An old soc.history.what-if post of mine (sorry for any links that may no longer work):
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From 1913 to 1951, Tibet enjoyed de facto independence. One of the tragedies of this era is that it neglected several opportunities to transform itself into a modern nation-state. (It may be objected that even the most modern Tibetan state would be no match for the People's Liberation Army once the Communists won the Chinese civil war, but I would argue that a modern Tibet with more international diplomatic support, and with a strong army prepared if necessary for prolonged guerrilla warfare might have gotten better terms than the Seventeen Point Agreement of OTL. But I will get to that in a later post.) This was not due to any special isolation. Lhasa was not that far from British India, and although there were no newspapers or radio stations in Tibet, the country's leaders were more aware of the outside world than is generally realized. (Many of the Tibetan aristocrats sent their children to India to be educated, and kept up with world events through shortwave radio or read the India-based *Tibet Mirror.*) There was also a considerable amount of trade with the West, including the United States: "The size of this Tibet-US wool trade was surprisingly large. In 1950, for example, Tibet exported 4,333,612 pounds of wool to the United States, which were worth 8,050,218 Indian rupees ($1,690,515 US dollars)...In 1951 this trade was terminated because the US Treasury Department had regulations prohibiting trade with Communist China, and Tibet had now become part of China..." Melvyn C. Goldstein, *A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm Before the Storm 1951-1955,* p. 263.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ep5l6JprtYcC&pg=RA5-PA263 As Goldstein writes elsewhere, the essentially pre-modern nature of the Tibetan polity in 1951 was "not because of any unusual isolation. In the twentieth century, Tibet looked modernity straight in the eyes and rejected change and adaptation. Its leaders saw Tibet's greatness in its religious institutions and held strongly that these should be continued without competition or contamination from 'modern' institutions such as public schools or a professional army."
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ep5l6JprtYcC&pg=RA1-PA1
(In this and subsequent posts on Tibet, I will be making much use of Goldstein's *History of Modern Tibet*--two volumes have so far been published, and a third one will deal with the situation from 1955 to the flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959. I should note, though, that Goldstein is disliked by some Tibetan nationalists, who find his image of pre-1951 Tibet too unfavorable. See, e.g.,
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=22046&t=1 There is also some disagreement among scholars about Goldstein's application of the concept of serfdom to Tibet; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy See
http://temp.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=22134&t=1&c=1 for Goldstein's response to a critic.)
Anyway, in subsequent posts, I will be writing about lost opportunities for modernization and reform during Tibet's era of de facto independence. These will include (a) Tsarong Shape's attempt to expand and modernize the army during the 1920's, and the attempt during the same era to establish an English-language school; (b) the disastrous decision to make Reting Rimpoche regent after the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's death, Reting's later resignation in favor of the ultra-conservative Taktra Rimpoche, and finally Reting's failed conspiracy to regain power in 1947 which left Tibet divided just as danger from a Communist China was about to emerge; and (c) Lungshar's reform plan of 1934, which ended in utter defeat and Lungshar's own blinding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungshar
Here I will just focus on one seemingly minor way in which Tibet had a chance to join the modern world, but ultimately decided not to. That was soccer. According to Goldstein,
"Traditionally, no Western sports were played in Tibet, with the exception of soccer, which was introduced by the British at the time of their conquest of Lhasa in 1904. Soccer was popular in 1923 at the short-lived Gyantse English School and again after 1936, when the British Mission...was started in Lhasa. In 1936, the British Mission started soccer matches between its staff and Lhasa residents, several of whom were Tibetan government officials. The Lhasans were called the Lhasa United (and had their own jerseys), and the British staff were called the Mission Marmots. Ultimately, this grew to include fourteen teams, which continued competition until the religious establishment induced the regent to ban soccer in 1944 on the grounds that kicking a football was as bad as kicking the head of the Lord Buddha."
http://books.google.com/books?id=7eTrh8CWIE4C&pg=RA6-PA404 (Re-introducing soccer in 1952 was one of the more popular decisions made by the PRC in Tibet.)
