Now that five years had elapsed since the Trade Regulations were concluded, and they were, according to their provisions, subject to revision, the Government of India began to consider any practical measures for securing fuller facilities for trade. The Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations of 1893 were intended to provide these facilities, but so far none had been obtained; and the Indian Government thought that, as the Tibetans attached great importance to retaining the Giagong piece of territory in Northern Sikkim, and as we had no real desire to hold it, there might be advantage in conceding that point if the Tibetans would, on their side, make some equivalent concession. They might, it was thought, concede to us the point for which we had contended when negotiating the Trade Regulations, and recognize Phari as the trade-mart in place of the quite useless Yatung. Lord Salisbury^[11] agreed that some action was necessary, but it seemed to him that, as during recent years Chinese advisory authority in Tibet had been little more than nominal, and the correspondence of the Government of India even seemed to show that it was practically nonexistent, it would be preferable to open direct communication between the Government of India and the Tibetan authorities.

Lord Curzon therefore commenced, in the autumn of 1899, a series of attempts to open up direct communication with them. Ugyen KÁzi, the Bhutanese Agent in Darjiling, who was accustomed to visit Tibet for trade purposes, was first employed to write a letter on his own behalf to the Dalai Lama, suggesting, in general terms, that a high Tibetan official should be sent to discuss the frontier and trade questions. This letter met with an unfavourable response. Captain Kennion, the Assistant to the Resident in Kashmir, who annually visits Leh and the Western Tibet frontier, was then charged with a letter from the Viceroy to the Dalai Lama, which he was to give to the Tibetan officials in Gartok; but six months after this was returned to Captain Kennion, with the intimation that the officials had not dared, in the face of the regulations against the intrusion of foreigners into Tibet, to send it to Lhasa. These two methods having failed, Ugyen KÁzi was entrusted with another letter from the Viceroy to the Dalai Lama, which he was himself to present at Lhasa. In August, 1901, he returned from Lhasa, reporting that the Dalai Lama declined to reply to it, stating as his reason that the matter was not one for him to settle, but must be discussed fully in Council with the Amban, the Ministers, and the Lamas, and the letter was brought back with the seal intact.

A factor of determining importance now suddenly thrust itself into the situation. At the very time when the Viceroy was making these fruitless efforts to enter into direct communication with the Dalai Lama came the information that this exclusive personage had been sending an Envoy to the Czar. Our Ambassador at St. Petersburg forwarded to the Foreign Office an announcement in the official column of the Journal de Saint Petersbourg of October 2 (15), 1900, announcing the reception by His Majesty the Emperor of a certain Dorjieff, who was described as first Tsanit Hamba to the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And, some months later, our Consul-General at Odessa forwarded to the Foreign Office an extract from the Odessa Novosti of June 12 (25), 1901, stating that Odessa would welcome that day an Extraordinary Mission from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, which was proceeding to St. Petersburg with diplomatic instructions of importance. At the head of the mission was the Lama, Dorzhievy (Dorjieff), and its chief object was a rapprochement and the strengthening of good relations with Russia. It was said to have been equipped by the Dalai Lama, and despatched with autograph letters and presents from him to His Imperial Majesty. And, among other things, it was to raise the question of the establishment in St. Petersburg of a permanent Tibetan Mission for the maintenance of good relations with Russia.

This Dorjieff, it appeared from an article in the Novoe Vremya of June 18 (July 1), 1901, was a Russian subject, who had grown up and received his education on Russian soil. He was by birth a Buriat of Chovinskaia (in the province of Verchnyudinsk, in Trans-Baikalia, Eastern Siberia), and was brought up in the province of Azochozki. He had settled in Tibet twenty years before his present visit to Russia. “This reappearance of the Tibet Mission in Russia proved,” said the Novoe Vremya, “that the favourable impressions carried back by Dorjieff to his home from his previous mission have confirmed the Dalai Lama in his intention of contracting the friendliest relations with Russia.... A rapprochement with Russia must seem to him [the Dalai Lama] the most natural step, as Russia is the only Power able to frustrate the intrigues of Great Britain.”

