Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TibArmy (The Tibetan Army of the Dalai Lamas (1642-1959))

Teaser

“The Tibetan army of the Dalai Lamas, 1642-1959” (TibArmy) is an ERC funded project (Starting Grant 2015 n° 677952, 2016-21), hosted by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the East Asian Civilisations Research Centre (CRCAO, UMR 8155) in Paris...

Summary

“The Tibetan army of the Dalai Lamas, 1642-1959” (TibArmy) is an ERC funded project (Starting Grant 2015 n° 677952, 2016-21), hosted by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the East Asian Civilisations Research Centre (CRCAO, UMR 8155) in Paris. The PI with a team of 10 researchers and engineers undertake the study of a previously unresearched subject: the history of the Tibetan army during the period of the Buddhist government of the Dalai Lamas, known as the Ganden Phodrang, from 1642 to 1959. This government was the heir to a robust military culture with long experience in the defence of Buddhism since the Tibetan Imperial Period (7th-9th centuries); however, from its inception in the 17th century, the Ganden Phodrang decided to partly rely on foreign armies for its protection, while also levying Tibetan soldiers on its territory according to different means varying at times of peace and war and evolving over the three centuries under consideration. On the basis of two distinctive features of this period—the creation and maintenance of the first Tibetan standing army (the precise dating of this innovation being still under research in the project) and the relatively limited number of these permanent troops—the project explores the enduring ambivalence of the Dalai Lamas’ government towards having its own army, as well as its reasons, consequences and expressions in discourses and practices.
The methodology, inspired by the “New military history”, follows a multifaceted approach towards the military in Tibet, by taking into considerations its social, economic, political, legal, religious and cultural aspects. It also focuses on one significant particularity of the history of the Tibetan troops, i.e. the multicultural and connected historical context of their evolution and the incorporation of elements from foreign military cultures and models (Mongol armies having fought with and, at times, against Tibetan troops from 1642 to the early 18th century, Sino-Manchu troops having been stationed in Tibet, fought with, and at the end trained Tibetan troops from the early 18th century to 1912, and the later adoption from 1913 onwards of British and Japanese military models).
The research project, based on written and oral multilingual (Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Mongol, Japanese, English) sources, is structured along 5 thematic axes:
1. A history of the army institution (17th-20th c.): social, economic and political aspects;
2. Ancient Tibetan military tradition, interactions with Mongol, Sino-Manchu troops and other foreign influences on the Tibetan army;
3. Cultural and discursive aspects: integration of the army within the Buddhist frame;
4. Material culture and photographs: a visual history of the Army (organisation of a photograph exhibition);
5. An online lexicon of military terminology.
By analysing the links between Buddhism and the military in Tibet, TibArmy seeks to achieve a clearer understanding of the links between State construction, religion and army, and shed light on the past and current geo-political situation in Asia.

Work performed

Significant progress has been made on all 5 axes during this first half of the project.
The PI conducted research on the social history of the Tibetan army and collected a number of new visual, written and audio sources in India, in the US and in various places in Europe. These new sources allow her to understand the recruitment and social composition of the army officers for the 18th-20th centuries and of the whole troops for the early 20th century. She presented her ongoing research in the Tibarmy seminar in June 2017 and November 2018 in Paris, in guest lectures in Norway (2016), France (2018), and the United States (2018), and in the TibArmy international conferences in Paris (July 2017 and Nov. 2018) and Oxford (June 2018).

