China

Tibet and Nepal

Qing control of Tibet reached its height in 1792, but thereafter China became unable to protect that region from foreign invasion. When an army from northern India invaded western Tibet in 1841, China could not afford to reinforce the Tibetans, who expelled the enemy on their own. China was a mere bystander during a coup d’état in Lhasa in 1844 and could not protect Tibet when it was invaded by Gurkhas in 1855. Tibet thus tended to free itself from Qing control.

The border dispute between Nepal and British India, which sharpened after 1801, had caused the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16 and brought the Gurkhas under British influence. During the war the Gurkhas sent several missions to China in vain expectation of assistance. When political unrest flared up in Nepal after 1832, an anti-British clique seized power and sought assistance from China to form an anti-British common front with the Qing, then fighting the first Opium War. But this too was rejected. Jung Bahadur, who had become premier of Nepal in 1846, decided on a pro-British policy; his invasion of Tibet in 1855—which took advantage of the Taiping uprising in China—gained Nepal many privileges there. Though Nepal sent quinquennial missions to China until 1906, the Gurkhas did not recognize Chinese suzerainty.