Alastair Lamb
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Alastair Lamb is a diplomatic historian who has authored several books on the Sino-Indian border dispute and the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir. He has also worked in
archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
and ethnography in Asia and Africa.


Career

Alastair Lamb was born in 1930. He entered the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
in 1953 and graduated with a doctorate degree in 1958. His thesis was on the history of the
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
n border between the era of
Warren Hastings Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-General ...
and the 1904 British expedition to Tibet. He is a diplomatic historian by training. In 1959, Lamb moved to British Malaya where he studied archaeological sites. Lamb was a reader of history at the
University of Malaya The University of Malaya ( ms, Universiti Malaya, UM; abbreviated as UM or informally the Malayan University) is a public research university located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the oldest and highest ranking Malaysian institution of highe ...
for nine years and was a senior fellow in the department of history at the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...
for three years. From 1968 to 1972, he was a professor of history at the
University of Ghana The University of Ghana is a public university located in Accra, Ghana. It the oldest and largest of the thirteen Ghanaian national public universities. The university was founded in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast in the Br ...
. He was a reader of history at Hatfield Polytechnic during the 1980s.Authors
Roxford Books, retrieved 6 September 2017.


Honours

Lamb is a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries of London A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...
and a Fellow of the
Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...
. He is also a council member of the
Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (MBRAS) is a learned society based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Established in 1877, the society is dedicated to the collection, recording and communication of geographic, historic and cultural infor ...
.


Research

Lamb is recognised as an expert on the juridical and diplomatic history of the Kashmir dispute. In addition to his work on diplomatic history, Lamb has worked in
archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
and ethnography in Asia and Africa. Lamb's doctoral thesis on the history of the
Younghusband Expedition The British expedition to Tibet, also known as the Younghusband expedition, began in December 1903 and lasted until September 1904. The expedition was effectively a temporary invasion by British Indian Armed Forces under the auspices of the T ...
was published in 1960 by Routledge & Kegan Paul as the book ''Britain and Chinese Central Asia: The Road to Lhasa 1761 to 1905''. The book was revised and published in 1986 under a new title, ''British India and Tibet: 1766-1910,'' by bringing it up to the events of 1910 based on newly released archival documents. In the 1960s, Lamb studied Hindu and Buddhist sites in
Kedah Kedah (), also known by its honorific Darul Aman and historically as Queda, is a state of Malaysia, located in the northwestern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The state covers a total area of over 9,000 km2, and it consists of the mainland ...
and southern
Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
in a series of papers. When the China–India border dispute was getting critical in 1962, Lamb was conducting research in British archives in the
Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...
and the India Office Library. Lamb has stated that he came across a number of documents in the archive which looked "rather different" from the versions published by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Through the mediation of
Dorothy Woodman Dorothy Woodman (1902 – September 1970) was a British socialist activist, communist and journalist. Biography Woodman was born in Swindon,"Obituary: Dorothy Woodman", ''The Guardian'', 1 October 1970 into a family known for its nonconformis ...
, Lamb managed to meet a senior official in the Indian High Commission in London in order to bring these facts to India's notice. However, he states the official was least interested. The more he checked the published Indian documents, the more convinced he became of "distortions and misquotations". Thus he came to the "reluctant conclusion", he says, that the Indian government was least interested in the historical accuracy of its territorial claims. This motivated him to write ''The China-India border'' in 1964, where he claims he did his utmost to "play down the defects of the Indian published material". In 1966, he expanded the book into a large two-volume work titled ''The McMahon Line''. In 1966 Lamb also wrote his first book on the
Kashmir conflict The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, with China playing a third-party role. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed ...
, titled ''The Crisis in Kashmir''. This was soon after the Second Kashmir War. In 1991, after the start of the
Kashmir insurgency The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, also known as the Kashmir insurgency, is an ongoing separatist militant insurgency against the Indian administration in Jammu and Kashmir, a territory constituting the southwestern portion of the larger g ...
, he expanded it into a larger volume titled ''Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy''.


Reception

Journalist and scholar Andrew Whitehead cited Alastair Lamb among historians of eminence, whose work is however tarnished by partisan comment. Scholar Ian Copland has called him a "meticulous historian" with exhaustive research and eye for detail. Parshotam Mehra called him "a professional historian of great academic distinction". He stated that his work was thorough and painstaking even though it suffered from gaps in the presentation and interpretation. Certain aspects of Lamb's claims related to India-China, such as India being an aggressor or Lamb's claims on the Shimla convention, have been countered by
Bertil Lintner Bertil Lintner (born 1953) is a Swedish journalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decades. He was formerly the Burma (Myanmar) correspondent of the now defunct ''Far Eastern Economic Review'', and ...
's book, ''China’s India War''.


