The Ming dynasty considered Tibet to be part of the Western Regions. While the Ming dynasty at its height had some degree of influence in Tibet, the exact nature of their relations is under dispute by modern scholars. Analysis of the relationship is further complicated by modern political conflicts and the application of Westphalian sovereignty to a time when the concept did not exist. The Historical Status of China's Tibet, a book published by the People's Republic of China, asserts that the Ming dynasty had unquestioned sovereignty over Tibet by pointing to the Ming court's issuing of various titles to Tibetan leaders, Tibetans' full acceptance of the titles, and a renewal process for successors of these titles that involved traveling to the Ming capital. Scholars in China also argue that Tibet has been an integral part of China since the 13th century and so it was a part of the Ming Empire. However, most scholars outside China, such as Turrell V. Wylie, Melvyn C. Goldstein, and Helmut Hoffman, say that the relationship was one of suzerainty, Ming titles were only nominal, Tibet remained an independent region outside Ming control, and it simply paid tribute until the Jiajing Emperor, who ceased relations with Tibet.
Some scholars note that Tibetan leaders during the Ming frequently engaged in civil war and conducted their own foreign diplomacy with neighboring states such as Nepal. Some scholars underscore the commercial aspect of the Ming–Tibetan relationship, noting the Ming dynasty's shortage of horses for warfare and thus the importance of the horse trade with Tibet. Others argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship of the Ming court with Tibetan lamas is underrepresented in modern scholarship.
In the hope of reviving the unique relationship during the Yuan dynasty, and his spiritual superior Drogön Chögyal Phagpa of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Yongle Emperor made a concerted effort to build a secular and religious alliance with Deshin Shekpa, the Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu school. However, the Yongle Emperor's attempts were unsuccessful.
The Ming initiated sporadic armed intervention in Tibet during the 14th century but did not garrison permanent troops there. The Tibetans also sometimes used armed resistance against Ming forays. The Wanli Emperor made attempts to re-establish Ming–Tibetan relations after the Mongol–Tibetan alliance initiated in 1578, which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Qing dynasty in its support for the Dalai Lama of the Gelug school. By the late 16th century, the Mongols were successful armed protectors of the Gelug Dalai Lama after they increased their presence in the Amdo region. That culminated in Güshi Khan's conquest of Tibet from 1637 to 1642 and the establishment of the Ganden Phodrang regime by the 5th Dalai Lama with his help.
Background on Yuan rule over Tibet
Mongol Empire and Yuan dynasty
Tibet was once a strong power contemporaneous with the Tang dynasty (618–907). Until the Tibetan Empire's collapse in the 9th century, it was the Tang's major rival in dominating Inner Asia.Melvyn C. Goldstein, Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1.Denis Twitchett, "Tibet in Tang's Grand Strategy", in Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2000), 106–179. The Yarlung rulers of Tibet also signed various peace treaties with the Tang, culminating in a treaty in 821 that fixed the borders between Tibet and China.Michael C. van Walt van Praag, The Status of Tibet: History, Rights, and Prospects in International Law (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 1–2.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China (907–960), while the fractured political realm of China saw no threat in a Tibet which was in just as much political disarray, there was little in the way of Sino-Tibetan relations.Josef Kolmas, Tibet and Imperial China: A Survey of Sino-Tibetan Relations Up to the End of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912: Occasional Paper 7 (Canberra: The Australian National University, Centre of Oriental Studies, 1967), 12–14.Van Praag, The Status of Tibet, 4. Few documents involving Sino-Tibetan contacts survive from the Song dynasty (960–1279). The Song were far more concerned with countering northern enemy states of the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty (907–1125) and Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty (1115–1234).Kolmas, Tibet and Imperial China, 14–17.
In 1207, the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227) conquered and subjugated the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227).Van Praag, The Status of Tibet, 5. In the same year, he established diplomatic relations with Tibet by sending envoys there.Hok-Lam Chan, "The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-shi, and Hsuan-te reigns", in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 261. The conquest of the Western Xia alarmed Tibetan rulers, who decided to pay tribute to the Mongols. However, when they ceased to pay tribute after Genghis Khan's death, his successor Ögedei Khan (r. 1229–1241) launched an invasion into Tibet.Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 2–3.
The Mongol prince Godan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, raided as far as Lhasa.Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 3. During his attack in 1240, Prince Godan summoned Sakya Pandita (1182–1251), leader of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, to his court in what is now Gansu in Western China. With Sakya Pandita's submission to Godan in 1247, Tibet was officially incorporated into the Mongol Empire during the regency of Töregene Khatun (1241–1246).Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 18. Michael C. van Walt van Praag writes that Godan granted Sakya Pandita temporal authority over a still politically fragmented Tibet, stating that "this investiture had little real impact" but it was significant in that it established the unique "Priest-Patron" relationship between the Mongols and the Sakya lamas.
