Tim Coates

Peace in Tibet Tim Coates

Publisher Marketing: On 13 December 1903, Colonel Francis Edward Younghusband, Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire, British Commissioner for Tibet Frontier Matters, once more crossed over from Sikkim to Tibet, this time over the Jelap (Dzelap) La. True to his Edwardian heritage, his personal luggage alone filled 29 containers and included 67 shirts, camp suit, camp dinner suit, an assortment of coats and hats, a prodigious supply of underwear, an umbrella and a campaign bath. This is the story of the British invasion of Tibet, the negotiations with the Tibetan government and the eventual signing of a peace treaty on 7 September 1904, told through excerpts from official correspondence between the Commission and India and from diaries kept by Colonel Younghusband and Captain O'Connor. The transliteration of names, in the text and in the maps, follows the usage of the period. Contributor Bio:  Coates, Tim A former bookseller in London, Tim Coates is the editor and publisher of M"oments of History," a series of historic official papers from the archives of the British and American governments. Contributor Bio:  Younghusband, Francis Sir Francis Younghusband is universally known for his forcible entry into Lhasa in 1902. But his adventures commenced much earlier. After mountaineering in Manchuria, he began in 1887 his exciting journey through the heart of Asia, across the Gobi Desert and Chinese Turkestan to Kashgar and Yarkand, and then across the Himalayas to Srinagar. He was sent by the British to investigate Hunza raids on Kirghiz territory; he went on his famous expedition to the Pamirs, only to be summarily ordered out by the Russians; and in 1898 he was appointed political agent in the disturbed Chitral (in present-day Pakistan).