No subject

"It is not perhaps too far-fetched to suggest that Younghusband's
desire to possess her as a distant and worshipful icon ("she
admires me I know ... I want to keep high above any interaction
of the senses ... to give her an example of a man who can be a
friend without making love to her, to raise her moral standard,"
p. 224) might be said to sum up something of his attitude to
Tibet. Younghusband, with his superior sense of order, morality,
and nascent [Christian--JK] spirituality, felt that he could
harness and raise up to higher standards this land, benighted by
"lecherous Lamas" with its dubiously motivated and secretive
foreign policy aims. What one might call the "Holy Mission" of
imperialism, in this case exemplified by Younghusband, is an
avenue worth exploring and one which would certainly have added a
novel dimension to the chapter."

Here we have an etic viewpoint with a vengeance. Similar to the
etics of missionaries of all stripes. Granted, neither Bogle nor
Younghusband were Buddhist scholars, but these views hung on for
for several decades if not longer, in "western" writings on
Tibetan (and Indian) cultures.

Joanna K.

___________________________________________________________



H-ASIA
December 30, 2009

Book Review (orig pub. H-Buddhism) by David Templeman on Gordon
T. 
Stewart.  _Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism, and
the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774-1904_

(x-post H-Review)
*****************************************************************
*******
From: H-Net Staff <revhelp at MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU>

Gordon T. Stewart.  Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment,
Imperialism, and the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774-1904.
Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2009.  xiv + 280 pp.
$95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-51502-3; $34.99 (paper), ISBN
978-0-521-73568-1.

Reviewed by David Templeman (Monash University) Published on
H-Buddhism (December, 2009) Commissioned by A. Charles Muller

The British in Tibet

Considerable interest in George Bogle (1746-81) and Francis
Younghusband (1863-1942), the main characters of Gordon Stewart's
book, has been displayed by scholars in recent years.[1]
Stewart's book, the topic of this review, adds something to those
other studies in its detailed examination of the marked contrast
between both major characters in their approaches to "knowing"
Tibet. This contrast is highlighted and refined by Stewart in his
examination of the broader areas and the exemplary features of
both the Scottish Enlightenment and the high period of late
British imperialism. Both these "attitudinal periods" served to
shape the approaches of each person towards Tibet.

Overall Stewart is successful in his attempt and makes explicit
the various shaping forces which were exerted upon Bogle and
Younghusband. In Bogle's case, the result was a man whose active
life exemplified the Enlightenment approach, encouraging
inquisitiveness, openness to the new, and a willingness to engage
with people and situations as they were found on the ground,
rather than as abstract ideals. In this he is contrasted markedly
with Enlightenment "stay-at-home" intellectuals such as
Montesquieu, who did not appear to place his theories into a
real-life setting, as did Bogle. Bogle's reasonable and accepting
approach to the customs of Bhutan and Tibet, even towards the
vexed issues of Indian widow-burning (p. 42) and certain
unlikable characteristics of Nepalese and Tibetans are examples
of the generosity of spirit which imbued him. On the contrary, we
must not imagine that all was sweetness and light with Bogle.
Stewart notes that although this placid and low-key approach
might well have been true for Bogle's experiences in Bhutan and
Tibet, it was not necessarily the case for certain other of his
experiences, with, for example, Hindu holy men, whom he disliked
intensely,  or in his almost Machiavellian willingness to
countenance an invasion of Assam to further the East India
Company's interests.[2]

For Younghusband, a product of an entirely different period and
set of dynamics, Tibet was an entity which troubled him greatly.
His evangelical Christianity made him a narrower person, one less
open to new ideas than Bogle. For Younghusband, "Tibetans are not
a people fit to be left to themselves between two Great Empires.
They have to look to one or the other--to us or the Russians--for
protection" (p.
173). As Stewart notes, with this more limited approach
Younghusband was often reduced to fulmination and railed against
the "selfish, filthy, lecherous Lamas who are bringing all this
trouble upon their country for their own ends" (pp. 171-172).
Stewart judiciously studies this sclerotic period of British
imperialism and examines whether the Enlightenment itself was
ultimately "the source for the exclusionary and destructive
aspects of imperial ideologies" (p. 8).

A further important point raised is the extent to which both
Bogle and Younghusband created powerful images of Tibet from
which we still suffer to this day. It appears to this reviewer at
least, that both the benign view of the former and the more
aggressively shaped attitude of the latter still tend to form the
parameters within which much present-day discourse on Tibet is
confined, much to its detriment.

Certainly Stewart is wise enough to note the paradoxes within
both his subjects and his comments on them serve to ameliorate
any fixed attitudes we might harbor towards them. He highlights
Bogle's irascible side as a balance to his Enlightenment
sensibilities and acknowledges the mystic side to Younghusband
the imperial power-broker.

It is in these latter pages of the book that much of Stewart's
analysis might have gone one step further. For example, in his
discussion of Younghusband's efforts to sublimate the shipboard
advances of Miss Beddie (French refers to her as "the clever and
pretty Mrs Beddy").[3] Stewart might have taken the reader a
tentative step further in his analysis. It is not perhaps too
far-fetched to suggest that Younghusband's desire to possess her
as a distant and worshipful icon ("she admires me I know ... I
want to keep high above any interaction of the senses ... to give
her an example of a man who can be a friend without making love
to her, to raise her moral standard," p. 224) might be said to
sum up something of his attitude to Tibet. Younghusband, with his
superior sense of order, morality, and nascent spirituality, felt
that he could harness and raise up to higher standards this land,
benighted by "lecherous Lamas" with its dubiously motivated and
secretive foreign policy aims. What one might call the "Holy
Mission" of imperialism, in this case exemplified by
Younghusband, is an avenue worth exploring and one which would
certainly have added a novel dimension to the chapter.

The author possesses a clear feeling for detail and depth in his
analysis and although much of the material is quite well known,
it is in Stewart's overall thesis of the nexus between
Enlightenment and imperialism as exemplified by Bogle and
Younghusband that we find the strength of this valuable and
interesting book.

Notes

[1]. The following are a small selection of these works: L. H.
McMillan, _English in Tibet, Tibet in English: Self-Preservation
in Tibet and the Diaspora _(New York:_ _Palgrave, 2001); K.
Teltscher, _The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen
Lama, and the First British Expedition to Tibet _(London:_
_Bloomsbury, 2006); and P. French, _Younghusband: The Last Great
Imperial Adventurer _(London:_ _HarperCollins, 1994).

[2]. In this dislike of Hindu holy men, Bogle might have been
influenced by the Panchen Lama, whose work the _Sham bha la'i lam
yig_ (translated as "The Way to Shambhala") contains several
passages condemning the Tibetan savant Taranatha (1575-1634) for
his credulity in believing everything that Hindu yogis who
possessed smatterings of Buddhist knowledge told him about India
and the state of Buddhism there in that extremely late period.

[3]. French, _Younghusband_, 113.

Citation: David Templeman. Review of Stewart, Gordon T.,
_Journeys to
Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the British Encounter
with Tibet, 1774-1904_. H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. December,
2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25907

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
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