Well, I did already say my reading in 2021 was going to be focused on Tibet. I knew precious little about Tibet's history at the start of this year, having only read the Chinese Communist Party's official biography of the Dalai Lama (which contradicts itself and defies common sense enough times to be dismissed out of hand as rubbish), and a handful of articles on Thoughtco, mostly by Kallie Szczepanski (an unapologetic Sinophile). I was, for all intents and purposes, flying into this book blind, with little prior knowledge of the subject.
Fortunately (and somewhat humorously), so was the Dalai Lama. At least so he claims.
"Actually, I am not very interested in history," the Dalai Lama told me initially, "mainly because I don't know too much... As a boy, I learned about history from paintings and people talking, from world events. But it was not a subject I studied. After the Chinese invasion, after I left Tibet in 1959, I grew more interested in history. But I want to make it clear I am not a historian. In some cases I don't even know the details." (p. 3)
I cringed when I read that in the early pages, and all I could think was "for God's sake do not let the CCP know you said that, because they'll trot out an entire army of so-called "experts" whose so-called "studies" have consisted exclusively of the Party's line on Tibetan history, and make a big show of saying "see? The Dalai Lama's quest for Tibetan Independence has no basis in facts and he admits it!"
I digress. The fact that both the author and the Dalai Lama (who he was interviewing) were both studying Tibetan history as they wrote about it, gives it an interesting change of perspectives throughout its pages, from its naive beginning to its almost cynical ending. I could not help but note how the author's view of China as the book progresses follows a course similar to my view of China from 2012 (when I landed in Shanghai for the first time) to the present day: the more he deals with the country, the more he reads their publications, the more he learns about how China sees themselves (and their neighbors)...
...the less he likes them.
So Is It Well-Researched?
The author's careful, painstaking research into not only Western but Tibetan, Persian, Mongolian, Chinese, Indian and Arabic sources regarding Tibet's rich history as a refined and powerful nation, shines through on every page. The history of Tibet is presented here in its full scope, from the nation's beginnings as a collection of nomadic sheep-herders worshipping animistic spirits and a war-god, to the arrival of Buddhism from India, to the later revival of Buddhism thanks to a captive princess from what would later become China, and all through the various foreign rulers in between.
The author is at pains to point out, at every step of the journey, the relationship Tibet had with its (usually smaller and weaker) neighbor, China, and a pattern quickly emerges of Tibet being the more refined, cultured, and civilized of the two nations.
During the rites to formalize the final treaty, in 822, China -grudgingly agreeing to follow "barbaric" Tibetan customs- swore to uphold the treaty, in front of a Buddhist statue, while burning incense as an offering. Tibetan negotiators agreed, after much pressure, to affirm the pact in the "civilized" Chinese fashion: spreading the blood from animals butchered as offerings to the treaty, on their lips. (p. 50)
Hm. So China's "civilized" method of marking a treaty was to smear raw animal blood all over their mouths, eh? Kind of makes a reader wonder if the animals sacrificed for it were bats or pangolins, doesn't it?
Remember, He's A Monk; Not Just a Head of State
What was perhaps more unusual about it though, is the way the Dalai Lama, from the beginning of the book, insists that one can only understand Tibet if one examines Tibet through a Buddhist's eyes. In the early chapters, there is a running theme of the Dalai Lama attempting to educate the author on Buddhist spirituality, with the insistence that these spiritual concepts are not merely Tibetan beliefs, but truisms.
[We] cannot say that all such things are just the imagination of the Buddhist faithful. They can also be true. (P. 5)
This makes for a tug-of-war that distracts from the meat and potatoes in the first few chapters as the author, an avowed Atheist, spends much of the early chapters struggling with the fact that the Dalai Lama, as a monk, does, in fact, believe that the religious tenets to which he has devoted his entire life, are true. It's not merely that he doesn't understand Buddhism (because I don't either, nor would most readers at the beginning), it's that he takes almost the first 60 pages wrapping his brain around the fact that the Dalai Lama -the head of Tibetan Gelug Buddhism- actually does believe in the Divinity of Buddha.
As a religious practicioner myself (though not Buddhist), I found the Dalai Lama's metaphysical explanations much easier to at least accept (if not fully believe) than the author did. Yes, Mr. Laird, those who devote their lives to a religion, usually believe that religion to be fully true. Why would we go through the hassle otherwise?
