The Convention of Calcutta or Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890, officially the Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet, () was a

treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations An international organization or international o ...

between

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

and Qing China relating to

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

and the

Kingdom of Sikkim The Kingdom of Sikkim (Classical Tibetan and sip, འབྲས་ལྗོངས།, ''Drenjong''), officially Dremoshong (Classical Tibetan and sip, འབྲས་མོ་གཤོངས།) until the 1800s, was a hereditary monar ...

. It was signed by Viceroy of India Lord Lansdowne and the Chinese Amban in Tibet, Sheng Tai, on 17March 1890 in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, India. The Convention recognized a British protectorate over Sikkim and demarcated the Sikkim–Tibet border. China is said to have negotiated the treaty without consulting Tibet, and the Tibetans refused to recognize it. China's inability to deliver on the treaty eventually necessitated a

British expedition to Tibet 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 ...

in 1904, setting in motion a long chain of developments in the history of Tibet. Modern international law jurists state that the convention exposed the Chinese 'impotence' in Tibet. The boundary established between Sikkim and Tibet in the treaty still survives today, as part of the

China–India border The Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the context of the Sino-Indian border dispute, is a notional demarcation lineAnanth KrishnanLine of Actual Control , India-China: the line of actual contest, 13 June 2020: "In contrast, the alignment o ...

. It has an impact on the modern day

Doklam Doklam (), called Donglang () by China, is an area in Bhutan with a high plateau and a valley, lying between China's Chumbi Valley to the north, Bhutan's Haa District, Ha District to the east and India's Sikkim state to the west. It has been ...

dispute between China, India and

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...

Background

The British imperative in North East India was to open the markets of Tibet and by extension China to their manufactured textiles, tobacco, grain, tools and tea.

Provisions

Under Article 1, the boundary of Sikkim and Tibet was defined as the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the

Teesta River Teesta River is a long river that rises in the Pauhunri Mountain of eastern Himalayas, flows through the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal through Rangpur, and enters the Bay of Bengal. It drains an area of . In India, it flows through ...

in Sikkim and its tributaries from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu River and northwards into other rivers of Tibet. The line commenced at Mount

Gipmochi Gipmochi (Gyemo Chen or Gamochen, 'The Great Queen') is a mountain in the Lower Himalayan Range, Lower Himalayas in south central Asia. Rising to a height of , the mountain sits on the Bhutan–India border, border between the northern Indian st ...

on the

frontier, and followed the above watershed to the point where it met

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

i territory.

Aftermath

A protocol was added to the original convention in December 1893. "Regulations Regarding Trade, Communications, and Pasturage to Be Appended to the Sikkim-Tibet Convention of 1890" allowed for the establishment of a British trading post in

Old Yatung Old Yatung (), originally just "Yatung", with a native Tibetan spelling of Nyatong: "Miss nnie R.Taylor returned with the object of converting the Tibetan people, and now lives at the town of Nyatong, which by some is called Yatung." or Myatong, ...

, Tibet as well as laid down regulations concerning pasturage and communication. The 1904

Convention of Lhasa The Convention of Lhasa, officially the Convention Between Great Britain and Thibet, was a treaty signed in 1904 between Tibet and Great Britain, in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. It was signed following the British expedition to Tibet of 1903–1 ...

states "The Government of Thibet engages to respect the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890 and to recognize the frontier between Sikkim and Thibet, as defined in Article I of the said Convention, and to erect boundary pillars accordingly."

References

Bibliography

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External links

* * * {{Cite web , title=Zhōng yīng cáng yìn tiáoyuē - wéijī wénkù, zìyóu de túshū guǎn , script-title=zh:中英藏印條約 - 维基文库，自由的图书馆 , trans-title=Sino-British Tibet-India Treaty-Wikisource, the free library , website=zh.wikisource.org , language=zh , url=https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E8%8B%B1%E8%97%8F%E5%8D%B0%E6%A2%9D%E7%B4%84 , access-date=2017-08-15 Treaties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922) Treaties of the Qing dynasty Treaties of Sikkim