The British expedition to Tibet, also known as the Younghusband expedition, began in December 1903 and lasted until September 1904. The expedition was effectively a temporary invasion by British Indian Armed Forces under the auspices of the Tibet Frontier Commission, whose purported mission was to establish diplomatic relations and resolve the dispute over the border between Tibet and Sikkim. In the nineteenth century, the British had conquered Burma and Sikkim, with the whole southern flank of Tibet coming under the control of the British Indian Empire. Tibet was ruled by the 13th Dalai Lama under the Ganden Phodrang government as a Himalayan state nominally under the protectorate (or suzerainty) of the Chinese Qing dynasty until the 1911 Revolution, after which a period of de facto Tibetan independence (1912–1951) followed.
The invasion was intended to counter the Russian Empire's perceived ambitions in the East and was initiated largely by Lord Curzon, the head of the British Indian government. Curzon had long held deep concerns over Russia's advances in central Asia and now feared a Russian invasion of British India. In April 1903, the British government received clear assurances from Russia that it had no interest in Tibet. "In spite, however, of the Russian assurances, Lord Curzon continued to press for the dispatch of a mission to Tibet," a high level British political officer noted.
The expeditionary force fought its way to Gyantse and eventually reached Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in August 1904. The Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, had fled to safety, first to Mongolia and then to China proper. The poorly trained and equipped Tibetans proved no match for the modern equipment and training of the British Indian forces. At Lhasa, the Commission forced remaining Tibetan officials to sign the Convention of Lhasa, before withdrawing to Sikkim in September, with the understanding the Chinese government would not permit any other country to interfere with the administration of Tibet.
The mission was recognized as a military expedition by the British Indian government, which issued a campaign medal, the Tibet Medal, to all those who took part.
Background
British-ruled India came in contact with Tibet after the annexation of Kumaon and Garhwal in 1815, and it expanded further with their reach into Punjab and Kashmir. However, the British were unable to carry out any negotiations or trade with Tibet. After Sikkim came under British protection in 1861, its border with Tibet needed to be defined. Sikkim also appeared to the British as an ideal route to conduct trade with Tibet.
The presence of Chinese ambans in Tibet led the British to assume that China possessed authority over Tibet and they began to negotiate with China regarding relations with Tibet. However, the Tibetans rejected the results of these negotiations, including the border settlement and the trade agreement. Tibetan troops erected a stone fortress across the trade route on Sikkimese territory. Protests to China obtained no relief. Boundary pillars erected by the British and Chinese commissioners were removed by the Tibetans. The British trade commissioner was told that Tibet did not recognise the concessions made by China. British efforts to directly negotiate with the Tibetans were also rebuffed. The Chinese inability to implement the concessions exposed their "impotence" in Tibet. The British Governor-General came to the conclusion that Chinese suzerainty over Tibet was a "constitutional fiction", which was maintained only for mutual convenience and had no effect in practice.
On top of this, there were rumours and suspicions in the British colonial government that the Tibetans had reached a secret understanding with the Russians over Tibet, and that Russia was providing arms and fighting forces to Tibet against the British Raj. Russian influence in Tibet would afford them a direct route to British India, breaking the chain of quasi-autonomous buffer-states that separated the Raj from the Russian Empire to the north. These rumours were supported by the Russian exploration of Tibet and the presence of a Siberian-born courtier and Mongolian Buddhist lama named Agvan Dorzhiev, who knew and tutored the 13th Dalai Lama. While the Dalai Lama declined to have dealings with the British, he established contact with the Tsar of Russia through Dorzhiev. In 1900, he sent an appeal for Russian protection through Dorzhiev, who met the Tsar at the imperial summer residence in Livadia on 30 September 1900. Gifts were exchanged and the possibility of a Russian consulate in Tibet was discussed. In 1901 Dorzhiev and other representatives met with the Tsar at Peterhof. A Russo-Tibetan treaty was drafted but not adopted due to fears of conflict with the British and Qing regimes. Russia sent back arms and ammunition, as well as a set of Russian Episcopal robes, to the Dalai Lama.