Starting in 1236, the Mongol prince Kublai, who later ruled as Khagan from 1260 to 1294, was granted a large appanage in northern China by Ögedei Khan.Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, 14–41. Karma Pakshi, 2nd Karmapa Lama (1203–1283)—the head lama of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism—rejected Kublai's invitation, so instead Kublai invited Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235–1280), successor and nephew of Sakya Pandita, who came to his court in 1253.Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, 40–41.George N. Patterson, "China and Tibet: Background to the Revolt", The China Quarterly, no. 1 (January–March 1960): 88.Van Praag, The Status of Tibet, 6. Kublai instituted a unique relationship with the Phagpa lama, which recognized Kublai as a superior sovereign in political affairs and the Phagpa lama as the senior instructor to Kublai in religious affairs.Patterson, "China and Tibet", 88–89. Kublai also made Drogön Chögyal Phagpa the director of the government agency known as the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs and the ruling priest-king of Tibet, which comprised thirteen different states ruled by myriarchies.Turrell V. Wylie, "The First Mongol Conquest of Tibet Reinterpreted", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37, no. 1 (June 1997): 104.
Tibet was later incorporated into the Yuan dynasty of China (1271–1368), the primary successor state to the Mongol Empire. Van Praag writes that this conquest "marked the end of independent China," which was then incorporated into the Yuan dynasty that ruled modern-day China proper, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, parts of Siberia and Upper Burma.Van Praag, The Status of Tibet, 6–7. Morris Rossabi, a professor of Asian history at Queens College, City University of New York, writes that "Khubilai wished to be perceived both as the legitimate Khan of Khans of the Mongols and as the Emperor of China. Though he had, by the early 1260s, become closely identified with China, he still, for a time, claimed universal rule", and yet "despite his successes in China and Korea, Khubilai was unable to have himself accepted as the Great Khan".Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, 115. Thus, with such limited acceptance of his position as Great Khan, Kublai Khan increasingly became identified with China and sought support as Emperor of China.Denis Twitchett, Herbert Franke, John K. Fairbank, in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 454.
Overthrow of the Sakya and Yuan In 1358, the Sakya viceregal regime installed by the Mongols in Tibet was overthrown in a rebellion by the Phagmodru myriarch Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen (1302–1364).Chan, "The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-shi, and Hsuan-te reigns", 262.Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 4. The Mongol Yuan court was forced to accept him as the new viceroy, and Changchub Gyaltsen and his successors, the Phagmodrupa dynasty, gained de facto rule over Tibet.
In 1368, a Han revolt known as the Red Turban Rebellion toppled the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang then established the Ming dynasty, ruling as the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398).Patricia B. Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 190–191. It is not clear how much the early Ming court understood the civil war going on in Tibet between rival religious sects, but the first emperor was anxious to avoid the same trouble that Tibet had caused for the Tang dynasty.Morris Rossabi, "The Ming and Inner Asia," in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 242–243. Instead of recognizing the Phagmodru ruler, the Hongwu Emperor sided with the Karmapa of the nearer Kham region and southeastern Tibet, sending envoys out in the winter of 1372–1373 to ask the Yuan officeholders to renew their titles for the new Ming court.
As evident in his imperial edicts, the Hongwu Emperor was well aware of the Buddhist link between Tibet and China and wanted to foster it.Rossabi, "The Ming and Inner Asia," 242. Rolpe Dorje, 4th Karmapa Lama (1340–1383) rejected the Hongwu Emperor's invitation, although he did send some disciples as envoys to the court in Nanjing. The Hongwu Emperor also entrusted his guru Zongluo, one of many Buddhist monks at court, to head a religious mission into Tibet in 1378–1382 in order to obtain Buddhist texts.
However, the early Ming government enacted a law, later rescinded, which forbade ethnic Han to learn the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism. There is little detailed evidence of Chinese—especially lay Chinese—studying Tibetan Buddhism until the Republican era (1912–1949).Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 27. Despite these missions on behalf of the Hongwu Emperor, Morris Rossabi writes that the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424) "was the first Ming ruler actively to seek an extension of relations with Tibet."
Assertions in the History of Ming The History of Ming is one of the official Twenty-Four Histories that covers the history of the Ming dynasty, compiled by the subsequent Qing dynasty (1644–1912). The compilation started in 1645 and was completed in 1739. The History of Ming follows the traditional division of official history since the Records of the Grand Historian into Annals (), Treatises (), Tables () and Biographies (). The territories of Ming was described under Treatises on geography () and Tibet was not included in this section. Other countries were described under Biographies, and Tibet was described under Western Regions (), after Foreign states () such as Korea (), Vietnam () and Mongol.For Korea, Vietnam and Mongol in the History of Ming, see