Alastair Lamb

Alastair Lamb
Occupation	Diplomatic historian
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Subject	Sino-Indian border dispute, Kashmir conflict

Alastair Lamb is a diplomatic historian who has authored several books on Sino-Indian border dispute and the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir.

Career

Alastair Lamb graduated from the University of Cambridge. He is a historian and is known as the foremost authority on the juridical and diplomatic history of the Kashmir dispute.

He worked in the early 1960s in the Public Record Office and India Office Library in London. Later, he taught at the University of Malaya and also worked as a Senior Fellow in the Department of History at the Australian National University for three years. Later he was a Professor of History at the University of Ghana (1968–1972). He was a Reader of History at Hatfield Polytechnic during the 1980s.

In addition to his historical work, Lamb has worked in archaeology and ethnography in Asia and Africa. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Works

• 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 (1968)
• The Sino-Indian Border in Ladakh (Australian National University Press, 1973)
• British India and Tibet 1766-1910 (1986)
• Tibet, China & India 1914-1950 (Roxford Books, 1989)
• Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990 (Roxford Books, 1991). ISBN 0907129056
• Birth of a Tragedy, Kashmir 1947 (Roxford Books, 1994)
• Incomplete Partition, 1947-48 (Roxford Books, 1997)

When the China–India border dispute was getting critical in 1962, Lamb was working in British archives in the Public Record Office 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 a friend, 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 2-volume work titled The McMahon Line.

In 1966 Lamb also wrote his first book on the Kashmir conflict, titled The Crisis in Kashmir. This was soon after the Second Kashmir War. In 1991, after the start of the Kashmir insurgency, he expanded it into a larger volume titled Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy.

Reception

Kashmir: A disputed legacy, 1846–1990

T.C recommends the book for those looking for an authoritative and detailed account of the Kashmir conflict. Ross H. Munro observes that Lamb has written an authoritative history of Kashmir. He unites his flawless scholarship with an interesting story. Munro sees that Lamb refutes India's claim on Kashmir and seriously indicts Indian actions, leaders and also his own countryman, Mountbatten. 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.

V.G. 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.

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, who diligently analyses the evidence. 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. Pro-India scholar 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 admit. Mehra concludes:

That Islamabad has a case of sorts would be hard to deny, but that New Delhi has none may be difficult to accept. The path of reason, which this study sadly spurns, is to map out the common ground...

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. Pro-India scholar 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.

The McMahon Line: A Study in the Relations Between India, China and Tibet, 1904 to 1914

Leo Rose called it a "special pleading" rather than a scholarly work, that presents the Chinese position extremely well. Lamb points out rightly than China had never ratified the Simla Convention that defined the McMahon Line but he dismisses the question of whether the British and Tibetan governments were competent to conclude an agreement. Rose also notes that Lamb seems annoyed at the fact that the Indian authorities do not follow the British imperial line, which he terms "out of place". Parshotham 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 has been acknowledged as tendentious and pro-India although Rose says it is "more balanced and less advocative" than Lamb's.

Alastair Lamb responds that the main critics of his work, Dr S Gopal, M.W Fisher and Leo Rose, are seemingly persuaded by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ biased cartography.

Bibliography

• Steven A. Hoffmann (1 January 1990), India and the China Crisis, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-06537-6
• R. Kent Rasmussen (2000), Charles F. Bahmueller (ed.), World Conflicts and Confrontations, vol. 3, Salem Press Incorporated, ISBN 9780893562229
• Lamb, Alastair (1971), "War in the Himalayas (Book review of India's China War by Neville Maxwell)", Modern Asian Studies, 5 (4), JSTOR 312054
• "Shorter Notices", The Geographical Journal, 158 (1): 112, 1992, doi:10.2307/3060063, ISSN 0016-7398
• Ross H Munro (1993), "Kashmir: A disputed legacy, 1846–1990 (Book Review)", Orbis, 37 (2): 318, doi:10.1016/0030-4387(93)90277-J, ISSN 0030-4387
• Schofield, Victoria (27 December 1991), "Review: Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: a disputed legacy 1846-1990", The Times Literary Supplement (4630): 10
• Kiernan, V. G. (1992), "Reviewed Work: Kashmir: a disputed legacy, 1846–1990", International Affairs, 68 (4): 783, doi:10.2307/2622824, ISSN 1468-2346
• Tinker, Hugh (1995), "Shorter Notices", The English Historical Review, 110 (436): 5299, doi:10.1093/ehr/CX.436.529-b, ISSN 0013-8266
• Copland, Ian (1993), "Reviewed Work(s): Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990. by Alistair Lamb", Pacific Affairs, 66 (1): 120–121, JSTOR 2760039
• Kumar, Mahendra (2016), "Book Reviews : Parshotam Mehra. The McMahon Line and After: A Study of the Triangular Contest on India's North-eastern Frontier between Britain, China, and Tibet, 1904-1947. Delhi: Macmillan, 1974. Pp. xvi + 497. Price Rs 75.00", International Studies, 14 (1): 169–171, doi:10.1177/002088177501400119, ISSN 0020-8817
• Taylor, David (1999), "Prem Shankar Jha: Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History (Book Review)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62 (1): 167–168, JSTOR 3107438
• Perry Anderson (2013), The Indian Ideology, Verso, ISBN 978-1-78168-259-3
• Maxwell, Neville (1975), "The Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier and The McMahon Line and After: A Study of the Triangular Contest on India's North-eastern Frontier Between Britain, China and Tibet, 1904–47", International Affairs, 51 (2): 286–288, doi:10.2307/2617278, ISSN 1468-2346
• Alastair Lamb (1973), The Sino-Indian Border in Ladakh, Canberra: Australian National University Press

Alastair Lamb
Occupation	Diplomatic historian
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Subject	Sino-Indian border dispute, Kashmir conflict

Alastair Lamb is a diplomatic historian who has authored several books on Sino-Indian border dispute and the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir.

