Talk:Olaf Caroe

Falsified?

Zanhe, I am not happy with your recent addition to the lead (reproduced below) and the corresponding content in the body. Especially troubling is the term "falsified" (by which you mean "false"?).

... although he was known to have falsified diplomatic records with regard to the 1914 Simla Accord and the McMahon Line, leading to still unresolved boundary disputes between China and India.

References

The sources you quote are not great. The reference to Julie Marshall is actually Alastair Lamb's Foreword and the partisan nature of his writings is known. Dr. S. K. Shah seems to be an unknown entity, even though he has written several books on Tibet and China. Vij Books is better known for publishing war histories. Subramanian is a retired official, not a scholar by any means. Lamb calls it "bordering on forgery" whereas Shah says "forgery". But what was forged? What has been falsified?

A couple of recent scholarly works Hoffman (1990, pp. 19–22) and Raghavan (2010, pp. 229–230) mention nothing of that sort, even though Hoffman notes the fact that the Simla Convention (and McMahon Line) were not included in the original printing of Aitchison's Treaties in 1929, but were included when it was reprinted in 1938. Other than the fact the date of reprinting was not noted in the publication, I don't see any discussion of something having been "falsified". Can you explain? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:49, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Caroe's trickery was discovered by British diplomat-scholar Sir John Addis in 1963 through his research at Harvard University. Lamb, Shah, Subramanian are merely reporting the well known discovery. I used these particular sources because they're online and easily verifiable. Karl E. Meyer covers it in greater detail in his Tournament of Shadows (p. 558), and used the words "doctored" and "forgery" to describe Caroe's version of Aitchison's Treaties, but unfortunately the page is not available on Google books. Hoffmann did mention Caroe's tricks in his book (p. 21), but put it in a milder tone: "contrived to issue an amended version of the appropriate 1929 Aitchison volume, without giving it a new publication date. Copies of the original 1929 volume ... were then replaced by request and discarded." The facts are clear: Caroe surreptitiously inserted the McMahon Line into Aitchison's Treaties in 1938 and tried to cover up his action by falsifying the publication date and destroying all authentic copies of the original publication. And can you explain why you accuse the respected historian Alastair Lamb of being partisan while citing Srinath Raghavan, a veteran officer of the Indian Army, as if he were a neutral observer? -Zanhe (talk) 03:33, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the facts are clear in Hoffman's coverage. They are nowhere clear in your write-up or your sources. If you rewrite it based on Hoffmann, I would have no objection. You are also welcome to say Addis called it "forgery", with suitable attribution to him. But this is not what most people in the world call a "forgery". Julie Marshall's bibliography seems to list several sources that cover the affair in detail. We can be sure that historians like Hoffmann would have read them. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

It's not just John Addis: numerous researchers use the words "forgery", "falsification" or "fabrication" to describe Caroe's action. In addition to the aforementioned Lamb/Marshall, Subramanian, Meyer, and Shah, there's Karunakar Gupta in Spotlight on Sino-Indian Frontiers (p. 147), Subramanian Swamy in India's China Perspective (p. 43), Arun Banerji/Jayanta Kumar Ray in Aspects of India's International Relations, 1700 to 2000 (p. 203), and of course Neville Maxwell in multiple writings. The consensus is overwhelming. And even though Hoffmann does not explicitly use the word, the action he describes clearly matches the dictionary definition of falsification: "the action of changing something, such as a document, in order to deceive people." -Zanhe (talk) 07:17, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I am not surprised. If Addis himself called it a "forgery", it obviously becomes convenient for all those that want to take a particular slant on the Sino-Indian border dispute to replicate it. But the scholars who have studied the history do not use the term. Please check that you understand WP:YESPOV and WP:SOURCETYPES.

A key question is, why was the Simla Convention signed in 1914 not included in the 1929 Aitchison volume? Most of these people would not tell you that there were two Simla Conventions signed, one in April 1914 and the second in July 1914. The first one had three signatures and the second one had two signatures. Do any of these commentators mention this fact? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:34, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Addis's discovery was corroborated by other scholars who found two more authentic copies of Aitchison's Treaties that escaped Caroe's destruction. To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that an experienced editor like you would claim that all these scholars and other researchers would accuse a high-ranking official like Caroe of forgery/falsification for the sake of "convenience". On the contrary, they're obviously convinced that the evidence against him is irrefutable.

