The volume Marching into View, published in July 2022, is now available for download on the French open access academic repository HAL:
Now available in Open Access: Marching into View: The Tibetan army in historic photographs (1895-1959)
Exposition “L’ armée tibétaine en vues : photographies historiques (1895-1959)”
L’ exposition itinérante “L’ armée tibétaine en vues : photographies historiques (1895-1959)”, organisée par Alice Travers (commissaire scientifique) et Estelle Car (commissaire technique) dans le cadre du projet TibArmy, sera présentée en version bilingue français-anglais (avec un livret de visite en tibétain) dans la salle d’exposition “L’Interface” de l’Humathèque au Campus Condorcet (Aubervilliers – Grand Paris, métro Front Populaire) du 15 décembre 2022 au 10 février 2023 (du lundi au vendredi de 8h à 19h).
Le vernissage de l’exposition aura lieu le jeudi 15 décembre 2022 à partir de 18h00, en partenariat avec la Société Française d’Études du Monde Tibétain.
Il sera précédé d’un atelier introductif (programme) qui se tiendra entre 16h00 et 17h45 à l’Auditorium de l’Humathèque, avec des interventions de la commissaire scientifique (Alice Travers) et des deux conseillers curatoriaux et éditoriaux de l’exposition (Emma Martin et Donald La Rocca).
En marge de l’ exposition, un Cycle de conférences intitulé “Archives photographiques pour la recherche en science humaines sur le monde Tibétain” se tiendra tous les jeudis du mois de janvier (programme).
Des visites guidées de l’exposition par Alice Travers sont proposées les jeudis 12 janvier à 16h00 et 26 janvier à 14h30. RDV dans le hall d’entrée de l’Humathèque.
L’Humathèque, 10 Cours des Humanités, 93322 Aubervilliers
(Ligne de métro : 12 / Station : Front Populaire)
L’ exposition est accompagnée d’une publication :
Plan d’accès
CYCLE DE CONFERENCES / Archives photographiques du monde tibétain pour la recherche en sciences humaines
Organisé tous les jeudis du mois de janvier 2023, pour accompagner l’exposition “L’armée tibétaine en vues : photographies historiques (1895-1959)”
à l’Auditorium de l’Humathèque
Campus Condorcet – 10 Cours des Humanités – 93322 Aubervilliers (métro : Front Populaire)
Jeudi 5 janvier 2023, 17h30 à 19h00 (CET)
Pr. Clare HARRIS FBA (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)
Unpacking and Animating the Archive: Some reflections on ways of working with Tibet photographs
Format hybride/ Also on Zoom
Jeudi 12 janvier 2023, 17h00 à 18h30
Pr. Fernand MEYER (Centre d’Études Himalayennes) et Rémi CHAIX (Centre d’Études Himalayennes)
Fonds perdus ou archives visuelles pour la recherche en anthropologie sur le monde tibétain ?
À travers l’exemple de la documentation photographique produite par C. Jest (1930-2019)
La conférence de Kunsang Namgyal Lama initialement prévue le jeudi 19 janvier est déplacée au 26 janvier à 15h30 en raison du mouvement social annoncé.
Jeudi 26 janvier 2023, 15h30 à 17h00
Kunsang NAMGYAL LAMA (Centre d’Études Himalayennes)
La documentation photographique dans la pratique de l’historien de l’art du monde tibétain
En présentiel
Jeudi 26 janvier 2023, 17h00 à 18h30
Samuel THÉVOZ (THALIM)
Format hybride / Also online
Télécharger le programme du cycle de conférences
Des visites guidées de l’exposition d’une durée de 30 mn par Alice Travers sont proposées les jeudis 12 janvier à 16h00 et 26 janvier à 14h30. RDV dans le hall d’entrée de l’Humathèque.
Plan d’accès
Book release / Asian Influences on Tibetan Military History between the 17th and 20th Centuries
Our collective volume, Asian Influences on Tibetan Military History between the 17th and 20th Centuries, previously published as a special issue of the RET, has just been released by Vajra Academic
in a printed book format.
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You can get the volume on Vajra Publications website.
