In the current debate on Tibet the two opposing sides see almost
everything in black and white—differing only as to which is which. But there is
one issue that both Chinese authorities and Tibetan nationalists consistently
strive to blur or, better still, avoid altogether. At the height of the
Cultural Revolution hundreds of thousands of Tibetans turned upon the temples
they had treasured for centuries and tore them to pieces, rejected their
religion and became zealous followers of the Great Han occupier, Mao Zedong. To
the Chinese Communist Party, the episode is part of a social catastrophe—one
that it initiated but has long since disowned and which, it hopes, the rest of
the world will soon forget. For the Tibetan participants, the memory of that
onslaught is a bitter humiliation, one they would rather not talk about, or
which they try to exorcise with the excuse that they only did it ‘under
pressure from the Han’. Foreign critics simply refuse to accept that the
episode ever took place, unable to imagine that the Tibetans could willingly
and consciously have done such a thing. But careful analysis and a deeper
reflection on what was involved in that trauma may shed light on some of the
cultural questions at stake on the troubled High Plateau. 
First, however, a survey of the broader historical background is required. For many centuries Tibet was an integral political entity, governed by the local religious leaders and feudal lords. Under the Qing dynasty, China exercised its jurisdiction over the region through the submission of this elite and did not interfere directly in local affairs. Between 1727 and 1911, the principal symbol of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was the office of the Residential Commissioner, known as the amban. The imperial presence in Lhasa, however, consisted ‘solely of the commissioner himself and a few logistical and military personnel.’footnote1 These, together with a handful of civilian staff members, were responsible for carrying out all the daily administrative routines. Speaking no Tibetan they had to rely on interpreters and spent most of their time in Lhasa, making only a few inspection tours a year outside the city.footnote2 It is inconceivable that such a tiny apparatus would be able to exercise effective control over Tibet, an area of more than a million square kilometres. By and large, the Residential Commissioner could only serve as what I shall call a ‘connector’, mediating between the Qing authorities and the local rulers, the Dalai Lama and the Kashag.footnote3 Under this system, Tibetan peasants submitted solely to Tibetan masters—they ‘only knew the Dalai, not the Court’. On certain occasions—when the Qing army had helped repel aggressors, for instance—the Tibetan elite would be full of praise for the Commissioner’s advice. For the rest of the time, it would be unrealistic to expect that a few alien officials—linguistically handicapped, militarily weak, socially and politically isolated—would be obeyed by the local rulers, who held all the region’s power and resources in their hands.
Consequently, as the Qianlong Emperor admitted, ‘Tibetan local affairs were left to the wilful actions of the Dalai Lama and the shapes [Kashagofficials]. The Commissioners were not only unable to take charge, they were also kept uninformed. This reduced the post of the Residential Commissioner in Tibet to name only.’footnote4 In response, the Qing court issued in 1793 an imperial decree, the Twenty-Nine Articles on the Reconstruction of Tibetan Domestic Affairs, which consolidated the Commissioner’s authority over administrative, military and religious appointments, foreign affairs, finance, taxation and the criminal justice system.footnote5 These measures have given rise to the claim that the power of the Residential Commissioners subsequently ‘exceeded that of the governors in other provinces’.footnote6 Nevertheless, when the Imperial Commissioner Zhang Yintang visited Tibet a century later, he was greatly distressed to hear the Dalai Lama ridiculing the Qing representatives as ‘tea-brewing commissioners’. (Tea-brewing is a kind of Tibetan Buddhist alms-giving ceremony—one of the Commissioner’s duties was to distribute this largesse to the monasteries on the Emperor’s behalf; the insinuation was that he did nothing else.)footnote7 The Commissioner of the late Qing period, Lian Yu, also complained that ‘the Dalai Lama arrogated undue importance to himself and wanted to manipulate everything.’ If Tibetan officials appeared to be respectful and deferential, with an ‘outward display of honesty and simple-mindedness’, he found their actual behaviour was nothing less than ‘secret resistance’, and ‘very often they left orders unattended to for months on the pretext of waiting for the Dalai Lama’s return or for decisions yet to be made, simply ignoring urgent requests for answers.’footnote8
To some extent, however, this state of affairs was acceptable to both sides. In terms of state power, the Qing court retained the ability to occupy Tibet, but did not need to do so; and the connector system had the merit of being extremely cheap. The crux of the framework of ancient oriental diplomacy lay in the order of ‘rites’: as long as the lamas were submissive and posed no threat, they would be tolerated. Despite the Commissioners’ complaints and the Emperor’s occasional displeasure, it was only the threat that Tibet might break away from its orbit that caused serious concern at Court, and entailed some form of ‘rectification’. This occurred only a few times during the entire 185 years of Qing rule; for the most part, Residential Commissioners were stationed in Tibet to maintain the Emperor’s symbolic mandate rather than to govern in fact.
The overthrow of the Qing Empire by the Chinese revolution of 1911 created a quite new situation. Just before, in one of its last acts of authority, the dynasty had dispatched an army to occupy Lhasa. But with the collapse of the imperial order, followed by four decades of turmoil in China itself, Tibet for the first time in centuries enjoyed virtually complete de facto independence. The Residential Commissioner and his entourage were expelled in 1912 and the thirteenth Dalai Lama consolidated his position as a national leader, expanding and modernizing the Tibetan Army along British or Japanese lines and setting up banks, mines and a postal service. Trade was promoted and students sent to study in the West. Young officers began to imitate the fashions of their polo-playing counterparts under the British Raj and the military band was taught to play God Save the King. But the price of the reforms was deemed too high by the monastic elite. The new officers saw the religious orders as the cause of Tibetan backwardness: not prayers but guns would make the country strong. While the Dalai Lama understood the importance of the Army in securing his secular power and resisting the potential Chinese threat, he could not tolerate any direct challenge to his authority; when the military leadership began to target his own position for reform, instigating a series of private meetings designed to pressure him to relinquish political power, he moved against them, putting a halt to Tibet’s modernization. The Army went into decline after the officers were purged, meeting defeat at the hands of a regional warlord in Kham—the section of Eastern Tibet that extends into Sichuan province—in 1931. After this, the Dalai Lama tilted back towards Beijing.
China, meanwhile, had been waging a ceaseless propaganda campaign within the international arena for its right to sovereignty over Tibet. This was tacitly granted by the West—the country would be a large and populous ally during World War II—which nevertheless continued to treat Tibet as, in practical terms, an independent state. The Tibetan elite, meanwhile, continued to vacillate: since they already had de facto self-rule, it was simpler to blockade themselves on their plateau, ringed with snowy mountains, than to get into arguments with China. As the thirteenth Dalai Lama told Charles Bell:
Some countries may wish to send representatives to Tibet; the travellers of other nations may wish to penetrate our country. These representatives and travellers may press inconvenient questions on myself and the Tibetan government. Our customs are often different from those of Europe and America, and we do not wish to change them. Perhaps Christian missionaries may come to Tibet, and in trying to spread Christianity may speak against our religion. We could not tolerate that.’footnote9