IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
MOVE TO GYANTSE SANCTIONED 141
Mission to Gyantse. They were, however, clearly of
opinion that " this step should not be allowed to lead to
occupation or to permanent intervention in Tibetan affairs
in any form. The advance should be made for the sole
purpose of obtaining satisfaction, and as soon as reparation
was obtained a withdrawal should be effected. While
His Majesty's Government considered the proposed action
to be necessary, they were not prepared to establish a
permanent Mission in Tibet, and the question of enforcing
trade facilities in that country should be considered in the
light of this telegram."
It was a curious telegram, which I never quite under-
stood. It said that the advance was to be made for the
sole purpose of obtaining satisfaction. But it was always
understood, and it was most emphatically laid down, that
this was not a punitive expedition to obtain satisfaction
and get reparation. It was a Mission despatched to put
our relations with the Tibetans on a regular footing, to
establish ordinary neighbourly intercourse with them.
Lord Lansdowne himself said in the House of Lords * :
We desire that a new Convention should be entered
into between. the Government of India, on the one hand,
and the Tibetans and Chinese, as the suzerain Power, on
the other. That is the object of the Mission." It is
remarkable that a document which was so often quoted to
the Russian Government, to the Indian Government, to
the Chinese Government, and which the Indian Govern-
ment on one occasion quoted to me in terms of admoni-
tion, should have described with so little precision the real
purpose of the advance—and this at the culminating point
of thirty years' effort on the part of the Government of
India. It was not till after the Mission had been attacked
at Gyantse, and on account of that attack, that we
demanded satisfaction—in the shape of an indemnity.
The obvious purpose of the advance was to do what
Warren Hastings had attempted, what the Government of
Bengal since 1873 had been advocating--to put our inter-
course with the Tibetans on proper terms. We had
found it impossible to effect this object on the frontier or
* February 26, 1904.
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