Officers, Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4 Younghusband Mission to Tibet

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 81-109

  Carrington, Michael ^a  

^a Faculty of Engineering and Computing   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85008525442     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X03001033     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Though this term became, by 1904, one which was not particularly appreciated by those who wanted the appropriate classification of ‘mere curios into objects of scientific interest’. Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums Material Culture and Popular Imagination (London, 1994), p. 133.
2. A New York Herald journalist who accompanied newly retired president of the United States Ulysses S. Grant on his 1877 world tour thought that the British had ‘plundered Egypt just as Lord Elgin plundered Greece’, simply in order to provide material for museums. Quoted in, Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (London, 2001), p. 4.
3. See, Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasyof Empire (London, 1993). Richards sees the imperial archive as ‘neither a library or museum… [but as a] fantasy of knowledge collected and united in the service of state and Empire’. A New York Herald journalist who accompanied newly retired president of the United States Ulysses S. Grant on his 1877 world tour thought that the British had ‘plundered Egypt just as Lord Elgin plundered Greece’., p. 6.
4. Amal Chatterjee, Representations of India 1740-1840 (London, 1998), pp. 34 and 40.
5. Representations of India 1740-1840., p. 48.
6. Gerald Bryant, ‘Officers of the East India Company's Army in the Days of Clive and Hastings’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 6, no. 3, May 1978, pp. 203-27, p. 205.
7. Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857 (London, 1980), p. 327. European civilians were also engaged in looting at Lucknow. See, ‘A personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow During the Indian Mutiny of 1857’. Parsons Papers, box 1, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, hereafter CSAS.
8. This article is concerned, ultimately, with the looting of artefacts from Tibet; as such it touches lightly on the looting and burning of property as revenge or empowerment; it does not deal at all with the related though important issues surrounding the defilement of women.
9. Charles Bruce, John Lawrence: Saviour of India (Edinburgh, 1889), p. 205.
10. John Lawrence: Saviour of India.
11. Hibbert, p. 320.
12. John Lawrence: Saviour of India. Even though the prize money amassed at Lucknow totalled perhaps as much as a million and a quarter sterling its eventual destination remained something of a mystery, as each private soldier who had served throughout the relief and capture of the Residency received less than 18 rupees. John Lawrence: Saviour of India., p. 366.
13. Ranajit Guha, ElementaryAspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1992), p. 148.
14. Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London, 1997), p. 410.
15. See, Peter Robb, ‘The Colonial State and Constructions of Indian Identity: An Example on the Northeast Frontier in the 1880s,’ Modern Asian Studies 31, 2, 1997, pp. 245-83. The burning of villages during punitive expeditions was sometimes thought to have assumed ‘dimensions disproportionate to the exigencies of the situation’. Nevertheless, the Government of India recognized the relevance of secondary objectives, such as the mapping of regions untraversed by Europeans and the display of imperial might as a deterrent to any future ‘unlawful’ behaviour. See also, R. Bezbaruah, ‘Mitaigaon Outrage and the Bebejiya Mishmi Expedition 1899-1900’, Proceedings of the Indian HistoryCongress 54 Session, vol. 54, 1994, pp. 416-22.
16. The Summer Palace had also been looted and burned by Lord Elgin's British troops after the Anglo/French landing of 1860.
17. Quoted in the Englishman (Calcutta) 28 July 1904, cited in ‘Allegations Against the Tibet Mission with Regard to Looting’ Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 241-4. National Archives of India, hereafter NAI.
18. Curzon had to implement measures to deal with one of the most serious famines of the century, then to contend with plague. He addressed the issues of troops for South Africa, relations with the Indian Princes, taxation and the partition of Bengal. He also had to deal with personal differences with Lord Kitchener over army reform. His list of reforms included the suppression of frequent official transfers, reduction of superfluous report writing, preservation of ancient monuments, currency and irrigation measures, police and education reform. Significantly, he engaged in a concerted and relatively successful campaign to curb the frequent collisions between Europeans and Indians.
19. Orange Papers, box 2. CSAS.
20. A number of authors have alluded to the looting of religious artefacts, for example see, P. Mehra, The Younghusband Expedition (London, 1968) and most recently Patrick French in Younghusband (London, 1994). Laudable though these works are they produced no great weight of evidence to substantiate the sheer scale of the looting.
21. Brodrick to Curzon, 29 January 1904, Mss Eur F111/236. OIOC.
22. British newspapers used the mission to Tibet as well as military intervention in Somaliland and Nigeria as evidence of the fact that ‘the British were not bereft of martial spirit’. DailyMirror, 5 April 1904, quoted in Glen R. Wilkinson, ‘The Blessings of War: The Depiction of Military Force in Edwardian Newspapers’, Journal of ContemporaryHistory, vol. 33, no. 1, January 1998, pp. 97-115, p. 101.
