Tibet

Tibet, the high plateau the Tibetans call the Land of Snows, was ruled from Lhasa by the Dalai Lamas from 1642 to 1951. Its statehood reaches further back: Songtsen Gampo united the plateau in the seventh century, married Tang princesses, gave Tibet its script and raised the Jokhang temple, and his empire raided from Chang'an to Kashmir. Buddhism, planted then and rooted by the Indian master Padmasambhava, became the marrow of Tibetan life. Under the Mongols the Sakya abbots governed as priests to khans; under the Ming the lamas carried titles from Nanjing. The Gelug school's rise changed everything: with the Mongol Gushri Khan's armies, the Fifth Dalai Lama took temporal power in 1642, moved into the Potala palace rising over Lhasa, and made the reincarnate lama both pope and prince. The Qing emperors, patrons of the same Buddhism, garrisoned Lhasa from 1720 and managed successions through the golden urn, while British expeditions in 1904 and Chinese commissioners pressed from both sides. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, ruling to 1933, built a modern army and printed stamps to hold independence between empires. In October 1950 the People's Liberation Army took Chamdo; the following May Tibetan delegates signed the Seventeen Point Agreement in Beijing, accepting Chinese sovereignty in exchange for pledges of autonomy and religious freedom. The Dalai Lama remained in Lhasa under the agreement, ending three centuries of independent rule from the Potala.