This is a work of fiction although based on factual happenings. It is only fair to the reader, then, that I should delineate which is truth and which fiction in the telling of this story. In this context, Fonthill, Alice, Jenkins and Sunil are my creations as are other minor characters in the story, such as Willoughby, Curzon’s ADC, Chung Li and his family and the rather more important figure of General Khemphis Jong.
The cast list of real people is longer: Curzon, Younghusband and Macdonald, of course, and officers in the expedition force such as Captain William Ottley, who actually led the Mounted Infantry throughout the campaign; Frank O’Connor, Younghusband’s valued interpreter; Colonel Campbell of the 30th Pathans; Colonel Brander, who led the attack at Karo La; Major Bretherton, who perished in the Tsangpo: Captains Bethune, Walton, Kelly and Cook-Young; and Lt John Grant, VC and his havildar, Karbir Pun. Alice’s three correspondent colleagues are as named.
The list of the tongue-twistedly named Tibetans who played a role in the real-life story is equally long: the Ta Lama; Yutop Shapé; the amban, who was commander of the fort at Gyantse; Lobsang Trinley, the Dalai Lama’s adversarial Grand Secretary; the Chinese amban in Lhasa; Kalon Yuthok; Ti Rinpoche; and the two non-Tibetans who helped Younghusband make the initial breakthrough in negotiating the treaty; Captain Ja Bahadur, the Nepalese ambassador in Lhasa and the Tonsa Penlop, he of the homburg hat.
I have tried to retell the battles and main events of the invasion as accurately as studies of respected accounts of the campaign have allowed. I must confess, however, to two departures from the actualité. The first concerns the attack on the mission at Chang Lo. I have the journalists not accompanying Colonel Brander on his attack on Karo La, because I wanted Alice to stay and describe the attack on the mission. In reality, all three correspondents went with the Colonel to Karo La. The second is that the Mounted Infantry’s heroic action at the river near the end of the march on Lhasa is a pure figment of my imagination, although in fact they experienced many more military encounters with the Tibetans than I have described. I felt that one more stirring piece of action was needed at this point in the story. Well, the book is a novel, after all!
If one discounts the disastrous episode of Suez in 1956 as being forced on the UK by events rather than territorial ambition, the invasion of Tibet in 1904 (and, despite Curzon’s protestations, it was an invasion) can be described as the last real hurrah of British imperial expansionism. It took place only after Curzon pressed the British government hard to react to the border pinpricks and lack of respect shown to the Raj by the Tibetans and to the perceived threat of a growing Russian presence in Lhasa. Curzon never had firm evidence of the presence there of a permanent representative of the Tsar, nor of the existence of a Russian gun factory. He virtually lied about this, to support his long-held theory. The expedition, in fact, began shrouded in criticism from Westminster and it ended in quite bitter controversy.
Younghusband got his treaty in the end, only after hard months of arguments in Lhasa, with Macdonald fussing and fuming in the background and longing to return to India. But, after lauding the Commissioner’s efforts initially, the British government emasculated the main elements of the agreement, reducing the amount of time the British occupied the Chumbi Valley from seventy-five years to three and cutting to a third the amount of reparations Younghusband had levied on the Tibetan government. It also revoked the clause, which Younghusband held dear, which allowed the British agent at Gyantse to visit Lhasa. In fact, the Tibetans never did pay the reparations and from attaining the status of hero, Younghusband limped back home accused of being headstrong and arrogant.
Sides were taken in the Macdonald vs Younghusband spats. At the end of the long, arduous campaign, having reached Lhasa after one of the most difficult and dangerous expeditions in British military history, Younghusband could reasonably have expected to be honoured with the knighthood of the Order of the Bath. Instead, he received the lower appointment of Knight Commander of the Indian Empire. Macdonald, however, was on the eve of being Gazetted Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath when, on the last minute intervention of the King himself – reputed to be an admirer of Younghusband – he, too, was demoted to the KCIE.
The controversy which ended the expedition seemed to obscure completely the fact that the main reason for the invasion – to counter the perceived strong influence in Lhasa of Russia – had been proven to be quite unfounded. But there was no more talk of a ‘forward policy’ being established to defend India.
The two protagonists of the long march virtually disappeared from public view. Thanks to his old supporter Curzon, Younghusband was appointed to the Residency of Kashmir, which he coveted. But that lasted only three years and it became clear that he had no longer any future in the Indian Civil Service and he resigned and, after an unsuccessful attempt to enter politics in the UK, he devoted the rest of his life to religious works, unembittered and rather mystical to the end. Macdonald became a major general and ended his career as GOC in Mauritius, before retiring early back to Scotland because of ill health.
Curzon, ill and burdened by the death of his beloved wife, returned to India but, worn out by constant conflict with Kitchener, resigned his Viceroyalty. He dropped out of public life for a while but married again, became Foreign Secretary during the war years and came within an ace of achieving the premiership in 1923, only to be pipped at the post by Baldwin. He died an unpopular figure, still carrying – perhaps unfairly – the reputation of being pompous and arrogant.
And Tibet? Historians have written that Younghusband at least brought it out of its medievalism. But it has remained to this day a backward, pastoral and theologically influenced state that is now dominated and occupied by a resurgent China. The present Dalai Lama now lives in exile in India. The waters of international interest now seem to have closed quietly over Lhasa, as though the Younghusband Expedition had never existed.