Tibet () was a de facto independent state in East Asia that lasted from the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 until its annexation by the People's Republic of China in 1951.;
The Ganden Phodrang based in Central Tibet was a protectorate under Qing rule.
Ram Rahul, Central Asia: an outline history , New Delhi, Concept Publishing Company, 1997, : "From then until the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1912, the Manchu Ch'ing government stationed an Amban, a Manchu mandarin, and a military escort in Tibet."Barry Sautman, Tibet's Putative Statehood and International Law, in Chinese Journal of International Law, Vol. 9, Issue 1, 2010, p. 127-142: "Through its Lifan Yuan (Office of Border Affairs...), the Chinese government handled Tibet's foreign and many of its domestic affairs. During the Qing, Tibet hosted imperial troops and border patrols, and the imperial court appointed Tibetan officials. The Lifan Yuan ... ratified the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, created joint rule by aristocrats and high lamas and elevated the Dalai Lama above the nobles. From 1728, the... amban handled Tibet's foreign and military affairs. From 1793, the amban had the right to identify the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.... Monastic finances were under imperial control.... Central-western Tibet was thus an administered territory of China under the Qing. In 1724, eastern Tibet was incorporated into existing Chinese provinces." In 1912 the provisional government of the Republic of China (ROC) succeeded the Qing and received an imperial edict inheriting the claims over all of its territories. The newly formed ROC was unable to assert consistent authority in remote areas such as Tibet however. The 13th Dalai Lama declared that Tibet's relationship with China ended with the fall of the Qing dynasty and proclaimed independence, although almost no country formally recognized this.
During the 1910s, the British and Russian empires, both vying for influence in Tibet, attempted to form an agreement with China regarding the region's status, but no consensus was reached. After the 13th Dalai Lama's death in 1933, the Kuomintang-ruled Nationalist government of ROC opened a mission in Lhasa to restart negotiations, but no agreements followed.: "Chinese fortunes in Tibet improved slightly after the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama when Tibet allowed a "condolence mission" sent by Guomindang government of Chiang Kaishek to visit Lhasa, and then permitted it to open an office to facilitate negotiations aimed at resolving the Tibet Question. These talks proved futile, but Tibet allowed the office to remain.
By 1949 the Nationalist government had lost its renewed civil war against the Chinese Communist Party. In 1951 Ü-Tsang and the western Kham area of Chamdo were annexed by the newly formed People's Republic of China.
History Fall of the Qing dynasty (1911)
Tibet came under the rule of the Qing dynasty of China in 1720 after the Qing expelled the forces of the Dzungar Khanate. But by the end of the 19th century, Qing authority in Tibet became little more than ritualistic and symbolic.: "From on, the Qing dynasty became increasingly preoccupied with problems in the interior, and court officials in Peking found it less and less easy to intervene in Tibetan affairs.... by the second half of the nineteenth century, the Qing ambans, who represented the Qing emperor and Qing authority, could do little more than exercise ritualistic and symbolic influence." In response to perceived British encroachment in Tibet, however, the Qing dynasty launched an expedition to the region in 1910 and decided to assert greater control over the region. Following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911–1912, Tibetan militia launched a surprise attack on the Qing garrison stationed in Tibet after the Xinhai Lhasa turmoil. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the Qing officials in Lhasa were then forced to sign the "Three Point Agreement" for the surrender and expulsion of Qing forces in central Tibet. In early 1912, the Government of the Republic of China replaced the Qing dynasty as the government of China and the new republic asserted its sovereignty over all the territories of the previous dynasty, which included 22 Chinese provinces, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia. This claim was provided for in the Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor signed by the Empress Dowager Longyu on behalf of the six-year-old Xuantong Emperor: "...the continued territorial integrity of the lands of the five races, Manchu, Han, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan into one great Republic of China" (...). The Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China adopted in 1912 specifically established frontier regions of the new republic, including Tibet, as integral parts of the state.
Following the establishment of the new Republic, China's provisional President, Yuan Shikai, sent a telegram to the 13th Dalai Lama, restoring his earlier titles. The Dalai Lama spurned these titles, replying that he "intended to exercise both temporal and ecclesiastical rule in Tibet." In 1913 he returned to Lhasa and issued a proclamation that stated that the relationship between Beijing and Tibet "had been that of patron and priest and had not been based on the subordination of one to the other." "We are a small, religious, and independent nation," the proclamation stated.
In January 1913, Agvan Dorzhiev and three other Tibetan representativesUdo B. Barkmann, Geschichte der Mongolei, Bonn 1999, p380ff signed a treaty between Tibet and Mongolia in Urga, proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China. The British diplomat Charles Bell wrote that the 13th Dalai Lama told him that he had not authorized Agvan Dorzhiev to conclude any treaties on behalf of Tibet. Because the text was not published, some initially doubted the existence of the treaty,Quoted by Sir Charles Bell, "Tibet and Her Neighbours", Pacific Affairs(Dec 1937), pp. 435–6, a high Tibetan official pointed our years later that there was "no need for a treaty; we would always help each other if we could." but the Mongolian text was published by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 1982.
