Associate Professor in the Department of History at Appalachian State University
A historian of Modern China, Professor Relyea specializes in political, social, and intellectual history. He focuses regionally on the southwest borderlands encompassing Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and the Tibetan plateau. His research centers on nationalism, state-building, ethnic construction and identity, and the global circulation of ideas embodied in the interaction between empire, state, and nation.
He is currently completing the manuscript for his book, Gazing at the Tibetan Plateau: China’s Infrontier and the Early Twentieth Century Evolution of Sino-Tibetan Relations. It explores the critical role played by borderlands and the neighboring ‘stable periphery’ in the processes of state-building and state consolidation in China’s transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. The book also situates the origins of ongoing Sino-Tibetan tensions in these efforts to transform and incorporate the Kham borderlands of eastern Tibet.
A parallel project, ‘Learning to Be Colonial,’ traces the intersection of globally circulating ideas of statecraft and colonization with long-standing Chinese imperial frontier policies on novel efforts by local officials to encourage Han settlement of eastern Tibet. He recently began work on a new project, ‘Scattering Sand: High-speed rail, nation-building, and China’s urban-rural divide in historical perspective.’ This research draws on the concept of ‘network ghettoes’ and Sun Yat-sen’s ambitious railway plan (1922) to explore the geographical planning and ramifications of China’s high-speed rail network in the context of political, economic, and social forces which have exacerbated the urban-rural divide throughout the past century.
Panel 5 | Circulatory Histories
A Political History for Tibet: Independence and Nationalism in the Origin and Goals of Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa’s 1967 Text
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In 1967, Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa published the first book focusing on political aspects of Tibetan history. Based on research he had initiated in the early 1950s while representing the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government in India, the book differed from most contemporary scholarship on Tibet not only due to its extensive use of government documents which were not readily available to other researchers. In the text, Shakabpa also identified a document produced by the Dalai Lama in 1913 as an official declaration of independence.
While he conducted his research and prepared his text in the Tibetan language, Shakabpa ultimately decided to share his political history of Tibet first in an English language book published in the United States by Yale University Press. Why? Shakabpa encountered many perspectives on Tibet beginning with his residence in India from 1950, following several visits to the United States and England throughout that decade, including observing a United Nations General Assembly debate on ‘The Tibet Question’ in 1959, and culminating with a visit to Yale University from late 1963 through early 1965, funded by an Asia Foundation scholarship.
How did these perspectives, global knowledge of Tibet’s political and religious society, particularly in the Anglophone world of the early 1960s during the latter stage of the era of decolonisation, contribute to the initial language of publication, and to his identifying a declaration of independence for Tibet?
This paper explores the socio-cultural and geopolitical context in which Shakabpa came to his decision to publish in English and focus on a political history for Tibet.