23. See, for example, Sir F. Maurice Miles, ‘National Health. A Soldiers Study’, ContemporaryReview, January 1903, pp. 41-56 and ‘Where To Get Men’, Contemporary Review, January 1902, pp. 78-86.
24. Rupert Wilkinson, ‘Political Leadership and the Late Victorian Public School’, The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 13, 1962, pp. 320-30, p. 324.
25. British newspapers used the mission to Tibet as well as military intervention in Somaliland and Nigeria as evidence of the fact that ‘the British were not bereft of martial spirit’., p. 328. There is now a quite considerable and varied literature on public school, sport and Empire; John MacKenzie and J. A. Mangan have produced some of the most interesting work.
26. Ronald Hyam, Britains Imperial Century (London, 1976), p. 157.
27. Howrah Hitaishi (Calcutta) 10 January 1904. L/R/5/30, Report of Native Papers in Bengal, no. 9, p. 193. OIOC. The British Government found the tone of the Indian nationalist newspapers rancorous, sarcastic, and anti-European. The Tribune (Lahore) was said to ‘exaggerate every case of assault on a native by a European’ whilst the Bengalee [Calcutta] continually criticized the Viceroy and individual Government officials. ‘Statements of English, Foreign, Anglo-Vernacular and Vernacular Newspapers-Published in India and Burma During the Year 1904’ Home (Public) August 1906, proceeding no. 35. NAI. Curzon had become acutely aware of public opinion in India though many in London often underestimated its importance. J. A. Godley (Permanent Under Secretary, India Office) believed that public opinion in India carried no more weight in 1904 than it had 10 or 15 years earlier. As the man on the spot, Curzon thought otherwise, he claimed that public opinion was ‘growing all the while [was] articulate [and was] daily becoming more powerful.’ Curzon thought that to ‘contend that it does not exist, that it has not advanced in the last 15 years, or that it may be treated with general indifference [was in his view] to ignore the great change that [was] passing over [the] country’. Godley to Curzon, 1 January 1904 and Curzon to Godley, 27 January 1904,Mss Eur. F111/167, nos. 1 and 4. OIOC.
28. Diary of Private H. A. Sampson, Royal Fusiliers. National Army Museum (London), hereafter NAM.
29. ‘Letter from Rawlings’, Light Bob Gazette, vol. 12, no. 4, 1904, pp. 8-10.
30. Capt. R. Gillespie, ‘The Construction of the Nathu La Road, Tibet Mission, 1904’, Royal Engineers Journal, vol. 2, 1905, pp. 289-95.
31. Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (Oxford, 1980), p. 111.
32. The Romantic name for science.
33. Beau Riffenburgh, The Myth of the Explorer (London, 1993), p. 6.
34. Swedish geographer Sven Anders Hedin (1865-1952) studied at Stockholm, Berlin and Halle Universities. Although an amateur archaeologist his excavations in 1899 at Lou-lan, an ancient Chinese garrison town, revealed a number of manuscripts which proved vital for the history of the Silk Road. In 1900-01, disguised as a Mongolian monk, he travelled through northern Tibet but was thwarted in his attempt to reach Lhasa. He later explored and mapped regions of the Himalaya, the Gobi Desert and Tibet providing important material for a number of institutions.
35. Hungarian by birth, Mark Aurel Stein (1862-1943) studied Oriental languages at Vienna, Leipzig, Tubingen and Oxford Universities.
36. And as Riffenburgh points out, they sold a considerable amount of newspapers. Riffenburgh, pp. 6-7.
37. Quoted in Sven Hedin, To the Forbidden Land: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet (New Delhi, 1988) first published 1934, introduction pp. vii-viii.
38. In 1900-01 Stein explored in the vicinity of Khotan, returning to Europe across Russia he deposited the material he had collected in the British Museum. He later visited Chinese Turkistan, Chitral and Afghanistan. In 1907 he discovered valuable paintings and manuscripts in the ‘Cave of a Thousand Buddhas’ at Tunhuang in Western China; this material has been described as the greatest single find in the history of Central Asian archaeology.
39. Patricia Fara, ‘The Appliance of Science: The Georgian British Museum’, HistoryToday August 1997.
40. For a useful discussion on the role of material culture in museums (though in relation to Africa) see, Annie E. Coombes.
