It was not till a century had elapsed since Warren Hastings had begun his attempts to form a friendship with the Tibetans that the Government in India again made any real effort to come into proper relationship with their neighbours. For a century they were content to let things take their course, in spite of their informality, and in spite of the fact that Indian subjects were having all the worst of the intercourse, for while Tibetans were allowed to come to India when and where and how they liked, to trade there without duty and without hindrance, to travel and to reside wherever they wished, on the other side, obstructions of every kind were placed in the way of Indians, and still more of British, trading, travelling, or residing in Tibet. But in the year 1873 the Indian Government began to stir, and take stock of the position, and to reflect whether this one-sided condition of affairs might not be changed to the advantage of Indians and Europeans without hurting the Tibetans.

In that year the Bengal Government addressed the Government of India a letter, a copy of which was sent to the Royal Geographical Society, in which they urged that the Chinese should be pressed “for an order of admittance to Tibet,” and that “the authorities at Peking should allow a renewal of the friendly intercourse between India and Tibet which existed in the days of Bogle and Turner.” The Bengal Government said that the Government of India and the Secretary of State had repeatedly expressed the great interest which they took in this subject, and the wish that no favourable opportunity should be neglected of promoting the development of commercial intercourse between British India and those trans-Himalayan countries which were then practically closed to us. If only the Chinese and Tibetans would remove the embargo at present imposed upon the entry of our trade, there were, by routes under our own control, no serious difficulties or dangers of any kind to overcome, and none of the risks of collision which existed elsewhere.

Tibet, the Bengal Government said, was a well-regulated country with which our Hillmen were in constant communication. When Europeans went to the frontier and tried to cross it, there was no display of violence or disturbance. They were civilly turned back, with an intimation that there were orders not to admit them. All the inquiries of the Lieutenant-Governor led to the belief that the Tibetans themselves had no objections to intercourse with us. The experiences of the great botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, who in 1849 had travelled to the Tibetan border, and Blanford among the recent travellers, and of Bogle and Turner in the past, were singularly at one upon this point. The Commandant of Khamba Jong, who had met Mr. Blanford on the frontier in 1870, assured him that the Tibetans had no ill-will to foreigners, and would, if allowed, gladly receive Europeans. The fact appeared to be, the Lieutenant-Governor said, that “the prohibition to intercourse with Tibet is part of the Chinese policy of exclusion imposed on the Tibetans by Chinese officials and enforced by Chinese troops stationed in Tibet.” He fully sympathized with the Chinese desire to keep out foreigners in China. “But,” he said, “in Tibet there is not wealth enough to attract many adventurers; there is room only for a moderate and legitimate commerce;” and among a people so good and well regulated as the Tibetans there would be no such difficulties as existed in China. If the road were opened, it would be used only by fair traders and by responsible Government servants or travellers under the control of Government.

In seeking to press the Chinese for admittance to Tibet, he said, the most emphatic declaration might be made that, having our natural and best boundary in the Himalayas, we could not, and would not in any circumstances, encroach on Tibet, and we might offer to arrange that none save Hillmen or classes domiciled in Tibet should be allowed to go in without a pass, which would be given under such restrictions that Government would be responsible for the conduct of the holders.

The Lieutenant-Governor adduced as a further reason for entering into formal relationship with the Tibetans that, if we had an understanding between us, we should together be able to keep in order the wild tribes inhabiting the hilly country between British territory and Tibet. And he instanced the case of the Mezhow Mishnies, who for murdering two French missionaries in 1854 were punished both by us and by the Tibetans, and who, in consequence, ever after had “a most salutary dread of using violence.”

The Bengal Government also contended then in 1873, as they are still contending now, for the admission of our tea. Indian tea is grown in large quantities on the hills in British territory bordering Tibet. But, said the Lieutenant-Governor, nearly forty years ago: “The Tibetans, or rather their Chinese Governors, will not, on protectionist principles, admit our tea across the passes. An absolute embargo is laid on anything in the shape of tea.” The removal of this, he thought, might well be made a subject of special negotiation. And besides tea, the Bengal Government thought that Manchester and Birmingham goods and Indian indigo would find a market in Tibet, and that we should receive in return much wool, sheep, cattle, walnuts, Tibetan cloths, and other commodities.

Thus, thirty years before the Tibet Mission started the local Government had made a real effort to have the Chinese pressed to abandon their policy of exclusion so far as Tibet was concerned. The lineal official descendant of Warren Hastings in the Governorship of Bengal neither attempted nor advocated any high-handed local measures. He stated his case calmly and reasonably, and advocated the most correct course—the attempt to settle the matter direct with the Chinese.

Local officers are often told that they are too impatient, and that they too frequently want to settle a matter by local action, when it might be so much better disposed of by correspondence from headquarters; by negotiations, for instance, between London and Peking, or London and St. Petersburg. They are urged to take a wider view, and to display a calmer spirit, and greater confidence in the wisdom and sagacity of their London rulers. But when thirty years after this very moderate and perfectly reasonable request was made by the local authority, the matter was still no nearer settlement than it was when the request was made; and when the House of Commons, which controls the destinies of the Empire, was still asking why we did not apply to the Chinese, the local officer’s faith in the superior efficacy of headquarters treatment is somewhat shaken. And he often questions whether matters which, after forming the subject of voluminous correspondence between the provincial Government and the Government of India, between the latter and the India Office, between the India Office and the Foreign Office, between the Foreign Office and the Ambassador abroad, between him and the Foreign Government, which are discussed in the Cabinet, and form a subject for debate in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and for platform speeches and newspaper articles innumerable, do not in this lengthy process assume a magnitude which they never originally possessed; whether, having assumed such magnitude, they ever really do get settled or only compromised; and whether, after all, they might not have been settled expeditiously and decisively on the spot before they had been allowed to grow to these alarming proportions.