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Military history is a domain in which nationalist or nation-state historical approaches often prevail. However the military institutions and military culture of any nation are also shaped by encounters with external actors, traditions and technologies. Tibetan military history between the 17th and 20th centuries clearly exemplifies this, reflecting an always unique, though ever-changing synthesis of influences and elements, in which older Tibetan traits, structural features, cultural orientations and nomenclatures, were mixed with those borrowed from foreign cultures. Predominant among the foreign influences in the early modern period were Mongol, Manchu, Chinese and Nepali, and then somewhat later, Japanese, Russian, Indian and British.
This volume focuses on the hitherto less-well-researched Asian influences among these. Over the course of the three centuries from the establishment of the Ganden Phodrang as the government of Tibet in 1642, Tibetan military forces were in many kinds of contact with a variety of Asian military traditions and institutions, whether in situations of conflict, alliance, cooperation, rivalry or subordination, and in many cases, these had a major impact on Tibet’s own army and its wider military culture.
While some of the articles in this volume focus on the culture of the military—reforms to military institutions, personnel and organisational issues, as well as evolutions in strategic orientations and technologies—others hope to shed light on the relationship between the military and society, i.e. on features of military culture as they were projected into social, cultural, political or religious spheres.
The eight articles of this volume thus explore some significant points of contact between the Tibetan military and their Mongol, Manchu, Chinese, and Japanese counterparts, based on sources not only in Tibetan language, but also in these respective languages. Th e diversity of source languages used for these articles, and hence the diversity of perspectives they embody, will we hope provide a step towards presenting a “global history” of the Tibetan military, that must, by necessity, be based on “multiple voices”.
Vernissage de l’exposition “L’armée tibétaine en vues : Photographies historiques 1895 – 1959”
Le vernissage de l’exposition “L’armée tibétaine en vues : Photographies historiques 1895 – 1959” s’est déroulé le 15 décembre 2022 à l’Interface de l’Humathèque dans une ambiance musicale proposée par Tshering Wangdu et Karma Drolkar, artistes tibétains.
L’exposition est présentée du 15 décembre 2022 au 10 février 2023 au Campus Condorcet (Aubervilliers – Grand Paris), du lundi au vendredi de 8h à 19h.
Photos : Alexandre Rouvrais et Hervé Chatel
Atelier introductif
Le jeudi 15 décembre 2022, à l’occasion de l’inauguration de l’exposition “L’armée tibétaine en vues : photographies historiques (1895-1959)”, un atelier introductif se tiendra à partir de 16h00 à l’Auditorium de l’Humathèque.
Programme
16h00-16h30
Donald La Rocca (Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New-York) :
Seventeenth-Century Tibetan Warriors in Twentieth-Century Photographs (en anglais)
16h30-17h00
Emma Martin (University of Manchester) :
Methods and approach to colonial photographs: a curator’s perspective (en anglais)
17h00-17h15 Pause
17h15-17h45
Alice Travers (CNRS, CRCAO) :
Les archives photographiques et la culture matérielle de l’armée tibétaine : présentation de l’exposition (en français)
L’atelier sera suivi du vernissage de l’exposition à 18h00 (L’Interface, Humathèque).
“Marching into View: the Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs 1895 – 1959” shown in Dharamsala
Our travelling exhibition, Marching into View : The Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs (1895 – 1959) on the material culture (uniforms, insignia, flags) of the Tibetan army is being presented at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) in Dharamsala (India) from 24.10.2022 until 11.11.2022.
The venue of the exhibition is the Sager Science Center (3rd floor).
See also the book published in conjunction with the exhibition:
TALK / Martial Symbolic “Arsenal” in a Buddhist Country: Military Flags and Insignia in Tibet in the First Half of the 20th Century
Alice Travers, principal investigator of the TibArmy ERC project gave a talk on Thursday 29 September 2022 at the occasion of the annual business meeting of the Société Asiatique (French Asiatic Society).
The annual business meeting took place at the Institut des Civilisations du Collège de France, 52 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Paris 5 from 15.30.
