The Younghusband Mission to Tibet

,br> Francis Younghusband took it upon himself to shoulder aside the nominal leader of the mission, General James Macdonald, who has subsequently and rather unfairly been labeled with the soubriquet 'Retiring Mac.' Where Macdonald would have followed the terms of reference of the mission scrupulously, Younghusband forced the troops onwards to the capital and to the negotiation of another the unequal treaties that imperialists employed at the time, as indeed they still do. Tibetans who tried to stand against the British and empire troops - mostly from India and Nepal - had only medieval weapons to sustain themselves and no concept of the danger of modern technology and military methods. Faced with superior firepower and with a mindset that connected superior force with religious virtue, the overwhelmed Tibetan guards fled on more than one occasion. There was a massacre. Some British troops were killed by accident, misadventure and enemy action. The weather and the forbidding mountainous terrain proved rather more formidable foes.
,br> Yet the steadfast sense of superiority and destiny possessed by the British hierarchy convinced them that they could not and would not be either deterred or defeated. Relentlessly, the column of troops and larger supporting column of livestock and logistics teams pushed on towards the holy of holies in Lhasa. Negotiations were entered into, contrary to instructions and the treaty forced through by Younghusband almost alone. He planned to return in triumph at this great extension of British imperial power. Alas for him, the British government took a dim view of his overstepping the mark and he lived out his life, if not in ignominy, then at least not without achieving the high honours he envisaged for himself and his later activities were more marked by eccentricity than reward. The treaty was renegotiated, with a much fairer distribution of the benefits of it. Tibet, nevertheless, had entered, fatefully, the realm of inter-imperial politics.

References and Further Reading

The main source for this article is Charles Allen's Duel in the Snows: The True Story of the Younghusband Mission to China (London: John Murray (Publishers), 2004). My review of this book for the Asian Review of Books is available here: http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/ar...

John Walsh, Mahidol University International College, June 2004

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