Count Lamsdorff, however, in conversation with the British Ambassador^[12] on July 3, 1901, characterized “as ridiculous and utterly unfounded the conclusion drawn in certain organs of the Russian press, that these Tibetan visitors were charged with any diplomatic mission.” He said Dorjieff was a Mongolian Buriat of Russian origin, who came occasionally to Russia with the object, he believed, of making money collections for his Order from the numerous Buddhists in the Russian Empire. Count Lamsdorff added that on the occasion of Dorjieff’s visit in the previous autumn to Yalta, the Emperor had received him, and he himself had had an opportunity of learning some interesting details from him of life in Tibet; the Russian Geographical Society also took an interest in his visit, which had, however, no official character whatever, although he was accompanied on this visit by other Tibetans.

But, in spite of this declaimer, Dorjieff was still styled an Envoy Extraordinary, and the Messager Officiel of June 25 (July 8, 1901) had the announcement that his Majesty the Emperor had received on June 23, in the Grand Palace at Peterhof, the Envoy Extraordinary from the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And as the Russian press announced that the Envoys had paid visits to Count Lamsdorff and M. Witte, Sir Charles Scott, the British Ambassador, took an opportunity at an interview with Count Lamsdorff of ascertaining some further particulars.^[13] The latter said that, although the Tibetan visitors had been described as Envoys Extraordinary of the Dalai Lama, their mission could not be regarded as having any political or diplomatic character. The mission was of the same character as those sent by the Pope to the faithful in foreign lands. Dorjieff had some post of confidence in the Dalai Lama’s service, but Count Lamsdorff believed that he still maintained his original Russian nationality. He had brought the Count an autograph letter from the Dalai Lama, but this letter merely expressed a hope that Count Lamsdorff was in the enjoyment of good health and was prosperous, and informed him that the Dalai was able to say that he himself enjoyed excellent health.

These proceedings naturally enough attracted the attention of the Secretary of State for India, who on July 25 pointed out to the Foreign Office^[14] that the Dalai Lama had recently refused to receive the communications addressed to him by the Viceroy, and that while the Viceroy was thus treated with discourtesy a mission was publicly sent to Russia, and the publicity given to the Tibetan Mission which had recently arrived in St. Petersburg could not fail to engender some disquietude in the minds of the Indian Government as to the object and result of any negotiations which might ensue. The Secretary of State for India suggested, therefore, that our Ambassador should be instructed to inform Count Lamsdorff we had received his assurance with satisfaction, as any proceedings that might have a tendency to alter or disturb the existing status of Tibet, would be a movement in which His Majesty’s Government could not acquiesce. This suggestion was adopted, and on September 2, 1901, our Ambassador informed Count Lamsdorff that His Majesty’s Government would naturally not regard with indifference any proceedings that might have a tendency to alter or disturb the existing status in Tibet. The Russian Minister repeated his assertion that “the mission was chiefly concerned with matters of religion, and had no political or diplomatic object or character.”

For the time being the Government of India itself took no action in regard to this new factor, though in concluding a despatch to the Secretary of State on February 13 of the following year (1902) they declared that it was desirable that the unsatisfactory situation in Tibet should be brought to an end with as little delay and commotion as possible, since there were factors in the case which, at a later date, might invest the breakdown of the unnatural barriers of Tibetan isolation with a wider and more serious significance.

They continued to plod steadily along at the settlement of the frontier, and corresponded with the Secretary of State and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce about the introduction of tea to Tibet now that the five years, during which it was to be excluded had expired. But they acted with much more decision than previously, and instead of waiting year after year for the arrival of Chinese or Tibetan deputies to meet our representatives, they sent Mr. White, in the summer of 1902, to Giagong, to reassert British rights to the tract of country which the Tibetans had been occupying in contravention of the treaty of 1890, and, if necessary, to expel them from the British side of the frontier. Mr. White had suggested that an effective and simple way would be to occupy the Chumbi Valley, but the Government of India, though they considered grounds for strong action were far from lacking, were not for the time in favour of such a proposal. And another alternative of stopping all Tibetan trade they thought would be hard on our own traders, and might drive trade permanently away to Nepal and Bhutan. They accordingly adopted the above-mentioned course.

