The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 24 April 2007
by Kate Teltscher
The history of the West's interaction with China is governed by the interests of trade. For centuries, Western nations have coveted the vast Chinese market and its huge store of natural resources and cheap manpower. China, for its part, knows it is in a superior negotiating position and Western interests seem certain to give in to Chinese demands. The West has little leverage in convincing the Chinese to accede to any reciprocal demands, especially with regard to human rights, and those include particularly China's treatment of its minorities, most famously the Tibetans who, debatably, have some claim to independence. Without question, China will be the superpower to contend with in the 21st century. Western conflict and negotiation with China have a variously complex history. China, with its long dynastic memory, is not without reason suspicious of Western influence. China's claim to Tibet goes back a long way, and often is based upon the history of the 18th century, when British colonial rule in India was one of the greatest threats to autonomy in the region. This book is an account of one episode in that gamesmanship between empires.
George Bogle, a young Scotsman of medium rank in the East India Company, was dispatched in 1774 on an expedition to Tashilunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lama of Tibet, in an attempt to negotiate trade from Bengal across Bhutan and into Tibet, and, hopefully, as a back door to the Chinese market. What followed, though, was a fascinating adventure in diplomacy. Bogle, through extensive notes and observations, proved a most sensitive and alert traveler. His writings are full of detailed observations, but also given to gentle critique of European ways in contrast to Tibetan culture. He succeeds in meeting and even befriending the Panchen Lama who, during the minority of the seventh Dalai Lama, was the senior lama in the Tibetan hierarchy. Bogle tries to get the Panchen Lama to act as an intermediary between the Company and the Chinese Qing emporer. Along the way, he uses the social and political skills of a wandering trader monk, Purangir, who, himself makes a significant mark on history. It takes years for the story to play out in an ultimately tragic and almost romantic manner. This first, best recorded, encounter between European and Tibetan cultures has political and cultural reverberations down to the present day. Kate Teltscher is a scholar of British colonial history and successfully writes a sensitive portrait of Bogle and places him in the complex context of his time. She paints the history with a broad and wide-ranging brush, touching on everything from the Boston Tea Party to the Qing emporer's recreation of a Tibetan monastery in his summer pleasure garden. She opens up Bogle's life, dispenses with legend and inaccuracies in the history, and she turns a subtle political game into a very engaging book.