''The McMahon Line''

Leo Rose called the book a "special pleading" rather than a scholarly work, which presents the Chinese position extremely well. Lamb points out rightly that China had never ratified the Simla Convention which contained the definition of the McMahon Line but he dismisses the question of whether the British and Tibetan governments were competent to conclude the agreement. Rose also notes that Lamb seems annoyed at the fact that the authorities of independent India do not follow the British imperial line, which he terms "out of place". Parshotam Mehra, calling the two-volume work a "herculean effort", nevertheless labels it an "outright partisan attempt at demolishing the Indian case and thereby lending countenance to, and buttressing, the Chinese claims." The historian in Alastair Lamb is "fairly sound", he says, but frequently departs from being a historian to a "factionist". Mehra's own later work, ''McMahon Line and After'' was judged by Leo Rose to be "more balanced and less advocative" than Lamb's.
Wim van Eekelen Willem Frederik "Wim" van Eekelen (born 5 February 1931) is a retired Dutch politician, diplomat, and political scientist. Early life and education Van Eekelen attended a Gymnasium in Utrecht from June 1943 until June 1949 and applied at the ...
describes the work as an "impressive and well-documented study of the relations between India, China, and Tibet between 1904 and 1914", which was in agreement with his own research in the India Office Library. Van Eekelen notes that due to greater weight being placed on the opinions exchanged with London, Lamb's book tends to be critical of the Indian government and disparaging of the Tibetan point of view, but that these criticisms were "often more a matter of accent than of substance."


''Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990''

Victoria Schofield describes the book as an expansion of Lamb's earlier work with the use of newly available documents. Schofield states that Lamb has successfully identified the main issues and mistakes. Schofield finds that Lamb's work is so filled with facts that additional notes are provided with each chapter. Lamb also successfully shows the impact a few individuals have had on South Asia's history. Ross H. Munro observes that Lamb has written an authoritative history of Kashmir. He called Lamb's work a "tour de force" that "combines impeccable scholarship with an fascinating story". Munro sees that Lamb refutes India's claim on Kashmir and seriously indicts Indian actions, leaders and also his own countryman, Mountbatten. Victor Kiernan recommends the book. Kiernan notes that Lamb is the top authority on the region and describes the book, like Lamb's previous ones, as very thorough, uninvolved and objective, regardless of the rare instance where India is treated with "little sympathy." Historian Hugh Tinker notices that Alastair Lamb explains Kashmiri political history in a "masterly style." Tinker points out that Lamb is known as the foremost authority on the region but also notes that his findings will not be accepted by Indian authors, who see Kashmir as a test of Indian secularism. Copland observes that Lamb's analysis of the Kashmir conflict is the most detailed and describes his work as a "considerable feat of scholarship." Copland states that the problems in the book are "few and far between" and notes that this high calibre book's bibliography ignores post-1980 writings. Parshotam Mehra, on the other hand, points out that Lamb is unabashedly pro-Pakistan with several bones to pick against India, arguing for various ways in which Kashmir could have gone to Pakistan instead of India. He also points out how Lamb glosses over the culpability of Pakistan in the 1947 crisis as well as in later developments, facts which scholars such as
Ayesha Jalal Ayesha Jalal (Punjabi, ur, ) is a Pakistani-American historian who serves as the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, and was the recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Family and early life Ayesha Jala ...
admit. Mehra concludes: Prem Shankar Jha, in his ''Kashmir 1947: Rival Versions of History'', tried to provide a detailed critique of the contentious aspects of Lamb's treatment of the Kashmir dispute, although David Taylor points out that while providing alternative readings on some points, Jha does not manage to entirely refute Lamb. Srinath Raghavan credits Lamb for discovering that Kashmir's Instrument of Accession was most likely signed on 27 October 1947, after the Indian troops landed in Srinagar, rather than 26 October, as official Indian history maintains. However, he states that in his later work, ''Birth of a Tragedy'', Lamb "overreached" by claiming that the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir never signed the Instrument of Accession at all. He conveniently overlooked other letters where the Maharaja mentioned having signed accession.


Selected publications

* ''The China–India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Boundaries'' (Chatham House, 1964) * ''The McMahon Line: A Study in the Relations Between, India, China and Tibet, 1904 to 1914'' (2 volumes, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966) * ''The Crisis in Kashmir 1947–1966'' (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), also published as ''The Kashmir Problem 1947–1966'' (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966) * ''Asian Frontiers'' (Praeger, 1968) * ''The Sino-Indian Border in Ladakh'' (Australian National University Press, 1973) * ''British India and Tibet 1766-1910'' (Routledge, 1986) * ''Tibet, China & India 1914-1950'' (Roxford Books, 1989) * ''Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990'' (Oxford University Press, 1991). * ''Birth of a Tragedy, Kashmir 1947'' (Oxford University Press, 1994). * ''Incomplete Partition, 1947-48'' (Oxford University Press, 2002). * ''Miscellaneous Papers on Early Hindu and Buddhist Settlement in Northern Malaya and Southern Thailand''. pp. 90, pls. 117. Federation Museums Journal, Vol. VI, New Series, Kuala Lumpur, 1961.


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lamb, Alastair British writers Alumni of the University of Cambridge Living people Writers about the Kashmir conflict 1930 births