Mr. White went to Giagong on June 26, 1902, with 200 men, and camped half a mile from the Tibetan wall, where the Khamba Jongpen and 40 men were stationed. He gave them twenty-four hours’ notice in which to move to the other side of the boundary. On the following morning, after some protests, the Tibetans removed across the boundary. On July 4 a number of Tibetan officials visited him, and said they had come under instructions from the Tashi Lama to show him the Giagong boundary. Mr. White told them that his orders were to lay down the boundary as shown in the Convention of 1890, which had been signed by the Chinese Amban on behalf of the Tibetans. To which they replied that they had heard of the treaty, but that it was invalid, as it had not been signed by any Tibetan. The Tibetans, however, asked for a copy of the treaty and for the names of the passes, and Mr. White told them they could see for themselves if the water ran into the Sikkim Valley or into Tibet, and where the water parted into Sikkim and Tibet was the boundary. He found on the tract 6,270 sheep, 737 yaks, out of which only 1,143 sheep and 80 yaks belonged to the Sikkimese, and the remainder were Tibetan. Near the top of the Naku La he found a Tibetan wall running across the valley, with a blockhouse on the east.

The immediate consequence of this action was, that at the end of July the Viceroy received a letter from the Chinese Resident at Lhasa, asking for an explanation of the object and reasons of Mr. White’s proceedings, and saying that he had appointed Mr. Ho Kuang-Hsi to proceed to Giagong, and had further arranged with the Dalai Lama for the despatch of a Tibetan official to act conjointly with Mr. Ho in any discussion with Mr. White which should arise.

The Viceroy, in reply, wrote to say that the object of the journey from which Mr. White had recently returned was to inspect the boundary as laid down in the Convention of 1890, and to compel the withdrawal from Sikkim territory of any troops which the Tibetans might have established in violation of that Convention. He reminded the Chinese Resident that he had offered to make concessions with respect to these frontier lands, on the understanding that matters as to trade would be put on a proper footing. But Lord Curzon pointed out that the negotiations for the improvement of trade relations between India and Tibet had made no real progress during the past twelve years. In these circumstances, he had no alternative but to compel the observance of the boundary as prescribed by the Convention; and until matters as to trade had been placed on a satisfactory footing, he must continue to insist on the boundary being observed, though any proposals which the Chinese Resident would make for the improvement of trade relations would receive careful consideration, and Mr. White had been instructed to discuss with the Commissioners appointed by the Amban any suggestions which they might put forward.

As a fact, the Commissioner never did meet Mr. White. Mr. Ho was prevented by “ill-health” from proceeding to Gantok. Then he was recalled to Lhasa. Then the Chinese Resident himself was to be replaced, and the new one would not reach Lhasa till the following summer. And so on, with the usual and unfailing excellent reasons for doing nothing.

But, in the meanwhile, the new factor in the situation was assuming significant proportions and causing the Government of India anxiety. I have already related how the Dalai Lama was sending missions to the Czar, with autograph letters to the Russian Chancellor, at the very moment when he was declining all communications from the Viceroy of India. And now, from a totally different quarter, came rumours that China was making a secret agreement with Russia in regard to Tibet.

Our Minister at Peking, on August 2, 1902, telegraphed^[15] to Lord Lansdowne that there had been going the rounds of the press an agreement in regard to Tibet, alleged to have been secretly made between Russia and China. In return for a promise to uphold the integrity of China, the entire interest of China in Tibet was to be relinquished to Russia. This rumour, said our Minister, seemed to have originated in a Chinese paper published in Satow. Fuller information was sent by letter. According to this, among other things, Russia would establish Government officers in Tibet to control Tibetan affairs.

On Sir Ernest Satow making, in accordance with Lord Lansdowne’s instructions, a representation to the Chinese Foreign Board about this, the President of the Board strongly denied that there was any such agreement, and declared that no such arrangement had ever formed a subject of discussion between the Chinese and Russian Governments. But the rumour seems to have had a wide prevalence and to have been regarded seriously, for our Ambassador at St. Petersburg reported in October that the Chinese Minister there had told him that several of his colleagues had been making inquiries from him respecting this pretended agreement, which had appeared in several Continental as well as Russian newspapers, and which he, the Chinese Minister, had first seen in the Chinese newspapers. The Government of India, also, reported to the Secretary of State that circumstantial evidence, derived from a variety of quarters, all pointed in the same direction, and tended to show the existence of an arrangement of some sort between Russia and Tibet.

