Overview

Tibet's enduring myth, animated by the tales of Himalayan adventurers, British military expeditions, and the novel, Lost Horizon, remains an inspirational fantasy, a modern morality play about the failure of brutality to subdue the human spirit. Tibet also exercises immense 'soft power' as one of the lenses through which the world views China. This book traces the origins and manifestations of the Tibetan myth, as propagated by Younghusband, Madam Blavatsky, Himmler, Acheson and Roosevelt. The authors discuss how, after WW2, Tibet - isolated, misunderstood and with a tiny elite unschooled in political-military realities - - misread the diplomacy between its two giant neighbours, India and China, forlornly hoping London or Washington might intervene. The PLA sought nothing less than to deconstruct traditional Tibet, unseat the Dalai Lama and 'absorb' this vast region into the People's Republic, and Lhasa succumbed to China's invasion in 1950. Drawing on declassified CIA and Chinese documents, the authors reveal Mao's collusion with Stalin to subdue Tibet, double-dealing by Nehru, the brilliant diplomacy of Chou en Lai and how Washington see-sawed between the China lobby, who insisted there be no backing for an independent Tibet, and Presidents Truman and later Eisenhower, who initiated a covert CIA programme to support the Dalai Lama and resist Chinese occupation. It is an ignoble saga with few, if any, heroes, other than ordinary Tibetans.

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9781849043595

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Reviews

'Since World War II few peoples have been more badly served than the Tibetans - abandoned to their fate at the hands of the Han Chinese by their so-called friends and admirers. Yet the Tibetan myth, a cultural state of mind and belief, lives on. This excellent book explains its fate and its extraordinary durability, and suggests that the myth may yet prove to have more soft power and greater longevity than the Chinese Communist Party itself - a wonderfully seditious idea which should set alarms ringing in Beijing'. - Sir Richard Dearlove KCMG OBE, former head of MI6

'Since World War II few peoples have been more badly served than the Tibetans - abandoned to their fate at the hands of the Han Chinese by their so-called friends and admirers. Yet the Tibetan myth, a cultural state of mind and belief, lives on. This excellent book explains its fate and its extraordinary durability, and suggests that the myth may yet prove to have more soft power and greater longevity than the Chinese Communist Party itself - a wonderfully seditious idea which should set alarms ringing in Beijing.' - Sir Richard Dearlove KCMG OBE, formerly Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service

Author Information

Lezlee Brown Halper M.Phil (cantab.), PhD (cantab.) is a Research Associate at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She is a Tibet scholar who has extensively travelled in and written about South Asia. Professor Stefan Halper D.Phil (oxon.), PhD (cantab.) is Director of American Studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Halper is a Life Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He first visited Tibet in 1997. He has served in the White House and the US Department of State and has written extensively on US foreign policy and US-China relations.

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