The Snow Lion and the British Lion continues....

McMahon’s division of Tibet into an Inner and an Outer Tibet with his blue line was an attempt to impose a ‘fair deal’ which would also simultaneously benefit Britain. Thus, at the Shimla talks of 1913-14, in dealing with a newly-independent Tibet, Britain gained both the total control of Tibet’s foreign trade, which would be through India, as well as the exclusion of all other foreign powers. China’s prior influence in Tibet, asserted through the variable power of the resident Ambans, was greatly reduced.

In effect, Britain was gaining another ‘protectorate’, while China was virtually losing a vassal state. It was not surprising that China did not want to surrender the conquests of Zhao Erfeng, while the Tibetans would not accept Chinese take-over of any territories inhabited by Tibetans, especially in areas where Tibetan monasteries commanded great authority and revenue. Had China accepted it, two regions with different status would have emerged, as demarcated by McMahon’s proposed line between Inner and Outer Tibet.

Outer Tibet would become a self-governing dominion of China, while Inner Tibet would be under Chinese administration. Ironically this is more or less what has actually happened, many years down the road, Xining (formerly Sining and/or Siling) in 1928.But to come back to the McMahon Line. The Shimla talks proposed two boundary lines, a blue line and a red line.

The blue line was the proposed division between an Inner Tibet and an Outer Tibet, as in the case of Mongolia, and a red line which was the proposed formal boundary between Outer Tibet and British India. The blue line separating the proposed ‘Inner Tibet’ and British-dominated ‘Outer Tibet’ was the significant part on which the Chinese Government could not agree, and this treaty never did become a mutually-agreed binding agreement between British India and China.

The effects were to be felt by independent India much later, from 1959 onwards. The remainder of the agreement pertained to trade arrangements with Tibet, which did not concern China materially.

To be continued.....