It may be asked—and, indeed, it was asked—why the Government of India should have been so nervous about Russian action in Tibet. The Russian Government had said that the mission which the Dalai Lama had sent to St. Petersburg was of a “religious” nature, and the Chinese Foreign Board had said there was no agreement with Russia about Tibet. Why not, then, have disregarded these idle rumours? Such lofty disregard is easy for irresponsible persons at a comfortable distance in England to display. But the responsible Government in India cannot dismiss such rumours with so light a heart. Russia might not have had any agreement about Tibet, and the Tibetan Mission might have been purely religious; but that she was extremely interested in Tibet was unquestionable. She had for years been sending semi-official, semi-scientific expeditions into the country. These had always reported on the richness of Tibet in regard to gold, and the desirability of getting concessions there. There was at the very moment one of these expeditions with an armed escort in Tibet. Apart from this, the interest of Russia in Tibet was thoroughly natural. The Dalai Lama was regarded with superstitious reverence by many thousands of Russian Asiatic subjects. Moreover, at that time it was generally looked upon as inevitable that Russia would shortly absorb Mongolia, and all Mongols look upon the Dalai Lama as a god. It was, indeed, because of his immense influence over the Mongols that the Chinese had for centuries, and at great cost to themselves, secured and maintained a dominant influence in Lhasa. It is easy to understand, therefore, that the Russians would be glad enough of any opportunity of gaining an influence with the Dalai Lama. The mission of the latter to the Czar might, as the Russian Chancellor said, be mainly religious, and similar to missions which the Pope sends out. But even in Europe it is often difficult to distinguish between religion and politics, and in Asia the two are almost indistinguishable. A religious understanding between the Dalai Lama and the Czar might by the former be regarded as a political agreement. And whatever might have been the intentions of the Russian Government at the time, they might on some subsequent occasion have sent a mission to Lhasa, as they had sent a mission to Kabul in 1879 and caused an Afghan War.

Even so, why should we trouble? What possible harm could a few Russians do in Lhasa? Russia might invade India through Afghanistan, but she could never invade India across Tibet and over the Himalayas. Why, then, should we be so touchy about her action there? Why not let her send as many missions and officers as she liked? This also seems a broad-minded attitude, such as a platform orator in the heart of England might safely take up. But, again, it was not so easy for those away on the frontier of the Empire, with immediate responsibilities on their shoulders, to feel so complacent. If Russia had been the friend she is now, and if our influence in Lhasa had been unmistakable, it would have been easier to take such a view, and it is, indeed, in my opinion, the right view now to take. But in 1902 she was still on the crest of a great advancing wave of expansion. She had not yet been checked by Japan. She had spread over Manchuria with startling rapidity. Where, at the time of my journey there with Sir Evan James, no Russian had ever been seen, there were now Russian railways and Russian cantonments. She had expanded in Western Turkestan and annexed the Pamirs, and it was generally looked upon only as a matter of time before she would absorb Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia. If, then, we complacently, and without a protest, allowed her to establish herself in Tibet, we could hardly expect those States dependent on us and bordering Tibet to think otherwise than that this was the real Power in Asia, and this, therefore, the Power to look up to.

A full-dress Russian invasion of India, through Tibet, no responsible person ever dreamed possible. But, without a real invasion, Russia established in Lhasa, while we were unrepresented there, could cause Government a great deal of anxiety. In practical detail it would mean the increase of our army on the North-East frontier by several thousand men.

It was obviously prudent, therefore, to prevent her acquiring a more predominant influence than our own in Tibet. While it was quite natural that she should be glad to have an influence at Lhasa, it was still more natural that we should be jealous of her having more influence than we had. For, while our border was contiguous with Tibet for 1,000 miles, from Kashmir nearly to Burma, the Russian border nowhere touched or even approached Tibet. The whole breadth of Chinese Turkestan lay in between the Russian frontier and the nearest frontier of Tibet, and Lhasa itself was 1,000 miles distant from the nearest point on the Russian frontier. To appreciate the position, let the reader draw out the map at the end of this volume.

