（原文）索引

British Intelligence on China in Tibet, 1903-1950

Formerly classified and confidential British intelligence and policy files

Editor: A.J. Farrington, Former Deputy Director, OIOC, British Library, London

background to the nature of China’s present position in Tibet.

Obviously the stance which emerges is Anglo-centric – indeed at times it becomes India Office-centric – but much of the value of this collection lies in the way it shows how the three players on the British side, the Government of India, the India Office and the Foreign Office, grappled with different imperatives. The view from the British Embassy in Peking and later from wartime Chungking was frequently at odds with that from Delhi or the India Office. Over decades the British side juggled with the self-imposed conundrum that recognition of Chinese ‘suzerainty’ should be conditional upon China’s recognition of Tibetan ‘autonomy’, while avoiding precise definitions of either concept. Meanwhile Tibet went its own way in a semi-independent limbo, subject to varying degrees of British intervention and support channelled through Government of India officials at Gyantse and Gartok, in Sikkim, or latterly in its Lhasa Mission.

The collection begins with Lord Curzon’s ‘forward policy’ of 1903-04, designed to create a Tibetan buffer state against Russian influence – significantly, all this material was printed-up by the Foreign Office. Then follow negotiations to keep Russia at a distance, and the return of the 13th Dalai Lama from China to Tibet.

There is extensive coverage of Tibet’s break with China after the 1911 Revolution, the subsequent Simla Conference of 1912, and the delimitation of Tibet’s borders.

A fascinating group of files offers minute detail on an attempt to turn four young Tibetans into a vanguard of ‘modernisers’ through the medium of an English public school education, and a further large group records the way in which access to Tibet was closely controlled by the British.

Tibet’s internal affairs and British encouragement of de facto semi-independence through the 1920s and 1930s lead to a renewed concern for Chinese Nationalist claims during World War II. Particularly interesting from this period are the files on the discovery of the 14th (the present) Dalai Lama in 1937-39. The collection ends with the complete reversal following the Independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the Communist victory in China.

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Provenance & historical background

All the files and related confidential print reproduced form part of the papers of the Political & Secret Department in the India Office Records (with the exception of three items from the Military Department and its World War II offshoot, the War Staff – Fiche 29-35 and 299).

The Political & Secret Department originated in provisions of William Pitt’s India Act of 1784 which established a statutory Secret Committee of the East India Company’s Court of Directors. The Act also set up a Secret & Political Department at the newly created Board of Control, which exercised on behalf of the Crown in Parliament powers to ‘superintend, direct and control’ the East India Company’s rapidly expanding government in South Asia. In 1804 the Company’s Secret Committee was supplemented by a Political Department within the office of the Examiner of Indian Correspondence at East India House.

Upon the abolition of the Company in 1858 and the creation of the India Office as a British Government department, the Board of Control and Company elements coalesced to form the India Office Political & Secret Department. During the nineteenth century ‘Political’ came to deal largely with matters involving the Indian Princely States, while ‘Secret’ handled India’s external and frontier affairs. In 1931 the title was changed to Political Department, sub-divided into two branches, Internal (Indian States, and questions relating to honours) and External (foreign and frontier affairs). All the India Office departments were subsumed within the Commonwealth Relations Office (subsequently the Foreign & Commonwealth Office) after Independence in 1947.

The files comprise a wide variety of papers received from the Government of India Foreign Department and other sources in India, and from the Foreign Office in London, together with India Office-generated minuting, comment and replies. Incoming papers passed through the departmental registry, where they were placed on a file numbered in an annual sequence before being passed to the department’s officers. As a result of a regular programme of ‘weeding’ and merger the files in the present collection were eventually archived in one of three groups:

L/P&S/10 Political & Secret Separate (or Subject) Files, 1902-1931

On-going files of documents on a particular subject accumulated over

a period of years.

L/P&S/11 Political & Secret Annual Files, 1912-1930

Files relating to business disposed of within a single year.

L/P&S/12 Political External Collections, 1931-1950

Broad subject collections such as ‘Tibet’ or ‘Travellers’, each containing

a large number of on-going files.

The department also maintained a separate series of memoranda prepared by India Office, Foreign Office or Government of India officials (L/P&S/18), and had its own reference library of secret/confidential print and official publications (L/P&S/20).

In 1982 the Foreign & Commonwealth Office transferred the administration of the India Office Library & Records to the British Library, where it now forms one part of the Library’s Oriental & India Office Collections.

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Organisation of the files

For the present publication the OIOC files and related confidential print have been re-listed and arranged in eight subject groups, in roughly chronological order:

CIT-1 From Younghusband to the Revolution, 1903-1912

CIT-2 Revolution in China, 1911-1915

CIT-3 Simla Conference and the 1914 Convention, 1912-1946

CIT-4 Internal affairs and boundaries, 1912-1947

CIT-5 Travellers and entry control, 1905-1950 

CIT-6 Trade, 1904-1949

CIT-7 Education for modernisation, 1912-1947

CIT-8 14^th Dalai Lama, World War II and Communist China, 1933-1950

Within these groups the following information is provided for each file:

� fiche number,

� subject description (or bibliographical details for print items),

� covering dates,

� OIOC reference number,

� original India Office registry reference,

� number of folios/pages.

A.J. Farrington

Former Deputy Director

Oriental & India Office Collections, The British Library

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