 1882 he was commissioned as a subaltern in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards.[3]
In 1886-1887, on leave from his regiment, Younghusband made an expedition through Manchuria, crossing the Gobi Desert and pioneering a route from Kashgar and India through the uncharted Mustagh Pass.[4] For this achievement he was elected the youngest member of the Royal Geographical Society and received the society's gold medal.
In 1889, the year he made Captain, Younghusband was dispatched with a small escort of Gurkha soldiers to investigate an uncharted region north of Ladakh, where raiders from Hunza had disrupted trade between Yarkand and India the previous year.[5] Whilst encamped in the valley of the Yarkand River, Younghusband received a messenger at his camp, inviting him to dinner with Captain Bronislav Grombchevsky, his Russian counterpart in "The Great Game". Younghusband accepted the invitation to Grombchevsky's camp, and after dinner the two rivals talked into the night, sharing brandy and vodka, and discussing the possibility of a Russian invasion of British India. Grombchevsky impressed Younghusband with the horsemanship skills of his Cossack escort, and Younghusband impressed Grombchevsky with the rifle drill of his Gurkhas.[6] After their meeting in this remote frontier region, Grombchevsky resumed his expedition in the direction of Tibet and Younghusband continued his exploration of the Karakoram.
In 1890 Younghusband was sent on a mission to Chinese Turkestan, accompanied by George Macartney as interpreter. He spent the winter in Kashgar, where he left Macartney as British consul.[7] In 1891 he returned to India through the Pamirs. At Bozai Gumbaz in the Little Pamir he encountered Russian soldiers, who forced him to leave the area.[8] This was one of the incidents which provoked the Hunza-Nagar Campaign.
During his service in Kashmir, he wrote a book called 'Kashmir' at the request of Edward Molyneux. Younghusband's descriptions went hand in hand with his paintings of the Valley by Molyneux. In the book, Younghusband declared his immense admiration of the natural beauty of Kashmir and its history.
In 1890, Younghusband transferred to the Indian Political Service. He served as a political officer on secondment from the British Army.
The Great Game, between Britain and Russia, continued beyond the turn of the century. Younghusband, among other explorers such as Sven Hedin, Nikolai Przhevalsky and Sir Aurel Stein, participated in earnest.[9] Rumors of Russian expansion into the Hindu Kush and a Russian presence in Tibet prompted the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon to appoint Younghusband, by then a Major, to serve as British commissioner to Tibet from 1902-1904.
In 1903-1904, under orders from Curzon, Younghusband, jointly with John Claude White, the Political Officer for Sikkim, led a British expedition to Tibet, whose putative aim was to settle disputes over the Sikkim-Tibet border; the expedition controversially became (by exceeding instructions from London) a de facto invasion of Tibet.[10]
About one hundred miles inside Tibet, on the way to Gyangzê, thence to the capital of Lhasa, a confrontation outside the hamlet of Guru led to the massacre, by the expedition, of 600-700 Tibetan militia, largely monks.[11] Some estimates of Tibetan casualties are far higher; including other conflicts, more than five thousand Tibetans may have been killed, against British casualties of five.[12] The British force was supported by King Ugyen Wangchuck of Bhutan, who was knighted in return for his services.
In 1891, Younghusband received the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire which was upgraded to Knight Commander in 1904;[3] and in 1917, he was awarded the honour of Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India. He was also awarded the Kaisar-I-Hind Medal (gold) in 1901.[3]
In 1906, Younghusband settled in Kashmir as the British representative before returning to Britain where he became an active member of many clubs and societies. During World War I his patriotic Fight for Right campaign commissioned the song Jerusalem. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1908.
Younghusband was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1919, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee which was set up in 1921 to co-ordinate the reconnaissance of Mount Everest.[13] He actively encouraged climbers, including George Mallory, to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest, and they followed the same initial route as the earlier Tibet Mission.
In 1938 Younghusband encouraged Ernst Schäfer, who was about to lead a German expedition to Tibet, to "sneak over the border" when faced with British intransigence towards Schäfer's efforts to reach Tibet.[14]
In 1897 Younghusband married Helen Augusta Magniac, the daughter of Charles Magniac, MP. They had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, Eileen Younghusband (1902-1981), who became a prominent social worker.[15]
From 1921 to 1937 the couple lived at Westerham, Kent, but Helen did not accompany her husband on his travels. In 1939 he met Madeline Lees, 32 years his junior, with whom he conducted a mystical affair until his death.[15]
Biographer Patrick French describes Younghusband as one who was
Ultimately he became what French calls a "premature hippy" who "had great faith in the power of cosmic rays, and claimed that there are extraterrestrials with translucent flesh on the planet Altair." [17]
During his 1904 retreat from Tibet, Younghusband had a mystical experience which suffused him with "love for the whole world" and convinced him that "men at heart are divine." [18] This conviction led him to regret his invasion of Tibet, and eventually, in 1936, to found the World Congress of Faiths (in imitation of the World Parliament of Religions).
Younghusband published a number of books with what we might call New Age themes, with titles like The Gleam: Being an account of the life of Nija Svabhava, pseud. (1920); Mother World (in Travail for the Christ that is to be) (1924); and Life in the Stars: An Exposition of the View that on some Planets of some Stars exist Beings higher than Ourselves, and on one a World-Leader, the Supreme Embodiment of the Eternal Spirit which animates the Whole (1927). (This last was admired by Lord Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts founder.) [19] Key concepts include what would come to be known as the Gaia hypothesis, pantheism, and a Christlike "world leader" living on the planet "Altair" (or "Stellair"), who radiates spiritual guidance by means of telepathy.
Younghusband also came to believe in free love ("freedom to unite when and how a man and a woman please"), marriage laws being a matter of "outdated custom." [20] He wrote his longtime lover Madeline, Lady Lees that "I have made the discovery that bodily union does not impair soul union but heightens and tightens it." [21] Lees agreed. French, restoring censored passages from Younghusband's correspondence, discovered a letter from him suggesting that Lees was pregnant with Younghusband's child:
The identity of the child is unknown, and its existence cannot be confirmed.
One of Younghusband's domestic servants, Gladys Aylward, became a Christian missionary to China. The Ingrid Bergman film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is based on her life, with an actor portraying Younghusband.[23]
In July 1942 Younghusband suffered a stroke after addressing a meeting of the World Congress of Faiths in Birmingham. He died of cardiac failure on 31 July 1942 at Madeline Lees' home at Lytchett Minster, Dorset. He was buried in the village churchyard.[15]