Career

Alastair Lamb graduated from the University of Cambridge. He is a historian and is known as the foremost authority on the juridical and diplomatic history of the Kashmir dispute.

He worked in the early 1960s in the Public Record Office and India Office Library in London. Later, he taught at the University of Malaya and also worked as a Senior Fellow in the Department of History at the Australian National University for three years. Later he was a Professor of History at the University of Ghana (1968–1972). He was a Reader of History at Hatfield Polytechnic during the 1980s.

In addition to his historical work, Lamb has worked in archaeology and ethnography in Asia and Africa. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Works

• 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 (1968)
• The Sino-Indian Border in Ladakh (Australian National University Press, 1973)
• British India and Tibet 1766-1910 (1986)
• Tibet, China & India 1914-1950 (Roxford Books, 1989)
• Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990 (Roxford Books, 1991). ISBN 0907129056
• Birth of a Tragedy, Kashmir 1947 (Roxford Books, 1994)
• Incomplete Partition, 1947-48 (Roxford Books, 1997)

When the China–India border dispute was getting critical in 1962, Lamb was working in British archives in the Public Record Office 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 a friend, 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 2-volume work titled The McMahon Line.

In 1966 Lamb also wrote his first book on the Kashmir conflict, titled The Crisis in Kashmir. This was soon after the Second Kashmir War. In 1991, after the start of the Kashmir insurgency, he expanded it into a larger volume titled Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy.

Reception

Kashmir: A disputed legacy, 1846–1990

T.C recommends the book for those looking for an authoritative and detailed account of the Kashmir conflict. Ross H. Munro observes that Lamb has written an authoritative history of Kashmir. He unites his flawless scholarship with an interesting story. Munro sees that Lamb refutes India's claim on Kashmir and seriously indicts Indian actions, leaders and also his own countryman, Mountbatten. 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.

V.G. 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.

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, who diligently analyses the evidence. 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. Pro-India scholar Parshotam Mehra, on the other hand, claims 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 claims that Lamb glosses over the culpability of Pakistan in the 1947 crisis as well as in later developments, which he claims are facts which scholars such as Ayesha Jalal admit. Mehra concludes "That Islamabad has a case of sorts would be hard to deny, but that New Delhi has none may be difficult to accept. The path of reason, which this study spurns" 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. Pro-India scholar 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.

The McMahon Line: A Study in the Relations Between India, China and Tibet, 1904 to 1914

Leo Rose called it a "special pleading" rather than a scholarly work, that presents the Chinese position extremely well. Lamb points out rightly than China had never ratified the Simla Convention that defined the McMahon Line but he dismisses the question of whether the British and Tibetan governments were competent to conclude an agreement. Rose also notes that Lamb seems annoyed at the fact that the Indian authorities do not follow the British imperial line, which he terms "out of place". Parshotham 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 has been acknowledged as tendentious and pro-India although Rose says it is "more balanced and less advocative" than Lamb's.

Alastair Lamb responds that the main critics of his work, Dr S Gopal, M.W Fisher and Leo Rose, are seemingly persuaded by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ biased cartography.

Bibliography

• Steven A. Hoffmann (1 January 1990), India and the China Crisis, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-06537-6
• R. Kent Rasmussen (2000), Charles F. Bahmueller (ed.), World Conflicts and Confrontations, vol. 3, Salem Press Incorporated, ISBN 9780893562229
• Lamb, Alastair (1971), "War in the Himalayas (Book review of India's China War by Neville Maxwell)", Modern Asian Studies, 5 (4), JSTOR 312054
• "Shorter Notices", The Geographical Journal, 158 (1): 112, 1992, doi:10.2307/3060063, ISSN 0016-7398
• Ross H Munro (1993), "Kashmir: A disputed legacy, 1846–1990 (Book Review)", Orbis, 37 (2): 318, doi:10.1016/0030-4387(93)90277-J, ISSN 0030-4387
• Schofield, Victoria (27 December 1991), "Review: Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: a disputed legacy 1846-1990", The Times Literary Supplement (4630): 10
• Kiernan, V. G. (1992), "Reviewed Work: Kashmir: a disputed legacy, 1846–1990", International Affairs, 68 (4): 783, doi:10.2307/2622824, ISSN 1468-2346
• Tinker, Hugh (1995), "Shorter Notices", The English Historical Review, 110 (436): 5299, doi:10.1093/ehr/CX.436.529-b, ISSN 0013-8266
• Copland, Ian (1993), "Reviewed Work(s): Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990. by Alistair Lamb", Pacific Affairs, 66 (1): 120–121, JSTOR 2760039
• Kumar, Mahendra (2016), "Book Reviews : Parshotam Mehra. The McMahon Line and After: A Study of the Triangular Contest on India's North-eastern Frontier between Britain, China, and Tibet, 1904-1947. Delhi: Macmillan, 1974. Pp. xvi + 497. Price Rs 75.00", International Studies, 14 (1): 169–171, doi:10.1177/002088177501400119, ISSN 0020-8817
• Taylor, David (1999), "Prem Shankar Jha: Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History (Book Review)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62 (1): 167–168, JSTOR 3107438
• Perry Anderson (2013), The Indian Ideology, Verso, ISBN 978-1-78168-259-3
• Maxwell, Neville (1975), "The Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier and The McMahon Line and After: A Study of the Triangular Contest on India's North-eastern Frontier Between Britain, China and Tibet, 1904–47", International Affairs, 51 (2): 286–288, doi:10.2307/2617278, ISSN 1468-2346
• Alastair Lamb (1973), The Sino-Indian Border in Ladakh, Canberra: Australian National University Press