Particular emphasis was collectively put during this first phase of the project on axis 2 and 3, on which two international conferences were organised, and with the involvement of two full time researchers. Dr. Federica Venturi focused on primary sources of the 17th and 18th century to study the discursive integration of the Tibetan army within the Buddhist government, as well as the military cooperation between Tibetan and Mongol troops. She shared her results in the TibArmy seminar in Feb. 2017 and March 2018, as well as in the UK (Nov. 2017), in Italy (Sept. 2017), and in TibArmy international conferences in Paris (July 2017 and Nov. 2018) and Oxford (June 2018). Dr. George FitzHerbert stressed the significance of ‘war-magic’—rituals for destroying and repelling armies (dmag bzlog)—during the establishment of the Ganden Phodrang state in 17th century Tibet, a key part of the Tibetan cultural discourse around warfare, whose propaganda value in Tibetan society at large persisted right up to to the British invasion of the early 20th century and the Chinese communist occupation in the 1950s. He also worked on the identification of the figure of the Gesar epic with the Chinese war god Guandi in the late 18th c., and on the Tibetan-Sino-Manchu diplomatic ramifications of this process. He disseminated his results in the Tibarmy seminar in Nov. 2016 and Dec. 2018, in TibArmy international conferences in Paris (July 2017) and Oxford (June 2018) and in the USA (April 2018).
The other experts of the project, Jeannine Bischoff, Ryosuke Kobayashi, Yasuko Komoto, Diana Lange, Charles Ramble, and Tashi Tsering Josayma, also contributed with their respective parts to some of the 5 axes and presented their work in the TibArmy Seminar and the TibArmy international conferences.

Final results

\"New results on the integration of the Tibetan army within the Buddhist context was presented in an international symposium convened by Federica Venturi and the PI (July 2017, Paris, https://tibarmy.hypotheses.org/category/the-ganden-phodrang-army-and-buddhism-symposium-2017), and gathered in a thematic volume entitled “Buddhism and the Military in Tibet during the Ganden Phodrang period (1642-1959)” (Cahiers d’Extreme Asie, vol. 27, 2019). The introduction and six chapters on the discursive and ethical elaborations to legitimise the use of violence, on the significance of rituals in the context of war, on the involvement of monks and monk officials in conflicts, and of soldiers in religious affairs provide a diachronic picture of the development of the relations between the Buddhist and military spheres. This volume demonstrates that the religious and military projects constantly supported each other during the Ganden Phodrang period. Buddhism supplied the army with both the means—human means through monastic manpower and the performance of rituals, and discursive and philosophical means when it came to justify the resort to violence—and the end, i.e. the protection of the Buddhist government.

New results of the whole team on the interactions of the Tibetan army with Mongol, Sino-Manchu and Japanese military cultures were presented during the second project’s international conference convened by George FitzHerbert and the PI (June 2018, Oxford, https://tibarmy.hypotheses.org/category/tibetan-military-culture-interactions-with-other-traditions-conference-2018) and these results are currently being edited for publication in a collective volume of the \"\"Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines\"\" to be published in 2020.

Last, a workshop on weapons in Tibet, convened by Federica Venturi and the PI in Paris in Nov. 2018, with the participation of experts Donald LaRocca and Tashi Tsering Josayma made it possible to improve significantly our understanding of the development of weapons in Tibet and their terminology from 1642 to 1959 (https://tibarmy.hypotheses.org/tibarmy-international-conferences/defense-and-offense-a-workshop-on-armour-and-weapons-in-tibetan-culture).

An online tool has been developed for the lexicon of military terminology, using the software Drupal. It gathers for each term not only definitions/translations in existing “reference works” when available, but also examples of occurrences of these words in a variety of historical sources. The TibArmy lexicon is a historical lexicon in the sense that it seeks to document the diachronic development of Tibetan military terminology across the centuries, with the appearance and disappearance of terms, as well as changes in their meaning over time. It is currently being filled with relevant terminology and is still in a testing phase by the project’s team.

A photography database has been created, using the software Omeka, used a tool for research purpose and to prepare the exhibition of photography planed in Year 4 of the project. The PI conducted several fieldworks to gather photographs in various collections in Europe, India and the United-States. The next phase of the project will put efforts on axis 1, 4 and 5 in particular.
The next phase of the project will put efforts on axis 1, 4 and 5 in particular.\"

Website & more info

More info: https://tibarmy.hypotheses.org/about.