41. L. A. Waddell, ‘Tibetan Manuscripts and Books Etc Collected During the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa’, Imperial and Asiatic QuarterlyReview, 3rd series, vol. 34, 1912, pp. 80-113, p. 82. Waddell thought that the collection of material from Tibet formed ‘one of not the least solid results of the mission of Sir Francis Younghusband’. For a useful discussion on the role of material culture in museums., p. 83.
42. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 1991), p. 184.
43. Das was a well-educated Bengali and had been a teacher at Darjeeling. He worked for the Survey of India and visited Tibet in the late 1870s and 1880s; his explorations took him to Gyantse and for a short time as far as Lhasa. He was later used as an interpreter by the British, may have been involved with British intelligence services and was believed to be the model for Kipling's character, Huree Chunder Mookerjee, in Kim. Ironically, two Tibetans who spent nineteen years in prison for helping Das travel in Tibet were released when the British reached Lhasa.
44. Home (Books and Publications) A, July 1904, proceedings nos 90-6. NAI. Considering the sterling work Das had undertaken for the British, Curzon's slight on his character could be considered unwarranted. Curzon's attitude may have had more to do with his irrationally held stereotypical racial beliefs than any deficiency of Das. Also, there was considerable debate over the amount of money to be allocated for the purchase of artefacts, and which department should provide the finance. The Home Department refused to supply the 10,000 rupees, which was eventually allocated to the mission by the Government, it was suggested that 26-Scientific and Minor Departments be debited for the amount. It was also indicated that there would ‘perhaps’ be an additional grant of 10,000 rupees (though I have no evidence that this money was ever allocated). Das was a well-educated Bengali and had been a teacher at Darjeeling.
45. L/Mil/9/407. OIOC.
46. Waddell had travelled widely in Sikkim, Nepal and the Indian Himalaya, had excavated the ruins of Pataliputra, Ashoka's capital near Patna, and had written on Tibetology. See, L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism (New Delhi, 1991).
47. Perceval Landon and C. F. Moberly-Bell Correspondence, Archive of Times Newspapers Ltd (News International PLC), London.
48. S. Normanton, Tibet: The Lost Civilisation (London, 1988), p. 19.
49. The Wellcome Institute has an item marked ‘found at Phari Fort 1904’ written on it.
50. See Lt Haddow's letter to his father of 3 April 1904. Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum, hereafter RNRM.
51. Diary of Private A. E. Christer, Royal Fusiliers, entry for 23 June 1904. NAM.
52. See for example the Spectator (London) ‘News of the Week’ 19 March 1904.
53. L. A. Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries (London, 1905), p. 216.
54. P. Landon, Lhasa, 2 Volumes (London, 1905).
55. L. A. Bethel, ‘A Footnote by Pousse Cailloux’, Blackwood's Magazine 225, 1904, pp. 147-76.
56. M. J. Peterson, ‘Gentlemen and Medical Men: The Problem of Professional Recruitment’, Bulletin of the Historyof Medicine, vol. 58, 1984, pp. 457-73, p. 470.
57. Bulletin of the Historyof Medicine., p. 471.
58. Waddell (London, 1905), p. 199. Waddell mentions how he inspected various artefacts in the chapel but makes no mention of taking any. Bulletin of the Historyof Medicine., p. 201.
59. Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 241-4. NAI.
60. The Times (London) 21 April 1904. It was also reported that ‘nearly all the portable valuables have been removed [from the Palkor Choede Lamastery] by the lamas, in spite of the repeated proclamation by Brigadier-General Macdonald that there would be no looting…. ’ Waddell mentions how he inspected various artefacts in the chapel but makes no mention of taking any.
61. R. T. Ritchie, Secretary in the Political Department India Office to Louis Dane, Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department. 29 April 1904. Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 254-254A. NAI.
62. Secretary in the Political Department India Office to Louis Dane.
63. Younghusband to Russell, ICS, Under Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department. Gyantse, 12 July 1904. Secretary in the Political Department India Office to Louis Dane.
64. Younghusband to his wife, Gyantse 14 April 1904 (Also cited in French, Younghusband p. 229). Mss Eur. F197/176. OIOC. Henry Newman, the Reuters correspondent, had a share of these images and recalls there was a ‘row about this distribution afterwards, and [that] some people called it scandalous looting’. H. Newman, A Roving Commission (London, 1937), p. 219.
65. Mitter to Mrs Younghusband, 6 May 1904. Mss Eur. F197/100. OIOC. However, Mitter later relented and sent Mrs Younghusband a number of small items (he was unable to send the painted scrolls and ‘other large things’ he had acquired as he could not find a suitable box). Mitter to Mrs Younghusband, 29 June 1904. Younghusband to his wife.
