The beginning of the twentieth century saw British imperialism in its heyday, firmly established on the Indian subcontinent. However, Tibet remained tantalizingly outside the arena of European scrutiny, for it was closed to foreigners. The Younghusband mission was designed to force the Tibetans to come into the modern international (read imperial) world. In terms of attitude toward Tibet, it was preceded and accompanied by a mix of abhorrence (with the "priest-ridden" system) and fascination (with the nature and simplicity of common people). This ambivalence remained integral to Exotica Tibet during the duration of British imperial rule on the Indian subcontinent. The image of Tibet one can glean from Younghusband's account is that of a backward, quaint people deserving the guiding hand of an enlightened British imperialism. This image is quite different from the idealization of Tibet (though not of Tibetans) as seen in Hilton's utopian archive.
Younghusband's India and Tibet (1910) purports to provide a history of the relations that have existed between India and Tibet from the time of Warren Hastings (late eighteenth century) to 1910, with a particular account of the 1903-4 mission to Lhasa. This story of the British aims toward "the establishment of ordinary neighbourly intercourse with Tibet" (vii) and Tibetans' refusal to oblige.
Reflecting the attitude of a "pioneer" and "frontiersman," the account is full of resentment against bureaucratic and political control exercised by the imperial government over its agents. Younghusband expresses nostalgia for a golden era when the agents of imperialism were left free to pursue their "destiny" without interference. Sarcastic about the centralization of power in London, he says that "the next mission to Lhasa will in all probability be led by a clerk from the Foreign Office in London" (103). Reflecting an aristocratic disdain for "democracy," he says that "as long as what an officer in the heart of Asia may do is contingent on the 'will' of 'men in the street' of grimy manufacturing towns in the heart of England, so long as our action be slow, clumsy, and hesitating, when it ought to be sharp and decisive" (133).
Younghusband is very conscious of the importance of credibility in maintaining imperial rule. For him, it was important to combat Russian intrigue in Tibet, as its loss would have been perceived by bordering Asiatic powers as a sign of British weakness and Russian supremacy. When signing the treaty in Potala Palace, Younghusband ordered everyone to dress in full regalia in order to impress the Tibetans: "Those who have lived among Asiatics know that the fact of signing the treaty in the Potala was of as much value as the Treaty itself" (302). Troops lined the road to the Potala and "a battery to fire a salute or to bombard the Palace, as occasion might require, was stationed in a suitable position" (303).
The invasion was seen as an adventure: when Younghusband received the news that he was to go on the mission, he was elated- "Here, indeed, I felt was the chance of my life. I was once more alive. The thrill of adventure again ran through my veins" (96). About leaving Darjeeling for Chumbi, he writes, "To me there was nothing but the stir and thrill of an enterprise, which would ever live in history" (152). Reflecting a close relation between imperial adventures and scientific pursuits, he describes how at Khamba Jong, while some went out to shoot antelopes and Ovis ammon, others indulged in "botanizing or geologizing"; he himself went with "Mr Hayden to hunt for fossils, with Captain Walton to collect birds, and Colonel Prain to collect plants" (123). [32]
Imperialists were flexible (opportunist?) in their perception of natives. The latter were perceived as inherently divided or inherently united depending on the needs of the former. The deputation from Tashi Lama (with his seat of authority in Tashilunpo monastery in Shigatse, the second city of Tibet; he is usually seen as secondary to the Dalai Lama in temporal matters) pleaded innocence, and citing their fear of the wrath of the Lhasa government, requested Younghusband to withdraw to Yatung or across the frontier. Younghusband made it clear that "we must regard Tibetans as all one people, and hold them responsible for the actions of each" (124). Contrary to the self-perception of Tibetans, the British imposed a pan-Tibetan identity.
The mode of trivializing and infantilizing natives is evident as Younghusband writes that the impression left on him was that the Tibetans, "though excessively childish, were very pleasant, cheery people, and individually, probably quite well disposed towards us" (124). He records how he tried again and again to reason with the obstinate Tibetans who refused to recognize British supremacy: "When I saw these people so steeped in ignorance of what opposing the might of the British Empire really meant, I felt it my duty to reason with them… to save them from the results of their ignorance" (163). In retrospect, one could argue that the Tibetan delegates, who came to negotiate before the mission finally entered Lhasa, had a better understanding of imperialism. The delegates stressed that it was Tibetan custom to keep all strangers out, otherwise, following the British, other nations too would want to go to Lhasa and establish their agents (as they did in China). In contrast, speaking from the lofty heights of an "internationalism" that was actually based on imperial arrogance, Younghusband "reminded them that they lived apart from the rest of the world, and did not understand the customs of international discourse. To us the fact of their having kept the representative of a great Power waiting for a year to negotiate was a deep insult, which most Powers would resent by making war without giving any further chance for negotiation. But the British Government disliked making war if they could possibly help it" (229).
