PDF Religious Freedom: History; Cases; and Other Materials on the Interaction of Religion and Government (University Casebook Series) by John T.; Jr. Noonan; Edward McGlynn Gaffney in History

Description

For nineteenth-century adventures; Tibet was the prize destination; and Lhasa; its capital situated nearly three miles above sea level; was the grandest trophy of all. The lure of this mysterious land; and its strategic importance; made it inevitable that despite the Tibetans’ reluctance to end their isolation; determined travelers from Victorian Britain; Czarist Russia; America; and a half dozen other countries world try to breach the country’s high walls.In this riveting narrative; Peter Hopkirk turns his storytelling skills on the fortune hunters; mystics; mountaineers; and missionaries who tried storming the roof of the world. He also examines how China sought to maintain a presence in Tibet; so that whenever the Great Game ended; Chinese influence would reign supreme. This presence culminated in the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s; and in a brief afterword; Hopkirk updates his compelling account of "the gatecrashers of Tibet" with a discussion of Tibet today—as a property still claimed and annexed by the Chinese.