Narratives Of The Mission Of George Bogle To Tibet, And Of The Journey Of Thomas Manning To Lhasa

About the BookThis volume contains firsthand accounts of the first voyages to Tibet by British diplomat George Bogle (17741781) and scholar Thomas Manning (17721840) in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1774 Bogle was appointed the leader of the first British diplomatic mission to the previously unknown country of Tibet in an attempt to establish friendly relations and open trade links between the two countries. Bogle spent six months wintering in various places in Tibet, exploring Tibetan culture and politics. Thomas Manning became the first English national to enter the city of Lhasa and to speak with the Dalai Lama in 1811. Edited by prolific writer and president of the Royal Geographical Society Sir Clements Markham (18301916), this fascinating volume also includes a detailed introduction providing the historical and geographic context of the voyages, together with biographies of the two adventurers. The whole of this voluminous mass of papers had to be carefully read through and annotated before any attempt could be made to arrange a consecutive narrative of the mission. His object has been to keep the author constantly in the foreground, and to avoid any sign of editorial intrusiveness, and, as the journal was fragmentary, and it was necessary to supplement if occasionally with extracts from letters and other materials, there were some difficulties in adhering to this plan. They have, however, been overcome, and a connected history of the Mission to Tibet is now presented to the world. It was first published in 1876.