These events reinforced the Governor-General Lord Curzon's belief that the Dalai Lama intended to place Tibet firmly within a sphere of Russian influence and end its neutrality. In 1903, Curzon sent a request to the governments of China and Tibet for negotiations, to be held at Khampa Dzong, a tiny Tibetan village north of Sikkim to establish trade agreements. The Chinese were willing, and ordered the thirteenth Dalai Lama to attend. However, the Dalai Lama refused, and also refused to provide transport to enable the amban, Yu Tai, to attend.
Tibet Frontier Commission
Governor-General Curzon gained approval from London to send a Tibet Frontier Commission, led by Colonel Francis Younghusband with John Claude White and E. C. Wilson as Deputy Commissioners, to Khampa Dzong. However, it is not known whether the Balfour government was fully aware of the difficulty of the operation, or of the Tibetan opinion of the idea.
On 19 July 1903, Younghusband arrived at Gangtok, the capital city of the British Indian princely state of Sikkim, where John Claude White was political officer, to prepare for his mission. White was unhappy with his secondment to the expeditionary force and, to Younghusband's displeasure, had done everything in his power to have the appointment cancelled. He failed, and Younghusband had his revenge for White's insubordination when he later left him in the leech-infested jungles of Sikkim to arrange for mules and coolies to transport supplies to the expedition.
Meanwhile, a letter from the under-secretary to the government of India to Younghusband on 26 July 1903 stated that "In the event of your meeting the Dalai Lama, the government of India authorizes you to give him the assurance which you suggest in your letter." From August 1903, Younghusband and his escort commander at Khampa Dzong, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Brander, tried to provoke the Tibetans into a confrontation. The British took a few months to prepare for the expedition that pressed into Tibetan territories in early December 1903 following an act of "Tibetan hostility", which was afterwards established by the British resident in Nepal to have been the herding of some trespassing Nepalese yaks and their drovers back across the border. When Younghusband telegrammed the Viceroy, in an attempt to strengthen the British Cabinet's support of the invasion, that intelligence indicated Russian arms had entered Tibet, Curzon privately silenced him. "Remember that in the eyes of HMG we are advancing not because of Dorzhiev, or Russian rifles in Lhasa, but because of our Convention shamelessly violated, our frontier trespassed upon, our subjects arrested, our mission flouted, our representations ignored."
Opposing forces
The Tibetan soldiers were almost all rapidly impressed peasants, who lacked organisation, discipline, training, and motivation. Only a handful of their most devoted units, comprising monks armed usually with swords and jingals, proved to be effective, but they were in such small numbers as to be unable to reverse the tide of battle. This problem was exacerbated by their generals, who seemed in awe of the British and refused to make any aggressive moves against the small and often dispersed column. They also failed conspicuously to properly defend their natural barriers, frequently offering battle in relatively open ground, where Maxim guns and rifle volleys caused great numbers of casualties.
By contrast, the British and Indian troops were experienced veterans of mountainous border warfare on the North-West Frontier, as was their commanding officer.
The British force, which consisted mostly of British Indian troops, numbered over 3,000 fighting men complemented by 7,000 sherpas, porters, and camp followers. This force consisted of 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 machine gun detachments from four regiments, and thousands of porters recruited from Nepal and Sikkim. The British authorities, anticipating the problems of high altitude conflict, included many Gurkha and Pathan troops from mountainous regions such as Nepal; six companies of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers, four companies of the 8th Gurkhas in reserve at Gnatong in Sikkim, and two Gurkha companies guarding the British camp at Khamba Dzong were involved.
