An account of Lhasa and the country and people of Central Tibet and of the progress of the mission sent there by the English Government in the year 1903-4. Doubleday, New York 1905.
The key to the situation in Tibet, which was now becoming desperate, is to be found in the deliberate and steady determination of the Tibetans to do away with the Chinese suzerainty. This is a policy of long standing. Thirty-Five years ago the spirit of independence was already abroad in Tibet, and there was recognized progressive party, headed by no less a dignitary than the treasure of Gaden monastery. Under the old regime, as is well known, a consistent policy of regency, and therefore also a continual opportunity for the assertion and reassertion of Chinese suzerainty, for no regent could be appointed without the sanction of Chinese Emperor. The very election of the Dalai Lamas himself was theoretically subject to the approval of Peking, but this prerogative was seldom, or never, exercised. In order parts of his dominions the Chine Emperor made undoubted use of his rights.
The Opening of Tibet, Perceval, Ross and Perry, Softcover, 478 pp. $39.95
Perceval Landon was born in 1868 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he was one of the original
subscribers to Woodward's Treatise on Heraldry British and Foreign (1892)
and he had a lifelong interest in heraldry.
He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple but in 1899-1900 he was War
Correspondent to The Times during the South African War. He was also involved,
with his close and lifelong friend Rudyard Kipling and others, in a daily paper
edited by Lord Roberts in Bloemfontein called The Friend. This South
African adventure launched a career of world travel, journalism and other
writing, so that he described himself in Who's Who as "special correspondent,
dramatist and author".
He was private secretary to the Governor of New South Wales 1900; in 1903 he
was special correspondent of the Daily Mail at the Delhi Durbar, in China, in
Japan and in Siberia; in 1903-1904 he was special correspondent of The Times on
an expedition to Lhasa, Tibet; in 1905-1906 he was special correspondent of The
Times for the Prince of Wales' visit to India; and after that he was in Persia,
India and Nepal, 1908; Russian Turkestan 1909; Egypt and Sudan 1910; on the
North Eastern Frontier of India and at the Delhi Durbar, 1911; in Mesopotamia
and Syria, 1912; in Scandinavia and behind the British and French lines in
1914-1915; behind the Italian Lines in 1917; at the Peace Conference in Paris,
1919; in Constantinople, 1920; in India, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine 1921;
on the Prince of Wales' tour of India and Japan, 1921-1922; in China and North
America 1922; at the Peace Conference in Lausanne, 1923; in China, Nepal and
Egypt 1924; and in China in 1925 (source: Who Was Who).
By this time, he was 57 and had travelled constantly since the age of 21.
He died unmarried on 23
January 1927.
I. Former Explorations of Tibet
II. Reasons for the Exhibition
III. Crossing the Himalaya
IV. The Tibetans of the Chumbi Valley
V. The Fight At the Wall
VI. Forcing the Way to Ghantse
VII. Life in a Tibetan Town
VIII. Attacked by the Tibetans
IX. The Dalai Lama Shows His Hand
X. Life in the Beseiged Post
XI. Religion: Manners and Customs: Art
XII. Internal History of Lhasa
XIII. Lamaism
XIV. The Relief of the Mission
XV. The Advance to Lhasa
XVI. The Last Stage
XVII. Lhasa, I
XVIII. The Enviorns of Lhasa
XIX. The Potala and the Cathedral
XX. The Ride from Lhasa to India
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