66. — 85.
67. Younghusband to his wife, Gyantse, 28 May 1904. Mss Eur F197/176. OIOC.
68. Younghusband to his wife, Kangma, 24 June 1904. Younghusband to his wife.
69. Colin Narbeth, ‘The Storming of the Gyantse Fort: An Unpublished Letter from the 1904 Younghusband Expedition in Tibet’, Tibetan Review, June 1996, pp. 16-18.
70. A. L. Haddow (LT.-Col), ‘Tibet, 1903-1904. With the Machine Gun Section 1st Battalion the Norfolk Regiment’, The Britannia, 1933, p. 67.
71. Younghusband to his wife.
72. Diary of H. Harvey Kelley, 64th Pioneers. NAM.
73. Typescript of items brought back from Tibet by Lt Haddow of the M. G. Section 1st Bn Royal Norfolk Regiment. RNRM.
74. Haddow's list contains 61 items, which include, two daggers taken from some large idols at Gyantse, the head of an image broken off as image was too large to carry away, heads on a string taken off an idol. Typescript of items brought back from Tibet by Lt Haddow of the M. G. Section 1st Bn Royal Norfolk Regiment. RNRM.
75. Narbeth, p. 18.
76. O'Connor to Mrs Younghusband, Gyantse, 21 July 1904. Mss Eur. F197/101. OIOC.
77. There were considerable numbers of Tibetan civilians in the area and orders had been issued which prohibited firing at night ‘unless certain of hitting the enemy’. Haddow diaries, 21 May 1904. Devon Records Office, hereafter DRO.
78. Sampson diary, entry for 12 July 1904. NAM.
79. ‘Letters from the Nepalese Representative at Lhasa Regarding Tibetan Affairs’ Foreign (Secret) E, October 1904, proceedings nos 646-66. NAI.
80. entry for 12 July. The reports the Nepalese representative sent on to the British were mostly second or third hand and must be treated with some suspicion, for example one report claimed that the British had advanced on Gyantse and ‘shot down every man women and child they had come across’. ‘Letter from the Honourable the Four Kasis of Tibet to His Highness the Maharaja of Nepal’. entry for 12 July. Enclosure no. 3, p. 59. The British were certainly involved in looting but there is no evidence that they ‘intentionally’ shot women and children.
81. Christer diary, entry for 8 July 1904. NAM.
82. Sampson diary, entries for 14 and 22 July 1904. NAM.
83. David Macdonald, TwentyYears in Tibet, first published 1932 (New Delhi, 1991), p. 25. Macdonald claimed that these sepoys were later tried by courtmarshal. Waddell ‘noticed’ a number of interesting items on the altar at Samding, including images adorned with precious stones and a large Ming jar. Waddell, 1905, p. 296.
84. Hitavadi (Calcutta) 29 July 1904. L/R/5/30, no. 32, p. 717. OIOC. The British, always keen to keep an eye on the more vociferous vernacular and Anglo-Indian press, realized that the Hitavadi was published from the same building as the Bengalee (which was edited by Congress official Surendranath Banerjea). The police thought that Banerjea had ‘a strong voice in controlling the policy and doing of the more audacious and unscrupulous vernacular paper Hitavadi’. Prem Narain, Press and Politics in India 1885-1905 (Delhi, 1970), pp. 288-9, fn. 27.
85. Statesman (Calcutta) 21 July 1904, cited in Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 254-254 A., NAI.
86. Englishman (Calcutta) 28 July 1904, cited in Statesman (Calcutta) 21 July. General Macdonald thought that the articles in the Statesman and the Englishman were ‘uncalled for and greatly exaggerated’. Macdonald to Adjutant General, 14 August 1904. L/PS/7/170. OIOC.
87. Curzon had left India for England at the end of April 1904 and was replaced by Lord Ampthill. He returned to office on 13 December of that year.
88. Hitavadi 12 August 1904. L/R/5/30, no. 34, pp. 761-2. OIOC.
89. Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 254-254 A., NAI.
90. Kitchener to Military Department, 29 July 1904. Foreign (External) B.
91. E. R. Elles, Foreign Department, 1 August 1904. Kitchener to Military Department.
92. Ampthill to Dane, 28 July 1904. Foreign Department.
93. Dane to Ampthill, 11 August 1904. Ampthill to Dane.
94. Ampthill to Dane, 12 August 1904. Dane to Ampthill.
95. Mr Philip Stanhope MP (Market Harborough) to Secretary of State, Commons 10 August 1904. V/3/1607. OIOC.
96. Morning Leader (London) 10 August 1904.
97. ‘An Account of Lhasa…. ’ Mss Eur C270. OIOC.