Alice Travers presented on the following subject: “Martial Symbolic “Arsenal” in a Buddhist Country: Military Flags and Insignia in Tibet in the First Half of the 20th Century”.
The conference was given in French.
Abstract in French / Résumé :
L’armée permanente du Ganden Phodrang – le gouvernement des Dalaï-lamas basé à Lhasa – a connu pendant la première moitié du XXe siècle des changements fréquents d’uniforme, reflet non seulement de la modernisation et de la professionnalisation des troupes, mais aussi des ruptures importantes survenues dans la vie politique, avec les recours successifs à différents modèles militaires extérieurs (notamment sino-mandchou, japonais et britannique). Dans le même temps, les emblèmes de l’armée tibétaine, autre composante de sa culture matérielle, ont connu au contraire une continuité historique notable. Une symbolique principalement bouddhique, mais aussi séculière puisant ses racines dans la période de l’Empire tibétain, VIIe-IXe siècles, se déploie sur les drapeaux et étendards ainsi que les insignes et médailles des soldats et officiers, manifestant clairement leur fonction de défense d’un gouvernement bouddhique. Ces emblèmes ne sont que peu décrits dans les sources historiques écrites, mais ils sont accessibles grâce à un riche ensemble d’archives photographiques. Cette présentation vise, d’une part, à analyser le répertoire de symboles religieux et séculiers utilisé par l’armée tibétaine dans ses emblèmes sous les règnes des Treizième et Quatorzième Dalaï-lamas (1895-1959) ; d’autre part, à mettre en lumière la façon dont les sources historiques visuelles viennent renouveler notre compréhension de l’histoire de la culture matérielle militaire au Tibet.
Exhibition / Marching into View : The Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs (1895 – 1959)
This exhibition of archival photographs focusses on the material culture (uniforms, insignia, flags) of the Tibetan army from 1895 to 1959, the last historical period of the Buddhist government of the Dalai Lamas known as the Ganden Phodrang. It shows how the Tibetan soldiers (both militia and regular troops) became progressively more visible in photographs during this period of time and how the various changes in the external appearance of the regular troops mirror the evolution of Tibet’s internal and international politics.
The exhibition took place during the 16th IATS Seminar at the Faculty of Arts – Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) from 3.7.2022 to 9.7.2022.
See also the book published in conjunction with the exhibition:
Book release / Marching into View : The Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs 1895 – 1959
The book Marching into View: The Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs 1895–1959 (Potsdam, edition-tethys: wissenschaft/science vol. 5, 209 p.) by Alice Travers was released on July 1st 2022.
The launch took place during the eponymous photo exhibition held in Prague during the 16th IATS.
It is now available for download on the French open access academic repository HAL:
https://hal.science/hal-03716900
Abstract
This volume seeks to shed light on one of Tibet’s little-studied secular features: its military institutions prior to 1959. It uses archival photographs, an underused historical source, to discover aspects of the Tibetan army history that scarcely appear in the written sources, such as its material culture (soldiers’ clothes and uniforms, insignia, military flags and banners, music band).
It focuses on the army of the Lhasa-based government known as the Ganden Phodrang, during the reigns of the 13th (1895-1933) and 14th Dalai lamas (1950-1959) and during the intervening period of regency (1933-1950). The Tibetan army, created to defend its Buddhist government, was mainly composed of two types of troops serving as a tax or corvée duty: a corps of permanent or regular troops (tenmag), whose first appearance dates to the 18th century; regional militia (yulmag), who guarded the borders and were summoned to serve alongside the Lhasa government’s regular troops when needed.
Assembled here for the first time are 168 photographs of Tibetan militia and regular soldiers, drawn from twenty-six museums, public and private archives in Europe, North America and Asia, and taken by thirty-five different photographers. This produces a variety of visual discourses on the Tibetan army that is rarely seen with other topics and helps to reposition the Tibetan army at the centre of the enquiry, as seen under a number of spotlights.
The volume shows how the Tibetan soldiers (both militia and regular troops) became progressively more visible in photographs during this period of time and how the various changes in the material culture and external appearance of the regular troops mirror the evolution of Tibet’s internal and international politics.
https://doi.org/10.36201/TETHYS.SCIENCE.5
You can get the book on Garuda Books.