A Case Study in Chinese Absurdity
The author's stated purpose, from the beginning, is to present the history of Tibet's relations with China from both the Tibetan side and the Chinese side. Within the first few chapters, this attempt gives way to his frustration at the Chinese government's unwillingness to even discuss their view of Tibetan history, except to doggedly insist that it has always been part of China. What's funny is that the author finds China can't even keep their lies straight. One set of scholars and officials claims Tibet became part of China in the 1300's due to Genghis Khan (p. 8) -who they claim was Chinese (p. 107, 110 & 114). Another insists that Tibet's first emperor, Songtsen Ghampo, was a devoted subject of the Tang Dynasty (p. 35).
The irony of this is that this "subject" defeated the Tang armies in every battle against them except one minor skirmish on the walls of the Chinese capital city (p. 34), took the Tang emperor's favorite daughter as the fifth wife in his harem (p. 30, 34 & 38), and ruled a unified Tibetan empire that dominated Central Asia while Tang China could not even maintain effective rule over its own borders (p. 47). And the best part is China's own records admit that.
The Tang dynastic histories offer conclusive evidence... that Tibet occasionally ruled large parts of China, not the contrary. (p. 46)
Again and again, the author slices through the layers of self-contradictory nonsense surrounding China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet, from the claim that Songtsen Ghampo was a vassal to the claim that Genghis Khan was Chinese to the claim that the Qing Dynasty (which wasn't even Chinese but Manchu (p. 170, 202), and the Chinese were the bottom caste of its ethnic hierarchy (p. 164 & 201)) somehow gives China "ancient and indisputable sovereignty" over Tibet. Finally, the author reaches a point where he's not even trying to pretend that it's worth examining the Chinese government's absolutely idiotic viewpoint anymore. And while he's at it, he dispenses with one of China's most precious myths: the myth of being 5,000 years old.
China as a modern nation, distinct from the various empires that had ruled the land, had never existed, and today there is a consensus among scholars that [it] is a creation of the twentieth century. (p. 215, emphasis mine)
This view is shared by the 19th century reformer Liang QiChao. The relevance of this to the titular issue, the Story of Tibet, is immediate, as it denies that a nation which never existed prior to 1911 could possibly claim "ancient" sovereignty over an empire nearly 2,000 years old.
Just the Right Mix
There is a tendency for any author who is not a scholar by nature to intersperse personal anecdotes amid research. While this is not a bad thing (I'd hate to live in a world where we were all stuffy academics and what kind of idiot would try to cite, say, a blog, in MLA format? wink), it's often jarring when the reader has to ask themselves "is this the author's research, his own experience, or his opinion?"
Not so with this book. The author's personal experiences with his encounters with Tibetans during his various trips to Tibet and Dharamsala are sprinkled throughout the book in exactly the right places and the right amounts to give the added "I didn't just read it; I saw it" flair, giving it an emotional impact that could not be obtained from scholarly research alone.
A Bit Badly Cited
My main gripe about this book is the way it cites sources. There is a section for notes at the back which clearly lists the source of information for each item on each page, but there are no footnotes, numeric notations or parenthetic notations in the pages which indicate when one is reading information that came from a researcher, rather than from the author's own conversations with the Dalia Lama. As such, I found myself endlessly flipping to the back of the book asking "is there a source for that?"
If there is a reprint edition, I'd recommend the publisher address this issue.
So Who Should Read It?
Well, if you want to make someone absolutely loathe everything about China, handing them a copy of this book is a good start. The value of Thomas Laird's exhaustive research is immeasurable in the struggle against the self-anointed "Central Nation"'s worldwide campaign of ethno-nationalist aggression and brazenly false propaganda, not only for Tibet but for the world.
Interestingly enough, for the spiritualist seeking to gain an understanding of how Buddhist Dharma is applied in everyday life (which is not what I was setting out to do when I read it but I digress), the Dalai Lama's deeply spiritual interpretation of the events he and Laird discuss throughout this book's pages, provide a unique insight, even if one doesn't give a twig about history (such as the Dalai Lama, apparently).
For the casual Tibetologist, nearly 400 pages may be a bit daunting. For such readers, it might suffice to read chapters 2 and 3, then 8, and 11 - 13. These chapters, which cover the Golden Age of the Tibetan Empire under Songtsen Ghampo, the "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama who essentially defined the modern institution of his office as it is known today, and the life and struggle of the current Dalai Lama including the brutality of the Chinese occupation, while not forming a holistic view of Tibet without the chapters in between, are sufficient for an overview; kind of a "Tibet at a glance."
For me, it was a thrilling beginning to a year-long study of Tibet. I can only dream that the rest of the year is as gripping (and enlightening) as this book was.