Tibet

Tibet
Author: Sam van Schaik
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2011-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300154046

Presents a comprehensive history of the country, from its beginnings in the seventh century, to its rise as a Buddhist empire in medieval times, to its conquest by China in 1950, and subsequent rule by the Chinese.

Taming Tibet

Taming Tibet
Author: Emily Yeh
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2013-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801469775

The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans' apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life.The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han's "little brothers." Arguing that development is in this context a form of "indebtedness engineering," Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to—and negotiations with—development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China's modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951

A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951
Author: Melvyn C. Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 944
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520061408

V. 2. It is not possible to understand contemporary politics between China and the Dalai Lama without understanding what happened during the 1950s. This book presents an understanding of that period. It furnishes portraits of these major players and unravels the fateful intertwining of Tibetan and Chinese politics against the backdrop of the Korean War.

The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Author: Bryan J. Cuevas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2005-12-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780195306521

In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular imagination, and is now considered a classic of spiritual literature. Over the years, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has inspired numerous commentaries, an illustrated edition, a play, a video series, and even an opera. Translators, scholars, and popular devotees of the book have claimed to explain its esoteric ideas and reveal its hidden meaning. Few, however, have uttered a word about its history. Bryan J. Cuevas seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by offering the first comprehensive historical study of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo, and by grounding it firmly in the context of Tibetan history and culture. He begins by discussing the many ways the texts have been understood (and misunderstood) by westerners, beginning with its first editor, the Oxford-educated anthropologist Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, and continuing through the present day. The remarkable fame of the book in the west, Cuevas argues, is strikingly disproportionate to how the original Tibetan texts were perceived in their own country. Cuevas tells the story of how The Tibetan Book of the Dead was compiled in Tibet, of the lives of those who preserved and transmitted it, and explores the history of the rituals through which the life of the dead is imagined in Tibetan society. This book provides not only a fascinating look at a popular and enduring spiritual work, but also a much-needed corrective to the proliferation of ahistorical scholarship surrounding The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China

The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China
Author: Andrew Martin Fischer
Publisher: Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Economic development
ISBN: 9780739134375

This book explores the synergy between development and conflict in the Tibetan areas of Western China from the mid-1990s onward, when rapid economic growth occurred alongside a particularly assimilationist policy approach. Based on accessible economic analysis and extensive in...

The Tibetan History Reader

The Tibetan History Reader
Author: Gray Tuttle
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231144695

Answering a critical need for an accurate, in-depth history of Tibet, this single-volume resource reproduces essential, hard-to-find essays from the past fifty years of Tibetan studies. Covering the social, cultural, and political development of Tibet from the seventh century to the modern period, the volume is organized chronologically and regionally to complement courses in Asian and religious studies and world civilizations. Beginning with Tibet's emergence as a regional power and concluding with its profound contemporary transformations, this anthology offers both a general and ..

Tibet, Tibet

Tibet, Tibet
Author: Patrick French
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 0007177550

In 1982, while he was still a schoolboy, Patrick French met the Dalai Lama for the first time. Ever since, he has been fascinated by Tibet's people, its history, and its recent plight. For centuries, Tibet has occupied a unique place in the Western imagination: romantic, mysterious, a remote mountain kingdom of incarnate lamas and nomadic herdsmen, of gold-roofed monasteries and hidden valleys which hold the secret of eternal youth. In recent years, Tibet has acquired an additional resonance as the oppressed vassal of its mighty neighbour China. Its plight has attracted Hollywood stars, and the exiled Dalai Lama has become the global embodiment of spiritual attainment and unflagging commitment to his nation. The effect of these myths has been more to obscure than to reveal the reality of the country, its people and its plight. Tibet, Tibet has its origins in Patrick French's twenty-year involvement in the Tibetan cause. Part memoir, part travel book, part history, it is a quest for the true Tibet. relationship with China. He meets victims and perpetrators of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and young nuns who continue the fight against Communist rule. He stays in the tents of nomads, and hears first-hand accounts of the hopeless battle against overwhelmingly superior Chinese forces which ended, in a single day, a way of life which had endured for thousands of years. On his journey, Patrick French is continually sidetracked by a cascade of information, thoughts and reflections on such subjects as how to blind a cabinet minister using a yak's knucklebones, the correct method of travelling across a desert by night, and the reasons for the Dalai Lama's transformation into 'an unknown dark-brown bird, bigger than a normal raven'. Patrick French has found a new way of writing about a place and its history. He fascinatingly illuminates one of the most persistently troubling of international issues, and confirms his reputation as one of the finest writers at work today.

One Hundred Thousand Moons

One Hundred Thousand Moons
Author: Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1261
Release: 2010
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004177329

A sustained argument for Tibetan independence, this volume also serves as an introduction to many aspects of Tibetan culture, society, and especially religion with a compendium of biographies of the most significant religious and political figures.

The Dawn of Tibet

The Dawn of Tibet
Author: John Vincent Bellezza
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442234628

This unique book reveals the existence of an advanced civilization where none was known before, presenting an entirely new perspective on the culture and history of Tibet. In his groundbreaking study of an epic period in Tibet few people even knew existed, John Vincent Bellezza details the discovery of an ancient people on the most desolate reaches of the Tibetan plateau, revolutionizing our ideas about who Tibetans really are. While many associate Tibet with Buddhism, it was also once a land of warriors and chariots, whose burials included megalithic arrays and golden masks. This first Tibetan civilization, known as Zhang Zhung, was a cosmopolitan one with links extending across Eurasia, bringing it in line with many of the major cultural innovations of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age. Based on decades of research, The Dawn of Tibet draws on a rich trove of archaeological, textual, and ethnographic materials collected and analyzed by the author. Bellezza describes the vast network of castles, temples, megaliths, necropolises, and rock art established on the highest and now depopulated part of the Tibetan plateau. He relates literary tales of priests and priestesses, horned deities, and the celestial afterlife to the actual archaeological evidence, providing a fascinating perspective on the origins and development of civilization. The story builds to the present by following the colorful culture of the herders of Upper Tibet, an ancient people whose way of life is endangered by modern development. Tracing Bellezza’s epic journeys across lands where few Westerners have ventured, this book provides a compelling window into the most inaccessible reaches of Tibet and a civilization that flourished long before Buddhism took root.

Tibet

Tibet
Author: Paul Christiaan Klieger
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789144027

The history of Tibet has long intrigued the world, and so has the dilemma of its future—will it ever return to independence or will it always remain part of China? How will the succession of the aging and revered Dalai Lama affect Tibet and the world? This book makes the case for a fully Tibetan independent state for much of its 2,500-year existence, but its story is a complex one. A great empire from the seventh to ninth centuries, in 1249, Tibet was incorporated as a territory of the Mongol Empire—which annexed China itself in 1279. Tibet reclaimed its independence from China in 1368, and although the Manchus later exerted their direct influence in Tibetan affairs, by 1840 Tibet began to resume its independent course until communist China invaded in 1950. And since that time, Tibetan nationalism has been maintained primarily by over 100,000 refugees living abroad. This book is a valuable, fascinating account of a region with a rich history, but an uncertain future.