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Camouflaged: looking for Tibetan soldiers and militia in early photographs (1890–1913)
Chapter 2. A new visual identity: the modernisation of the Tibetan army under British influence (1913–1938)
Chapter 3. The re-Tibetanisation of the Ganden Phodrang army (1939–1950)
Chapter 4. Towards Sinicisation: the aftermaths of the 17-Point Agreement (1951–1959)
Chapter 5. The lion and the vajra: the history of Tibetan military flags through film and photography
Chapter 6. “God Save the Queen” in Tibet: the military bands of the Ganden Phodrang army
Conclusion. Lessons about the history of the Tibetan army from archival photographs and films
Bibliography
Index
Defence and Offence: Armour and Weapons in Tibetan Culture
Co-edited by Federica Venturi and Alice Travers, the collective volume Defence and Offence: Armour and Weapons in Tibetan Culture is now available in open access on the website of the editor, Annali di Ca’ Foscari.
Abstract:
This special issue of Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale gathers scholars from various disciplines (history, art history, philology, Mongol studies and arms and armour specialists), in order to spur dialogue on the development and history of Tibetan weapons, and add new avenues of research on this topic, in the footsteps of the pioneering 2006 exhibition Warriors of the Himalaya (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Initially based on a workshop entitled Defence and Offence: Armour and Weapons in Tibetan Culture, organised in 2019 in Paris in the framework of the ERC-funded project The Tibetan Army of the Dalai Lamas, 1642-1959, this monographic issue starts from the observation that the theory of the ‘military revolution’, which for more than half a century has stimulated a reassessment of pre-modern and early modern European history, is still completely untested in the field of Tibetan studies. In particular, the impact of firearms innovation on the evolution of society has not been made for Tibet. The issue endeavours to build the ‘first missing link’ that would allow further analysis on this topic, by proposing five studies documenting the great diversity of weapon technology (and their corresponding terminology) that were used in Tibet, from the bow and arrow in the 7th century to the machine gun in the 20th century, by way of the famous Tibetan matchlock. Based on a great diversity of sources (material, visual and textual, such as archival, historiographical, biographical and autobiographical), the five chapters, authored by Donald La Rocca, Petra Maurer, Tashi Tsering Josayma, Federica Venturi and Alice Travers (with an additional preface by Johan Elverskog) answer, from a variety of perspectives and chronological angles, the following questions: which weapons did the Tibetan use, where did they come from, when were they used, in which circumstances, and what influence did they have on Tibetan society and history?
Book presentation: “Conflict in a Buddhist Society: Tibet under the Dalai Lamas”
Thursday 9 December 2021 – 5:30 pm –7:00 pm
The presentation is now available online (see below).
Conflict in a Buddhist Society presents a new way of looking at Tibet under the rule of the Dalai Lamas (1642–1959). Although this era can be clearly delineated as a distinct period in the history of Tibet, many questions remain concerning the specific form of rule established. Author Peter Schwieger attempts to make transparent the complexity and dynamics of the Dalai Lamas’ domination using the work of sociologist Niklas Luhman (1927–1998) as his theoretical starting point. Luhman’s systems theory allows Schwieger to approach Tibetan history and culture as a remarkable effort to create—under times of great conflict and stress and using uncommon means—a stable social and political order. Such a methodology provides the distance needed to move beyond event-based narrative history and understand the structures that made social action possible in Tibet and the operations by which its society as a whole distinguished itself from its environment.
Schwieger begins by asking the crucial question of how Tibet’s society dealt with conflict. The chapters that follow answer this question from various perspectives: history and memory; domination; hierarchy; center and periphery; semantics; morality and ethics; ritual; law; and war. Each reveals a different avenue for cross-cutting discourses in the historical and social sciences. Together, they provide a comprehensive picture of how conflicts were portrayed in Tibet society and how the manner in which they were handled stabilized the country for a considerable time but were ultimately unsuccessful in the face of radical upheavals in its environment.