The Government of India, accordingly, recommended prompt action. The attempts to negotiate an understanding with the Tibetans through the Chinese had proved a failure. It had been found impossible to open up direct communications with the Tibetans. The result of the exclusion of the Tibetans from the pasture lands at Giagong, though it had materially improved our position on the border, was not in effect more than a timely assertion of British authority upon the spot. These different rumours from such varied sources tending, in the opinion of the Government of India, to indicate the existence of some kind of an arrangement between Russia and Tibet, necessitated dealing with the situation far more drastically and decisively than it had ever been dealt with before. Continuously since 1873 the Government of India had been trying by every correct and reasonable method to regularize their intercourse with Tibet. Their patience was now exhausted, and, instead of trifling about on the frontier with petty Chinese or Tibetan officials, they proposed, in the very important despatch of January 8, 1903,^[16] to send a mission, with an armed escort, to Lhasa itself, there to settle our future relations with Tibet, and to permanently establish a British representative.

This proposal, when it reached England, seems to have caused considerable surprise. But Warren Hastings, a century before, had meant to do this very thing; and the Russians had a Consular representative in Chinese Turkestan alongside their frontier, so there seemed no particular reason why we should not have had a similar representative in Tibet alongside our frontier. The risk had to be considered, it is true, but why the case of Cavagnari’s murder at Kabul should be everlastingly brought up as an argument against sending an officer outside our frontier it is difficult to understand. It is ignoble to the last degree to be scared for all time by what happened then. Cavagnari was murdered. What then? I agree with my old chief and first master in Central Asian politics, Sir Charles Macgregor, that if our agent A was murdered we should have sent up B, and if B was murdered we should have sent up C. Our whole Afghan policy for thirty years past has been frightfully ignominious, and the day will come where we shall bitterly regret not having had an agent at the capital of a country for whose foreign policy we are responsible. At any rate, the fact of barbarian Afghans murdering our representative at Kabul in 1879 was no adequate reason for not sending a representative to Lhasa in 1903.

These, however, are merely my own views. The contention of the Government of India was that, in suggesting a mission to Lhasa, they were merely reviving a proposal which had been supported as far back as 1874 by Sir T. Wade, then British Minister at Peking, and which was almost taking definite shape in 1885–86, when the importance of a Burmese settlement appears to have so impressed itself upon all parties that the Lhasa Mission was sacrificed in order that the signature of the Chinese Government to the Burmese Convention might be obtained. The Government of India considered it a grave misfortune that they should have been diverted from a project of unquestionable importance by the exigencies of political considerations that had not the remotest connection with Tibet. They recommended, therefore, the revival of this precedent, and the firm pursuance of the policy which was then abandoned.

The Government of India regarded the so-called suzerainty of China over Tibet as a constitutional fiction. China was always ready to break down the barriers of ignorance and obstruction and to open Tibet to the civilizing influence of trade, but her pious wishes were defeated by the short-sighted stupidity of the Lamas. In the same way Tibet was only too anxious to meet our advances, but she was prevented from doing so by the despotic veto of the suzerain. The Government of India wished to put an end to this “solemn farce,” and would have preferred to deal with Tibet alone. But they recognized that China could not be entirely disregarded, and only asked that, if the Home Government trusted to the interposition of China, this might be accompanied by a resolute refusal to be defeated by the time-honoured procedure, and that if and when a new treaty was concluded, it should not be signed by the British and Chinese alone, but by a direct representative of the Tibetan Government also.

At the same time, said the Government of India, the most emphatic assurances might be given to the Chinese and Tibetan Governments that the mission was of an exclusively commercial character, that we repudiated all designs of a political nature upon Tibet, that we had no desire either to declare a protectorate or permanently to occupy any portion of the country, but that our intentions were confined to removing the embargo that then rested upon all trade between Tibet and India, and to establishing those amicable relations and means of communication that ought to subsist between adjacent and friendly Powers.

These proposals the Government of India commended to the favourable consideration of His Majesty’s Government, in the firm conviction that if some such step were not taken, “a serious danger would grow up in Tibet, which might one day, and perhaps at no very distant date, attain to menacing dimensions.” They regarded the situation, as it seriously affected the frontiers which they were called upon to defend with Indian resources, as one in which their opinion was entitled to carry weight with His Majesty’s Government; and they entertained a sincere alarm that, if nothing was done and matters were allowed to slide, they might before long have occasion gravely to regret that action was not taken while it was still relatively free from difficulty.