Preparations
The Tibetans were aware of the expedition, and a Tibetan general at Yatung wondered about British intentions. Colonel Younghusband replied, on 6 December 1903, that "we are not at war with Tibet, and unless we are ourselves attacked, we shall not attack the Tibetans". When no Tibetan or Chinese officials met the British at Khampa Dzong, Younghusband advanced with some 1,150 soldiers, porters, labourers, and thousands of pack animals, to Tuna, 50 miles beyond the border. After waiting more months there, hoping in vain to be met by negotiators, the expedition received orders (in 1904) to continue toward Lhasa.
The Tibet government, guided by the thirteenth Dalai Lama, alarmed by a foreign power dispatching a military mission to its capital, began marshalling its armed forces.
Expedition
The British army that departed Gnathong in Sikkim on 11 December 1903 was well prepared for battle, having had long experience of Indian border wars. Its commander, Brigadier General James Ronald Leslie Macdonald, wintered in the border country, using the time to train his troops near regular supplies of food and shelter before advancing in earnest in March 1904, travelling over 50 miles (80 km) before encountering his first major obstacle at the pass of Guru (28°05′22″N 89°16′40″E / 28.0895°N 89.2778°E), near Lake Bam Tso (or Dochen Tso) on 31 March.
Massacre of Chumik Shenko
A military confrontation on 31 March 1904 became known as the Massacre of Chumik Shenko. Facing the vanguard of Macdonald's army and blocking the road was a Tibetan force of 3,000 armed with antiquated matchlock muskets, ensconced behind a 5-foot-high (1.5 m) rock wall. On the slope above, the Tibetans had placed seven or eight sangars. The Commissioner, Younghusband, was asked to stop but replied that the advance must continue, and that he could not allow any Tibetan troops to remain on the road. The Tibetans would not fight, but nor would they vacate their positions. Younghusband and Macdonald agreed that "the only thing to do was to disarm them and let them go". British writer Charles Allen has also suggested that a dummy attack was played out in an effort to provoke the Tibetans into opening fire.
It seems then that scuffles between the Sikhs and Tibetan guards grouped around Tibetan generals sparked an action of the Lhasa general: he fired a pistol hitting a Sikh in the jaw. British accounts insist that the Tibetan general became angry at the sight of the brawl developing and shot the Sikh soldier in the face, prompting a violent response from the soldier's comrades, which rapidly escalated the situation. Henry Newman, a reporter for Reuters, who described himself as an eye-witness, said that following this shot, the mass of Tibetans surged forward and their attack fell next on a correspondent for the Daily Mail, Edmund Candler, and that very soon after this, fire was directed from three sides on the Tibetans crowded behind the wall. In Doctor Austine Waddell's account, "they poured a withering fire into the enemy, which, with the quick firing Maxims, mowed down the Tibetans in a few minutes with a terrific slaughter." Second-hand accounts from the Tibetan side have asserted both that the British tricked the Tibetans into extinguishing the fuses for their matchlocks, and that the British opened fire without warning. However, no evidence exists to show such trickery took place and the likelihood is that the unwieldy weapons were of very limited use in the circumstances. Furthermore, the British, Sikh, and Gurkha soldiers closest to the Tibetans were nearly all protected by a high wall, and none were killed.
The Tibetans were mown down by the Maxim guns as they fled. "I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire, though the general's order was to make as big a bag as possible", wrote Lieutenant Arthur Hadow, commander of the Maxim guns detachment. "I hope I shall never again have to shoot down men walking away."
Half a mile from the battlefield, the Tibetan forces reached shelter and were allowed to withdraw by Brigadier-General Macdonald. Behind them, they left between 600 and 700 dead and 168 wounded, 148 of whom survived in British field hospitals as prisoners. British casualties were 12 wounded. During this battle and some to follow, the Tibetans wore amulets which their lamas had promised would magically protect them from any harm. After one battle, surviving Tibetans showed profound confusion over the ineffectiveness of these amulets. In a telegraph to his superior in India a day later, Younghusband stated: "I trust the tremendous punishment they have received will prevent further fighting, and induce them at last to negotiate."