98. See Candler, p. 273.
99. L/Mil/7/16831. OIOC. Younghusband returned 4000 Rupees of the fine and gave 1000 to the families of two mission servants killed at Gyantse. See, Viceroy to Secretary of State for India, 17 September 1904. L/PS/7/170. OIOC.
100. Newman, p. 129.
101. See, Indian National Congress, Twentieth Session, Bombay, 26-28 December 1904, in A. M. Zaidi and S. Zaidi (eds), The Encyclopaedia of the Indian National Congress, vol. 4, (New Delhi, 1978), p. 635.
102. Indian National Congress Reports 1901-1904, 1904 Congress, Twelfth Resolution, p. 214. Nehru Memorial Museum Library, (microfilm).
103. Waddell, 1912, p. 86. Waddell claimed that ‘every single volume of this huge Tibetan collection was selected with [his] own hands’. Indian National Congress Reports 1901-1904., p. 84.
104. Macdonald, p. 42.
105. ‘Tibetan Curios for Public Museums’ The Times 5 April 1905. After the exhibition in Calcutta the official collection was divided up and sent to the British Museum, the India Office Library and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
106. The articles in question were: a silver incense burner with cover and chains, two painted scrolls, brazen bar for trumpets, standing goddess and a seated Buddha. A number of Calcutta antique dealers were instructed to place a value on the artefacts. Estimates of their worth averaged 500-600 rupees and it was decided that the value should be 382 rupees, this would be charged to 26 Scientific and Minor Departments. ‘Purchase of Certain Tibetan Curios by His Excellency Lord Curzon’ Foreign [External] B, May 1905, proceedings no. 330. NAI.
107. Macdonald, p. 42.
108. Which means that two thousand were not. Major W. J. Ottley, With Mounted Infantryin Tibet (London, 1906), p. 252.
109. The area surrounding Gyantse was reconnoitred by the British, eager to discover any curios that had been hidden by the monks; a nearby monastery was broken into, the two Tibetans inside were killed and articles looted. Diary of Lance Sergeant Alfred Stanley Dunning. Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Museum, London.
110. Many of Younghusband's letters to his wife mention the special relationship that had developed between Landon and Younghusband, who shared the same mess at Gyantse. Also, Ampthill informed Brodrick that he was expecting a visit from Landon after the mission and that they were old Oxford friends. Ampthill wanted to talk to Landon about the mission and would also ‘endeavour to persuade him’ to curtail his advocacy of a forward policy in The Times. Ampthill to Brodrick, 5 August 1904, Mss Eur. E233/37. OIOC.
111. H. A. Iggulden, ‘To Lhasa with the Tibet Expedition 1903-4’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution 49, 1905, pp. 659-79, p. 675.
112. Macdonald to Adjutant General in India, 14 August 1904, L/PS/7/170. OIOC. I have found no evidence of punishment for looting though there was a number of corporal punishments (usually 50 lashes) dealt out to recalcitrant sepoys who flouted military regulations. See, list of offences and punishments in the field diaries of Lt Haddow. DRO.
113. The Government had given Waddell 10,000 rupees to spend on books and manuscripts and he amassed over two thousand items, this would only allow for an average of five rupees per item.
114. Statesman 21 July 1904, cited in, Foreign (External) B, August 1904, proceedings nos 254-254 A., NAI.
115. After the mission returned there was quite an interest in Tibetan artefacts and institutions wrote to members of the mission in order to borrow items for exhibitions. The Wellcome Institute wanted to borrow items for a medical exhibition and wrote to Younghusband, the press correspondents Landon and Candler and Claude White the Political Officer in Sikkim as they thought they ‘would have many interesting articles…. ’ Curry to Younghusband, Candler, Landon and White, 19 May 1905. WA/HMM/CO/EAR/192, Wellcome Institute, London.
116. For an excellent discussion on the ‘crisis of time and space’ and the wider implications of Tibet during this period see, Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La (London, 1989).
117. Strategic concerns were certainly important though imperial expansion for any reason was inextricably connected with knowledge collection/surveillance of one kind or another as had been evident in other campaigns over the frontier during the nineteenth century (Burma or Afghanistan, for example).
118. As Alex McKay has noted that ‘myth and legend generally require a placement outside normal constraints of time and space, so it was no coincidence that the frontier, the zone with the weakest area of definition and administration, was the strongest realm of Indian indigenous and imperial myth.’ Alex Mackay, Tibet and the British Raj (Richmond, 1997), p. 190.
119. Richards, p. 11.