There are, one knows, many cases which can only be settled by the Central Government, and which are so settled very satisfactorily, but I am doubtful if Tibet is one of these, and whether we have been wise in the instance of Tibet, and in many others connected with China, to make so much of, and expect so much from, the Chinese Central Government, which has so little real control over the local Governments. Perhaps if the Government of Bengal, with the countenance and support of the Imperial Government, had long ago dealt directly with the Lhasa authorities, Chinese and Tibetan matters might have been arranged more expeditiously and satisfactorily. At any rate, it cannot be safely assumed that the Central Government method is necessarily the best.

In this case, for instance, all that resulted was that the Chinese Government, in the Chefu Convention concluded three years later, undertook to protect any mission which should be sent to Tibet—an undertaking which was literally valueless, for when a mission was actually sent to Tibet they were unable to afford it the slightest protection, and the Chinese representative in Lhasa confessed to me in writing that he could not even get the Tibetans to give him transport to enable him to meet me.

The Government of Bengal had therefore to content themselves with improving the road inside our frontier, and with doing what they could on our side to entice and further trade.

But in 1885 a renewed effort was made to come to an understanding with the Tibetans. The brilliant Secretary of the Bengal Government, Colman Macaulay, visited the frontier to see if any useful relationship could be established with the Shigatse people by the route up the head of the Sikkim Valley. The Tashi Lama, who resides at Shigatse, had always been more friendly than the Lhasa people, and this seemed more promising. Macaulay saw a local Tibetan official from the other side, entered into friendly intercourse, and found, as Bogle and Turner had found, that apart from Chinese obstruction there was no objection on the part of the Tibetan people themselves to enter into friendly relationship. Macaulay was filled with enthusiasm. He threw his whole soul and energy into the matter. He secured the support of the Government of India. And, more important still, he fired the Secretary of State for India with ardour. Never before had such enthusiasm for improving our relations with Tibet been shown. And as it happened that this Secretary of State was the best the India Office have ever had—the man who without any faltering hesitation annexed Burma, to the lasting benefit of the Burmese, of ourselves, and of humanity—there seemed now a real prospect of success. Lord Randolph Churchill and Colman Macaulay were something of kindred spirits, and Macaulay was sent to Peking with every support and encouragement to get the necessary permit for a mission to Lhasa. The Chinese assented. Permission was granted. Macaulay organized his mission, bought rich presents, collected his transport, and was on the eve of starting from Darjiling when “international considerations” came in and Government countermanded the whole affair.

“Everything had gone so fairly,” wrote Macaulay to Sir Clements Markham from Darjiling in October, 1886, “that it was difficult for us here to believe that we should be shipwrecked within sight of the promised land.” Yet so it was, and he took his disappointment so deeply to heart that he completely broke down in health, and died a few years later.

Immediately following on the abandonment of the mission came the most unprovoked aggression on the part of the Tibetans. They crossed the Jelap-la, the pass from Chumbi into Sikkim and the frontier between Tibet and our feudatory State, and they occupied Lengtu, eighteen miles on our side of the frontier, building a guard-house there, and turning out one of our road overseers, placed there to superintend the road which Sir Richard Temple had made when Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. And on hearing that the mission had been countermanded, they became so elated that they boasted that they would occupy Darjiling, only seventy-eight miles off, and something like a panic ensued in this almost unprotected summer resort. At the same time, on the opposite side of Tibet they were still more actively aggressive, expelling the Roman Catholic missionaries from their long-established homes at Batang, massacring many of their converts, and burning the mission-house.

This is a very essential fact to bear in mind in the consideration of the Tibetan question—that after both Tibetan and Chinese susceptibilities had been given way to on every occasion, it was the Tibetans who invaded us. It was a Bhutanese invasion of the plains of Bengal, followed by a letter from the Tashi Lama, that had initiated our relations with Tibet in the time of Warren Hastings. And it was this invasion of Sikkim that forced upon us the regularization of our relations with the Tibetans.

When the Tibetans thus invaded the territory of our feudatory, we should have been well within our right in forthwith expelling them by force; but, in accordance with the policy of forbearance we had so consistently pursued, we referred the matter to the Chinese, and requested them to procure the withdrawal of the Tibetans. We also allowed the Chinese ample time, a year, within which to bring their influence to bear. Then, at the end of 1887, we wrote to the Tibetan commander that unless he evacuated his position before March 15, 1888, he would be expelled by force. This letter was returned unopened. In February we wrote to the Dalai Lama himself to the same effect, but again we received no reply. It was only on March 20, 1888, that a British force assumed the offensive, and advanced upon the Tibetans in the position they had occupied within our frontier at Lengtu.

The Tibetans, for the time being, offered no resistance, and retired to Chumbi, on their own side of the frontier, and our troops occupied a position at Gnatong, on our side. Two months later, however, the Tibetans again showed truculence, and with 3,000 men attacked our camp at Gnatong. They were repulsed, and once more withdrew. But in September they, for the third time, advanced across our border, and in a single night, with that skill in building for which they are so remarkable, threw up a wall three miles long and from 3 to 4 feet high in a position just above Gnatong, and some miles within our border.

This position General Graham attacked on the following day, and drove the Tibetans from it over the Jelap-la Pass, and in the ensuing days pursued them into the Chumbi Valley. But here again, in accordance with our principle of respecting Chinese susceptibilities, our troops did not remain in Chumbi a single day, but returned at once to Gnatong. For two years now the Tibetans had been encroaching on our side of the frontier, but not for one day would we permit our troops to remain on the Tibetan side. Forbearance could scarcely go further than this, but yet it was to be still more strained on many a subsequent occasion.