Situated at the intersection of systems theory, conflict theory, and Tibetan/Inner Asian history and society, Conflict in a Buddhist Society will be of considerable interest to students and scholars in these areas. Its theoretical rather than narrative-descriptive approach to the history of the three centuries of Dalai Lama rule will be welcomed as wide-ranging and insightful.
The training of the Tibetan army by the British in Gyantse in 1922 (photographs by H. R. C. Meade)
“What event brought together such a disparate crowd in this mountainous landscape? Who are these Asian soldiers wearing European uniforms?”
Alice Travers analyses an image taken by Captain H.R.C. Meade, Officer of the British Survey, as part of the editorial project “The Darkroom of History” proposed by the EHNE (Encyclopedia of digital history of Europe).
(video in French)
To know more about this picture and others taken by Captain H.R.C Meade in 1922 during his mission to map some areas of Bhutan and southern Tibet, please see the dedicated article on the EHNE website (also in French).
The images are kept at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
Buddhism and the Military in Tibet during the Ganden Phodrang Period (1642-1959): now available in open access on Persée
Co-edited by Alice Travers and Federica Venturi, the volume is now available in open access on Persée.
Alice Travers and Federica Venturi (eds), Buddhism and the Military in Tibet during the Ganden Phodrang period (1642-1959), Special issue of the Cahiers d’Extrême Asie, EFEO, vol. 27, 2018, 244 p.
Asian Influences on Tibetan Military History between the 17th and 20th Centuries
The second collective volume of the TibArmy project has come out:
S.G. FitzHerbert and Alice Travers (eds), Asian Influences on Tibetan Military History between the 17th and 20th Centuries, Special Issue of the Revue d’Etudes Tibetaines, n°53, mars 2020, 367 p.
Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines
Numéro cinquante-trois – Mars 2020
Asian Influences on Tibetan Military History between the 17th and 20th Centuries
Edited by
S.G. FitzHerbert and Alice Travers
§ Full text (9.6 MB)
§ Cover, contents (89 kb, pp. i-iv)
§ Acknowledgements (60 kb, p. 5)
§ Notes on Transcription and Transliteration of Terms in Asian Languages (52 kb, p. 6)
§ Introduction: The Ganden Phodrang’s Military Institutions and Culture between the 17th and the 20th Centuries, at a Crossroads of Influences (1.1 MB, pp. 7-28)
author: Solomon George FitzHerbert and Alice Travers
§ Mongol and Tibetan Armies on the Trans-Himalayan Fronts in the Second Half of the 17th Century, with a Focus on the Autobiography of the Fifth Dalai Lama (484 kb, pp. 29-55)
author: Federica Venturi
§ The Zunghar Conquest of Central Tibet and its Influence on Tibetan Military Institutions in the 18th Century (491 kb, pp. 56-113)
author: Hosung Shim
§ Tibetan and Qing Troops in the Gorkha Wars (1788–1792) as Presented in Chinese Sources: A Paradigm Shift in Military Culture (695 kb, pp. 114-146)
author: Ulrich Theobald
§ Meritocracy in the Tibetan Army after the 1793 Manchu Reforms: The Career of General Zurkhang Sichö Tseten (481 kb, pp. 147-177)
author: Alice Travers
§ The Geluk Gesar: Guandi, the Chinese God of War, in Tibetan Buddhism from the 18th to 20th Centuries (1.5 MB, pp. 178-266)
author: Solomon George FitzHerbert
§ A Visual Representation of the Qing Political and Military Presence in Mid-19th Century Tibet (1.7 MB, pp. 267-302)
author: Diana Lange
§ Zhang Yintang’s Military Reforms in 1906–1907 and their aftermath—The Introduction of Militarism in Tibet (660 kb, pp. 303-340)
author: Ryosuke Kobayashi
§ Japanese Visitors to Tibet in the Early 20th Century and their Impact on Tibetan Military Affairs—with a Focus on Yasujirō Yajima (582 kb, pp. 341-364)
author: Yasuko Komoto
§ List of Authors (104 kb, pp. 365-367)
The printed version of this volume is now available for sale. The publisher is Vajra Publications.