Distinct from the latter-day idealizations of Tibetan Buddhism for its pacifist character, Younghusband agrees that "Lamaism" had a pacifying effect, but he has a different evaluation of this peace: "But the peace that has been nurtured has been the quiescence of sloth and decadence… Peace, instead of harmony, has been their ideal-peace for the emasculated individual instead of harmony for the united and full-blooded whole" (314-15). The pacifism of Tibetans is contrasted unfavorably with the masculine, energetic, and outward-looking character of the British imperial project.
Carrying on and reinforcing the tradition of Western travelers to Tibet, Younghusband experienced an epiphany there. For a moment, a mystic Younghusband subsumed the imperialist Younghusband. At a camp outside Lhasa, he went off alone to the mountains and, in his own words, "gave myself up to all the emotions of this eventful time." As he writes, from the city came the Lama's words of peace and not hatred and
I was insensibly suffused with an almost intoxicating sense of elation and good-will. This exhilaration of the moment grew and grew till it thrilled through me with overpowering intensity. Never again could I think of evil, or ever again be enemy with any man. All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy glowing radiancy; and life for the future seemed nought but buoyancy and light…
and that single hour on leaving Lhasa was worth all the rest of a lifetime. (326-27)
Tibet seems to have had a transformative effect on the hardened imperialist. [33]
Thus India and Tibet reflects many characteristics that were typical of imperial literature on Tibet during the time. It shows Tibet as a land of contrasts (between the lamas and the common people) and a land of religion (if a degraded one). It indulges in essentialism and stereotyping and deploys various representational strategies including gaze, debasement, moralization, infantilization, and self-affirmation. In contrast to the image of Tibet as a utopian archive, Younghusband's account is mainly about self-affirmation, a defense of the British imperial project as ennobling for the British and as civilizing for others. An incomplete passage from the discarded notes used for the book reflects Younghusband's confidence in his invasion:"To wantonly invade Tibet in sheer lust of conquest and merely for the sake of painting the map red would of course have been wrong. But" (IOR: MSS EUR/F197/358 n.d.).
[32] Within the Orientalist frame of thinking, expertise in cultures of the Other lies with the imperialists, not the natives of the culture. Younghusband's mission had "scientific" staff consisting of surveyors, naturalists, geologists, anthropologists (Younghusband in Hayden 1927, vii); their military and scientific roles overlapped. For instance, Waddell was an authority on Tibetan Buddhism, a medical officer, as well as a collector of texts, plants, and birds. Waddell, along with Captain Walton, is credited with "discovering" the Lhasa poppy (see Fletcher 1975, xxi). Similarly, the blue poppy's scientific name is Meconopsis baileyi, after its "discoverer," Lieutenant Colonel F. M. Bailey; the wild sheep argali and Tibet antelope chiru are Ovis ammon hodgsoni and Pantholops hodgsoni after Brian Hodgson, the British resident at the Nepalese court. This practice reflects the view of the Orient as a passive object to be discovered and appropriated by the West. Tibetans (and maybe many non -Tibetans too) were of course familiar with the poppy. But it required a Western man to name it, taxonomize it in a "universal" scheme of things, and thus become its discoverer. Interestingly, in the movie The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), the eponymous villain learns how to distill a vicious poison from the "Black Hill poppy" of Tibet thanks to the papers of the Younghusband expedition, where the complete secret of the plant is meticulously laid down. In some instances scientific names of Tibetan flora and fauna are hybrids, such as Ovis ammon dalailamae przevalskii (1888) (named after the Dalai Lama and the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky) for one variant of argali, the wild sheep.
[33] In fact, after his Lhasa expedition Younghusband involved himself in nonconventional mystical activities. In an obituary for Younghusband, the New York Times merged the man who had led the British invasion with the Hollywood myth: "If as James Hilton strongly suggests in Lost Horizon, Shangri-La is somewhere in Tibet rather than merely somewhere- anywhere… then Sir Francis Younghusband probably came closer than anyone else to being Robert Conway" (French 1995, 202).