To this proposal the Secretary of State agreed on November 7,[[44]] but he added that, as regards the agreement giving the Agent at Gyantse the right of access to Lhasa, His Majesty’s Government had decided to disallow it, for they considered it unnecessary, and inconsistent with the principle on which their policy had throughout been based.
Finally, the Secretary of State reviewed the whole affair in a despatch dated December 2. When Lord Curzon, in his despatch of January 8, 1903, made his proposal for a Mission to Lhasa, Tibet, though lying on our borders, was practically an unknown country, the rulers of which persistently refused to hold any communications with the British Government even on necessary matters of business; and if the Tibetan Government had become involved in political relations with other Powers, a situation of danger might have been created on the frontier of the Indian Empire. This risk had now been removed by the conclusion of the Treaty. And it was considered most satisfactory that, having regard to the obstinacy of the Tibetans in the past, I should, besides concluding the Treaty, have good reason to believe that the relations which I had established with them at Lhasa were generally friendly.
In the Treaty I had inserted a stipulation that the indemnity was to be paid in 75 annual instalments, and I had retained without modification the proviso that the Chumbi Valley was to be occupied as security till the full amount had been paid. The effect of this was to make it appear as if it were our intention to occupy for at least seventy-five years the Chumbi Valley, which had been recognized in the Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations of 1893 as Tibetan territory. This would have been inconsistent with the repeated declarations of His Majesty’s Government that the Mission would not lead to occupation, and that we would withdraw from Tibetan territory when reparation had been secured.
It had been hoped that it would be possible to alter the Treaty before I left Lhasa, but it was clear in the circumstances that it was not desirable that I should have postponed my departure.
As to the separate agreement, the question of claiming for the trade agents at Gyantse the right of access to Lhasa was carefully considered before His Majesty’s Government decided that no such condition was to be included in the terms of the settlement, and a subsequent request made by the Government of India for a modification of this decision was negatived by the telegram of August 3. No subsequent reference was made to the Secretary of State on the subject, and it was not till the receipt of the letter of October 6 from the Government of India that he learned that I had taken on myself the responsibility of concluding an agreement giving the trade agent at Gyantse the right to visit Lhasa to consult with the Chinese and Tibetan officers there on commercial matters, which it had been found impossible to settle at Gyantse. In the circumstances, His Majesty’s Government had no alternative but to disallow the agreement as inconsistent with the policy which they had laid down.
Attention had already been drawn to the fact that questions of Indian frontier policy could no longer be regarded from an exclusively Indian point of view, and that the course to be pursued in such cases must be laid down by His Majesty’s Government alone. It was essential that this should be borne in mind by those who found themselves entrusted with the conduct of affairs in which the external relations of India were involved, and that they should not allow themselves, under the pressure of the problems which confronted them on the spot, to forget the necessity of conforming to the instructions which they had received from His Majesty’s Government, who had more immediately before them the interests of the British Empire as a whole.
Such were the final views and orders of the Secretary of State upon the Mission. The reasons for my action in extending the period of payment, in securing the right to occupy the Chumbi Valley during that extended period, and in obtaining the right for our Agent at Gyantse to proceed to Lhasa, have been already given. I had to act in circumstances that were very exceptional, and I thought I was not taking more latitude than such circumstances naturally confer on an agent. The pledges to Russia were given with a qualification, but the main pledge, that we would not annex Tibet, or establish a protectorate over it, or interfere in its internal administration, had not, in my view, been infringed by the Treaty I signed.
We may assume that Government had some pressing international consideration of the moment which necessitated their taking no account of the qualification to their pledges, but there is some justification for thinking that if the Treaty had not been modified, and the right to occupy the Chumbi Valley and to send the Gyantse Agent to Lhasa had been maintained, we might have prevented the present trouble from ever arising.