I'm well aware of the process of the Simla conference: the Chinese representative initialed the April text, but refused to sign the binding declaration of July 1914 (Hoffmann p. 19), which is why the British government questioned its validity and omitted it from the 1929 volume. -Zanhe (talk) 04:15, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Zanhe, I believe the concerns that I have raised at the top were quite valid. The sources you have used are poor. It is passing off opinions as facts, without even bothering to state the facts precisely. Why the "British government" (New Delhi or London?) did not include the Simla Convention in the 1929 volume is not a straightforward question. There are WP:HISTRS available with detailed analysis:

... for nearly two decades after 1914, the dubious risk of attracting Russian, and later Chinese, attention continued to be the principal reason for the non-publication of the Simla Convention and its adjuncts, the Trade Regulations and the India Tibet boundary agreement.

What is generally meant by the "Simla Convention" is not the unratified trilateral treaty (the first one), but the second bilateral treaty between India and Tibet, which did not involve any ratification. Since two parties (Britain and Tibet) had agreed it to be binding between them, there were no bars on publishing it in 1929, There were no bars on publishing the unratified treaty either, provided the absence of ratification was noted. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:45, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

The bilateral declaration states:

We, the Plenipotentiaries of Great Britain and Tibet, hereby record the following Declaration to the effect that we acknowledge the annexed Convention as initialled to be binding on the governments of Great Britain and Tibet, and we agree that so long as the Government of China withholds signature to the aforesaid Convention, she will be debarred from the enjoyment of all privileges accruing therefrom.

Nothing in this implies that any ratification was required from China. The fact is that in 1914, China was in no position to impose any terms on Tibet. China subsequently attempted to revive the Simla framework for a revised agreement thrice, the last time in 1919.

... and in May 1919 the Chinese made a new proposal. Although it was based on the terms of Simla, it was completely unrealistic. It incorporated a number of Tibetan areas originally classified as Inner Tibet into the Chinese province of Szechuan, and it stated that Chinese officials would be posted at the trade marts in Tibet.

China raised no objection to the McMahon Line. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Arbitrary break

Of course China raised no specific objection to the McMahon Line at the time: it rejected the entire Simla Convention. And the Government of India rejected it as well, see its response to one of the negotiators at Simla, from the same Goldstein book you cited:

Since the Simla Convention has not been signed by the Chinese Government or accepted by the Russian Government and is, therefore, for the present invalid.

Britain recognized China's suzerainty over Tibet and had an existing treaty with Russia which forbade either to enter into any treaty with Tibet without China's consent (all part of the Great Game), which is why the British Indian government declared the Simla Convention invalid without the consent of China and Russia, and which is why it was not included in the Aitchison's Treaties in 1929.

Moreover, the validity of the Simla Convention is beside the point. This article needs to focus on Olaf Caroe's action. The sources agree on the facts:

• 1929 – The original 1929 volume of Aitchison's Treaties was printed without the Simla Convention or the McMahon Line.
• 1938 – Caroe printed a new version of Aitchison's Treaties with the Simla Convention and the McMahon Line added, but with the imprint of 1929.
• 1938 – Caroe destroyed all original copies of the 1929 Aitchison's Treaties and replaced them with the new but backdated version.
• 1962 – China and India fought a war over their dispute border including the McMahon Line.
• 1963 – Sir John Addis discovered an authentic copy of the 1929 Aitchison's Treaties in the Harvard Library that escaped Caroe's destruction.
• After 1963 – scholars discovered at least two more copies of the original 1929 Aitchison's Treaties, corroborating Addis's discovery.

Many researchers, including Addis, Neville Maxwell, Alastair Lamb/Julie Marshall, Karl E. Meyer, Arun Banerji/Jayanta Kumar Ray, Karunakar Gupta, Subramanian Swamy, Kadayam Subramanian, and S.K. Shah, have described Caroe's action as forgery, falsification, fabrication, or fraud. They represent a wide swathe of professions (scholars, journalists, diplomats, and government officials) and nationalities (British, Indian, American, and Australian). Steven Hoffmann is the only cited source that describes Caroe's action but does not explicitly use the word "falsification" or a synonym. On what basis do you declare all these sources as "poor"? -Zanhe (talk) 08:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I won't discuss the sources a great deal at this stage, except to point out that WP:CONTEXTMATTERS in assessing the validity of a source for a particular issue at hand, and we have WP:HISTRS essay, formulated by the WikiProject History, which asks us to use professional historians, or at least recognisable scholars for dealing with historical matters. So, retired officials, journalists, and random political commentators do not fit the bill, especially when we are trying to find the truth behind intricate diplomatic manoeuvrings that happened a long time ago.

