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

For the Chinese, the issue of ‘face’ was an important one in their negotiations with the British, even when they were weak and powerless.

RUSSIAN THREAT AND TRADE COMPULSIONS

Tibet-India relations during the first half of the 20th Century were entirely coloured by the British desire to keep Russian influence out of Tibet, and all their actions and interactions with China relative to Tibet need to be seen in this light. Russia was seen by the British to be expanding their Asian empire, and to be seeking a warm-water port in the Indian Ocean area. The British, therefore, in order to protect their Indian empire did all they could to keep the Russians out, and thus their efforts in Afghanistan and Tibet were all to this end.

Even though the British themselves, along with other Western powers, were forcibly opening up trade in Mainland China at gunpoint, the British tried to use the nominal Chinese ‘suzerainty’ over China in numerous ways, as it suited them, to keep the Russians from penetrating into Tibet.

Maintaining the polite fiction of the ‘suzerainty’ of China over Tibet, allowed them to make a sort of ‘stand-still’ deal with Russia, to try and prevent the Russians from extending their influence into Tibet.

All the treaties of the period (1890-1947) regarding Tibet, between Britain and China, Britain and Russia, and British India and Tibet, can be seen to have basically two objectives: to open up Tibet to trade exclusively with the British, and to keep the Russians physically out of Tibet.

For the Chinese, to be allowed to have formal international recognition of their ‘suzerainty’ over Tibet suited them, even though they were powerless at the time to enforce anything more than keeping a few official representatives in Lhasa.

To be continued.....