The final outcome of the affair was that the British left after a year, obtaining an agreement from the Tibetans to pay the equivalent of
?500,000 over 75 years to cover half the cost of their impoverished country's invasion. A British trade officer was established in the country, and a frontier valley was to host a British force until the indemnity was paid off. In the event the indemnity was later reduced by two-thirds, and the British stay in the Chumbi Valley reduced to a mere 36 months.
When the expedition arrived back in India, 400 mule-loads of "rare and valuable manuscripts of Lamaist sacred works, images, religious paraphernalia of all descriptions, armor, weapons, paintings and porcelain" were put on display in the India Museum in Calcutta. Much of this was undoubtedly looted, though some -- how much, surmises Allen, can never now be known -- may have been bought legitimately in local markets. Such is the paradoxical nature of history that this material now provides a major source of information on ancient Tibet when so much else was destroyed by Red Guards during China's Cultural Revolution.
This book will make absorbing reading for anyone wanting to know all there is to be known about the 1904 to 1905 Tibet expedition. But for sheer style, humor and memorable detail, nothing can replace Patrick French's superb and endlessly re-readable Younghusband, a combined biography and personal travelogue now in Flamingo paperback, and one of the greatest modern books on any Asian subject.
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