According to Alex McKay in James Mills (ed.) *Subaltern Sports: Politics and Sport in South Asia*, although the ostensible cause of the 1944 ban "was a hailstorm during a game, a most inauspicious event in Tibetan understanding, the real reason for the decree was opposition to the sport from the powerful monastic community. The guardians of Buddhist Tibet saw time and money being devoted to a non-religious activity, not least by monks, and saw passions and loyalties arising that were outside of the traditional structures of Tibetan society.
"The conservatism of the monastic elites is now recognized as fatal to any chance Tibet might have had to survive as independent entity in the modern world...and *I have previously concluded that had a Tibetan football team been created it would have made a small contribution towards the recognition of Tibet as a nation-state*... [My emphasis--DT] But in the wider sense, the Tibetans defined themselves in religious rather than secular terms, and manifestations of popular secular culture were of little interest to the ruling elites, who failed to see in them the aspects of modernity that would enhance Tibet's prospects for future independence..."
http://books.google.com/books?id=3gwJrF7yvDMC&pg=PA198
In any event, the fact that Tibet's aristocrats reacted enthusiastically to the re-introduction of soccer by the Chinese in 1952, and that the post-1959 Tibetan exile government in India has encouraged sports (in McKay's' words) "as a valuable tool, both for the general health and welfare of the community and as instrument for fostering Tibetan identity" does tend to show that there is no inherent conflict between Tibetan Buddhism and soccer--but of course these things happened only after the Chinese occupation had shattered the pre-1951 conservatism of the Tibetan monastic leadership. Indeed, as McKay notes, the British did not introduce soccer into Tibet just as a form of amusement; they consciously hoped to use it to modernize Tibet. (Not that the British were willing to recognize Tibet as fully independent--this would unnecessarily annoy the Chinese and give Tibet the freedom to bargain with other nations, like Tsarist--and even Soviet!--Russia. [1] But the British did want a modern Tibet that was independent in all but name.) The Tibetan leadership banned it precisely for this reason.
Suppose the Tibetan leadership did not ban soccer, indeed encouraged it? Lhasa United makes world tours, appears in international matches, etc. This will help people to think of Tibet as a modern nation, not a mythical Shangri-La. To quote McKay again: "The only hope for Tibet of obtaining permanent independence was to establish a separate political status and identity in the world arena. Football has certainly played a part in the assertion of a visible, national identity on the international stage in other cases, and a Tibetan football team could have made a small contribution to presenting the world with a strong symbol of independent Tibetan identity, while also countering the predominant popular images of Tibetans as an entirely spiritually-orientated people whose political aspirations were therefore of no importance. The failure of Tibet to represent itself in these terms has played a large part in its recent history of domination by the Chinese state."
http://books.google.com/books?id=O2RFRH0zSZ4C&pg=PA100
Of course, the real point is not so much soccer per se as the fact that a more soccer-friendly Tibetan government would probably be more pro-modernization in *other* more important ways. But as McKay indicates, soccer would be a part--a small but not totally insignificant part--of the creation of a modern Tibetan nation-state.
Thoughts?
[1] In a future post I will deal with Soviet Russia's attempt to revive the "Great Game" in the 1920's by secret diplomacy with Tibet--using the same Buryat lama Agvan Dorzhiev who had encouraged close relations between Tsarist Russia and Tibet--and how this effort was frustrated by the Dalai Lama's awareness of persecution of Buddhists both within the USSR and in Soviet-dominated Mongolia. Suffice it to say that two key books on this subject are John Snelling, *Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev, Lhasa's Emissary to the Tsar* (1993) and especially Alexandre Andreyev, *Soviet Russia and Tibet: The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-1930s* (2003). Goldstein's 1989 Volume One of *A History of Modern Tibet* (dealing with the 1913-1951 period) has practically nothing about Soviet-Tibetan relations, which is understandable, because most of the Soviet documents on this subject used by Andreyev were made available only after the fall of the USSR.