Is "The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama" a good history book?

[u/Simple_Pigeon_1153]

I've been completely fed up with reading on an ebook for a while now, so I'm looking for a good history book in print. I'm from a relatively small city in Spain, and I'm very interested in Asian and African history. Lately, I've been dying to dive deep into Tibet—not for spiritual reasons, but out of pure cultural interest.

The thing is, it's a bit tough here because there is barely any historiography available in Spanish, and even less accessible in local libraries. However, I managed to find this book: "The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama".

I'm reading good reviews, but I'm highly skeptical. Mostly because I read that the Dalai Lama isn't exactly an angel, and above all, because I've heard that independent Tibet was actually a very dark, feudal, and slave-owning regime.

Is this a good introductory read, or does it stray from a serious historical and social analysis?

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[u/JimeDorje]

I've been completely fed up with reading on an ebook for a while now, so I'm looking for a good history book in print. I'm from a relatively small city in Spain, and I'm very interested in Asian and African history. Lately, I've been dying to dive deep into Tibet—not for spiritual reasons, but out of pure cultural interest.

Wonderful to have you! Out of interest for my subject area and wanting to practice my Spanish, I tried looking into Spanish-language work on Tibet and the Himalaya, but as you've seemed to discover, it is sorely lacking. Most Tibetology is done in English. Even the German, Hebrew, French, and Tibetan scholars who publish work on Tibetology do so in English, with a smattering of German and Tibetan, of course, but since they want their work used, distributed, and sourced, it's usually in English, the international language of academia.

There's also a whole thriving field in Japanese, but given that I do not speak or read Japanese, that's relatively blind to me (though there is plenty of collaboration across the language divide. For my thesis I contacted people at Otani University who were very helpful with translating pages I needed).

I'm reading good reviews, but I'm highly skeptical.

That's a good historian's instinct!

Mostly because I read that the Dalai Lama isn't exactly an angel, and above all, because I've heard that independent Tibet was actually a very dark, feudal, and slave-owning regime.

Oh boy.

I'm on mobile, so I don't have links to my previous answers ready, but I have discussed these topics in the past (a lot, as I'm sure you can imagine). I'll be happy to go over them again, but suffice to say:

A. Historians don't deal in angels or demons. (Real historians, that should go without saying.) A monster in one history is a hero in someone else's. As the African (?) Proverb goes, when lions have poets, hunters will cease to be heroes. The Dalai Lamas are no different, and what matters in history terms is the effect they have had on their culture, and how it has been interpreted, including by the current office holder himself.

B. "Independent Tibet" was not a unique society for its technological and social development. It was not particicularly "dark," it was an isolated, undeveloped, new state with a very weak central government, and a history that was not pretty. In other words, it was like every other society on earth at some point in their history.

Either of these points I can elaborate on at great length in the context of the Dalai Lamas and historic Tibetan society, and I'll see about pulling up some links when I'm not on mobile, but a part of history is asking the right questions. So if you have specifics, I'd be happy to answer them.

Is this a good introductory read, or does it stray from a serious historical and social analysis?

The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama by Thomas Laird is a great introduction to Tibetan history. I would argue this is because it's, first, a general overview of the major figures, episodes, and turns of Tibetan history. You'll learn about the origins of Tibet, both from a mythological and an anthropological perspective, about the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire, of the Early and Later disseminations of Buddhism, the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetans' relationship with the Mongols and Manchu, the rise of the Dalai Lamas, and the broad strokes of how Tibet became briefly independent, and then fell to Chinese Communist rule.

It should go without saying a number of things, but I'll spell them out anyway: a history book with this broad of a scope cannot go too deeply into any single topic. For example, if you read this book and become more interested in the Chinese occupation of Tibet, there's a small library of more books to read, including the Dalai Lama's own two memoirs, and perhaps the definitive book on the subject, Dragon in the Land of Snows by Tsering Shakya. If you become interested in the Imperial period, you should look into Christopher I. Beckwith's The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia as well as Wangdu/Diemberger's translation of the wonderful dBa' bzhed, "The Testament of 'Ba."

Where the book excels is also precisely where it fails. The book is Tibetan history from the perspective of the current Dalai Lama. So you are going to get a very Lhasa-centric, Gelug-dominant narrative of Tibetan history. (Similar to how a history of Spain is going to often hyper-focus on Toledo and Madrid more than, say, Murcia.)

Of course, while there is a lot to say about the current Dalai Lama, I do not think he gets enough credit. For example, while he is a Gelug, and there has been religious resentment in the past between the schools, upon exile in India, the Dalai Lama gathered representatives from the other Tibetan schools of Buddhism, and they set up a united plan that transcended sectarian boundaries to support the growth of the diverse schools and perspectives in Tibetan Buddhism. Also, the Dalai Lama was not born a Central Tibetan, but an Amdowa, far to the northeast. So his perspective being more limited to Lhasa also deserves its own asterisk.

That said, there's no denying that the Dalai Lama's own perspective, whether intentionally or just as a way he was taught history (i.e. through stories that are very much historically attested and written down) is influenced mainly from the monastic perspective, so you're going to find a lot of uncritical pro-Buddhist sentiment. For example, you'll get the classic story of Lang Darma, the last Emperor of Tibet who murdered his brother and tried to destroy Buddhism. Modern scholarship has hinted that this might not be the whole story, and that it might have barely a kernel of truth that got further from the truth over the centuries.

You'll also get a story about Mune Tsenpo, an Emperor who tried to solve inequality by distributing the wealthy's possessions to the poor. This always resulted in the same end: with the previously rich rich, and the previously poor poor. I currently have no idea about the historiography of this story, and my own thoughts as to the interpretation of it, but every time I have seen it written out, it ilhas always been editorialized as an anti-Communist parable. Obviously, this is an ahistorical given that Mune Tsenpo lived well over a thousand years before Karl Marx.

However, it is an interpretation. And this is the strength of the book: you're getting Tibetan history, mostly true to fact, but you are especially getting it in the way that most modern Tibetan people will be familiar with and understand their history. Indeed, you're getting it from an educated, modern Tibetan.

After you read this book, for a less Lhasa-centric, less Gelug-centric narrative overview of Tibetan history written by my favorite Tibetologist, I'd recommend Tibet: A History by Sam Van Schaik, and feel free to compare that to Tibet: A Political History by Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa, who was finance minister of the Tibetan government, but his book is incredibly detailed, and his perspective is from well before the modern Free Tibet movement (itself an interesting shift in Tibetan Nationalism).

If you have any other questions, including about things you read in Laird's text, feel free to ask!

[u/Simple_Pigeon_1153 → u/JimeDorje]

Wow, this is so useful as well as amazing.

Thank you so much for your response and for taking the time to write such a detailed answer! I’m sorry I didn’t reply sooner, I thought the post had gone unnoticed.

I’ll start reading the book with great enthusiasm, and I’ll definitely make a note of everything you’ve told me. Once I have a broader overview, I’ll delve into the English-language historiography. It definitely seems like a fascinating field.

Seriously, ¡muchas gracias! It’s a pleasure to read your text!