Assamnet should post a parallel scenario for Oxom.NYT will be glad to publish I
would think>
mm> Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:32:33 -0700> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject:
From the NYT - Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History > To: assam@assamnet.org>
> If you are curious about Tibet's relationship with China over the centuries,
in view of the recent incidents, you may find the article below useful. The
article says that Tibet was never a part of China till Communist China marched
into Lhasa.> The question arises - was there a country called Tibet at all? Was
there a government in Tibet? Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader, not a political
one. What makes a Tibetan a Tibetan? Religion, language or tribal division?>
============================================================> From the NYT>
Op-Ed Contributor> Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History function
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13sperling.html > > >
By ELLIOT SPERLING> Published: April 13, 2008> Bloomington, Ind.> > > > > FOR
many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is
unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to
be an independent country. China’s assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet
became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has
never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history.> > >
The Tibetan view holds that Tibet was never subject to foreign rule after it
emerged in the mid-seventh century as a dynamic power holding sway over an
Inner Asian empire. These Tibetans say the appearance of subjugation to the
Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, and to the
Manchu rulers of China’s Qing Dynasty from the 18th century until the 20th
century, is due to a modern, largely Western misunderstanding of the personal
relations among the Yuan and Qing emperors and the pre-eminent lamas of Tibet.
In this view, the lamas simply served as spiritual mentors to the emperors,
with no compromise of Tibet’s independent status. > In China’s view, the
Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don’t
understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified
multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who
entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of
Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation. > Here are the facts. The claim that
Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is
easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the
governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet
was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers.
Tibet was not independent during these two periods. One of the Tibetan cabinet
ministers summoned to Beijing at the end of the 18th century describes himself
unambiguously in his memoirs as a subject of the Manchu emperor.> But although
Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to
China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the
Mongols and Manchus also shows that China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which
ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given
China’s insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line
from the 13th century onward. > The idea that Tibet became part of China in the
13th century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th
century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th
century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term that
designates a “feudal dependency,” not an integral part of a country. And that’s
because Tibet was ruled as such, within the empires of the Mongols and the
Manchus. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once
more. > From 1912 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,
no Chinese government exercised control over what is today China’s Tibet
Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama’s government alone ruled the land until
1951.> Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts it has
always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of empires. There is
now firm insistence that “Han,” actually one of several ethnonyms for
“Chinese,” refers to only one of the Chinese nationalities. This was a
conscious decision of those who constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. (It
stands in contrast to the Russian decision to use a political term, “Soviet,”
for the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)> There is
something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese
side is weaker. Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in
and made it so. > Elliot Sperling is the director of the Tibetan Studies
program at Indiana University’s department of Central Eurasia Studies.> > >
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