Welcome back. It's kind of sweltering hot in my flat today, so forgive me if I'm just

sweating the entire time that I'm talking. But today I'm going to be picking up from

where I left off in my last lecture. And a lot of what I'm going to cover is at least

surveyed in the reading from Warren Smith. The year was 1720 and a Qing army had been

sent from Sheshuan to occupy Lhasa and kick the Dzongar out of central Tibet, as well

as to establish the seventh Dalai Lama, who was both descended from and favored by rebel

factions within the Mongolian Khosho tribe, who had aligned themselves against Lazankhan.

Previously, the Qing policy towards Tibet had been a kind of extension of what we saw

under the Ming, but the conflicts between different Mongolian khans competing for patronage

from Tibetan Buddhist sects and their affiliated clans had become so badly destabilizing that

the possibility of these conflicts spilling over the border into territories directly

administered by the Qing was becoming a real possibility. And the prospect of a destructive

civil war in Mongolia and Tibet would be extremely damaging to the economic stability of the

early Qing state. This caused a gradual shift in the political thinking of the Qing emperors

and their courts, and from 1720 forward, the Qing would play a much more pronounced and

direct role in the political affairs of the Tibetan plateau.

Now after the Qing arrived in Lhasa and installed the seventh Dalai Lama, who was, surprise

surprise, very much pro-Qing, or at least he appeared to be, more on that in a moment,

he was also in his minority. He was only 12 years old in 1720, and they used this as an

opportunity to create a provisional government, the goal of which was to stabilize the internal

politics of the Tibetan plateau and establish a more direct relationship with Beijing, resembling

a form of de jure suzerainty. This government only ruled for one year, and then power was

handed over to a newly formed official government under the seventh Dalai Lama, which had been

structured by the Qing in the new 1721 government, a lei power in Tibet. So secular political

power, as opposed to the religious authority of the Dalai Lama, was divided between a group

of council members called a kashak, which in one capacity or another existed up until

the 1950s. The power of the kashak was not always consistent, and at some periods is

considerably stronger than others, but the first kashak was composed of three Tibetan

ministers and a Qing representative, who had a kind of majority power within the kashak

known as the amban. And as part of the governmental reforms of 1721, a large Qing garrison of

soldiers was also left in Lhasa, and the city's fortifications were demolished, presumably

to make the city less defensible in the case of civil unrest or rebellion. The Kangxi

emperor died shortly afterwards in 1722. His successor, the Yongquan emperor, was not at

first as preoccupied with or interested in administering Tibet. It was probably seen

as an unnecessary state expenditure for which the Qing received little in return, economically

or militaristically, from leaving garrisons in Tibetan fortresses and effectively controlling

the Lhasa government through the institution of the amban. So over the course of the first

few years of his reign, the Yongquan emperor began to withdraw Qing soldiers from Tibetan

fortresses, and they significantly decreased the Qing garrison in Lhasa. They also moved

the amban from Lhasa to Cining, which was significantly more defensible and accessible,

being located in eastern Shanghai. And the plan was to maintain the supervision and partial

control of the Tibetan government through the head of the Lhasa kashak, whose name was

Kanchen Nei. He was a well-known military commander and had been a supporter of the

Qing during the war with the Dzungar. He also served on the kashak with the second very

popular military commander known as Polanei, Polanei Sunam Topge, who's going to be extremely

important in just a few minutes. And both Kanchen Nei and Polanei were descended from

the lay aristocracy. They were not monks. Typically, the kashak members were drawn from

the lay aristocracy. And they had both also fought previously for Lazankan against the

Dzungar, and thus, at least in the early 1720s, saw an alliance or a with or suzerainty to

the Qing as the best way to secure peace and stability within Tibet. That began to change,