Simla Convention (1914)
In 1913–1914, a conference was held in Simla between the British India, Tibet, and the Republic of China. The British suggested dividing Tibetan-inhabited areas into an Outer and an Inner Tibet (on the model of an earlier agreement between China and Russia over Mongolia). Outer Tibet, approximately the same area as the modern Tibet Autonomous Region, would be autonomous under Chinese suzerainty. In this area, China would refrain from "interference in the administration." In Inner Tibet, consisting of eastern Kham and Amdo, China would have rights of administration and Lhasa would retain control of religious institutions.
When negotiations broke down over the specific boundary between Inner and Outer Tibet, the boundary of Tibet defined in the convention also included what came to be known as the McMahon Line, which delineated the Tibet-India border, in the Assam Himalayan region. The boundary included in India the Tawang tract, which had been under indirect administration of Tibet via the control of the Tawang monastery.Article 2 of the Simla Convention Appendix of the Simla Convention
The Simla Convention was initialled by all three delegations, but was immediately rejected by Beijing because of dissatisfaction with the boundary between Outer and Inner Tibet. McMahon and the Tibetans then signed the document as a bilateral accord with a note denying China any of the rights under the convention until it signed. The British Government initially rejected McMahon's bilateral accord as being incompatible with the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention.
The 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty, which had earlier caused the British to question the validity of Simla, was renounced by the Russians in 1917 and by the Russians and British jointly in 1921.Free Tibet Campaign, "Tibet Facts No.17: British Relations with Tibet" . Tibet, however, altered its position on the McMahon Line in the 1940s. In late 1947, the Tibetan government wrote a note presented to the newly independent Indian Ministry of External Affairs laying claims to Tibetan districts south of the McMahon Line. According to Alastair Lamb, by refusing to sign the Simla documents, the Chinese Government had escaped giving any recognition to the McMahon Line.
After the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933
Since the expulsion of the Amban from Tibet in 1912, communication between Tibet and China had taken place only with the British as mediator. Direct communications resumed after the 13th Dalai Lama's death in December 1933, when China sent a "condolence mission" to Lhasa headed by General Huang Musong.
Soon after the 13th Dalai Lama died, according to some accounts, the Kashag reaffirmed its 1914 position that Tibet remained nominally part of China, provided Tibet could manage its own political affairs.Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume XIII, Pergamaon Press, 1967, p. 638Reports by F.W. Williamson, British political officer in Sikkim, India Office Record, L/PS/12/4175, dated 20 January 1935 In his essay Hidden Tibet: History of Independence and Occupation published by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives at Dharamsala, S.L. Kuzmin cited several sources indicating that the Tibetan government had not declared Tibet a part of China, despite an intimation of Chinese sovereignty made by the Kuomintang government. Since 1912, Tibet had been de facto independent of Chinese control, but on other occasions it had indicated willingness to accept nominal subordinate status as a part of China, provided that Tibetan internal systems were left untouched, and provided China relinquished control over a number of important ethnic Tibetan areas in Kham and Amdo. In support of claims that China's rule over Tibet was not interrupted, China argues that official documents showed that the National Assembly of China and both chambers of parliament had Tibetan members, whose names had been preserved all along.
China was then permitted to establish an office in Lhasa, staffed by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and headed by Wu Zhongxin, the commission's director of Tibetan Affairs, which Chinese sources claim was an administrative bodyTibet during the Republic of China (1912–1949) —but the Tibetans claim that they rejected China's proposal that Tibet should be a part of China, and in turn demanded the return of territories east of the Drichu (Yangtze River). In response to the establishment of a Chinese office in Lhasa, the British obtained similar permission and set up their own office there.
The 1934 Khamba Rebellion led by Pandastang Togbye and Pandatsang Rapga broke out against the Tibetan Government during this time, with the Pandatsang family leading Khamba tribesmen against the Tibetan Army.
1930s to 1949
In 1935, Lhamo Dhondup was born in Amdo in eastern Tibet and recognized by all concerned as the incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. Similar to his predecessor Thubten Gyatso who was approved by the Central Government of China in 1877 to be exempted from the lot-drawing process using Golden Urn to become the 13th Dalai Lama On 26 January 1940, the Regent Reting Rinpoche requested the Central Government of China to exempt Lhamo Dhondup from the lot-drawing process using the Golden Urn to become the 14th Dalai Lama, and the Chinese government approved. After a ransom of 400,000 silver dragons had been paid by Lhasa to the Hui Muslim warlord Ma Bufang, who ruled Qinghai (Chinghai) from Xining, Ma Bufang released him to travel to Lhasa in 1939. He was then enthroned by the Ganden Phodrang government at the Potala Palace on the Tibetan New Year.