Coming to the substantial point you have raised from Goldstein, you forgot to mention that the assessment you state is from 1915 and it says "at present invalid". Scholars discuss the considerable developments that have occurred between then and 1929, not the least of which was the Russian revolution of 1917, and Bolsheviks repudiating all of Tsarist treaties. So it doesn't follow that what was said in 1915 was still the case in 1929. In fact, Parshotam Mehra states:

Later, in 1921, the British Foreign Office ruled that the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 was no longer to be regarded as valid and, therefore, such restrictions as it imposed on British action in Tibet would not operate any longer.

I have quoted Mehra's summary assessment above in the "nearly two decades" quote. I have not seen anything in any source that contradicts this assessment. Up to Caroe's time, the possibility of China joining the Simla framework was open. That is why the Simla Convention wasn't published. But Caroe argued that it was no more a possibility in 1937, and the Chinese nationalists had been thoroughly set in their claim that the Assam Himalaya belongs to them.

At this time there was also evidence of renewed Chinese interest and activity in Tibet, and the publication of Chinese maps showing the Assam Himalayan Region as part of Chinese Tibet, was causing alarm in India.

I wonder why all these scholars that rant about British India's map-making have nothing to say about the Chinese maps? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:03, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

• Chinese maps always showed the Assam Himalayan Region as part of Tibet, as did all British maps up until 1937 (as mentioned on the same page of the Marshall book you cited), because that's what the two countries agreed on during the joint border delineation in 1872–73. The Simla Convention shifted the border to the McMahon Line in favour of British India, but it was not accepted by China, and that's why scholars only "rant" about British India's post-1937 maps and have nothing to say about the Chinese maps.
• The Bolsheviks repudiated all Tsarist treaties, but whether the repudiation can be applied retroactively is questionable. Even if it could, that still leaves the issue of China's refusal to sign the Simla Convention, and Britain's recognition of China's suzerainty over Tibet, even when the latter was de facto independent, until it abandoned the concept of suzerainty in favour of sovereignty in 2008.
• As I already said, this side discussion about the Simla Convention is beside the point and I do not wish to waste more time on that. The focus of this article is Caroe's action, not the intricacies of the convention itself. -Zanhe (talk) 06:48, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Can you provide the quote from Marshall that says that Chinese maps always showed the Assam Himalayan Region as part of Tibet? I am afraid that this is directly relevant to the reasons for Caroe's actions and, so, quite important here. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:42, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

That's not from Marshall, but from other sources I've seen (such as Maxwell's India's China War, p. 46). I cited Marshall for the second part of the sentence (about the British maps): "nor had the McMahon Line appeared on Survey of India maps" (until it was inserted into Aitchison's Treaties in 1938). -Zanhe (talk) 08:45, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Who falsified?

It is also unclear to me that the responsibility for "falsification" rests on Caroe. Caroe only argued that the McMahon Line should be published immediately. But the idea that it had to be done unobtrusively belonged to the "India Office" in London, which is headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the elected British Cabinet. Hoffman states:

the India Office (and probably Caroe) contrived to issue an amended version of the appropriate 1929 Aitchison volume, without giving it a new publication date.

So, why is this content being inserted into the biography page on Olaf Caroe? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:14, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Numerous sources, including aforementioned Karl E. Meyer, Alastair Lamb/Julie Marshall, Neville Maxwell, Arun Banerji/Jayanta Kumar Ray, Karunakar Gupta, and Subramanian Swamy, all unambiguously attribute the falsification to Caroe. And these sources all satisfy WP:HISTRS, even if we decide to strictly adhere to that essay as you insist. Hoffmann is an outlier in adding the word "probably" and in not explicitly using the words "falsification" or "forgery". -Zanhe (talk) 07:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

No, they do not satisfy HISTRS. Karl E. Meyer is said to be a journalist, and so is Neville Maxwell. Subramanian Swamy is a politician with economics background. So, please take them out of the equation. They are not WP:HISTRS.

Alastair Lamb is a diplomatic historian, and several scholarly sources have pointed out that his writing is POV-ridden, and suffers from inadequate research (since he only studied the documents in London, not those in India).

Arun Banerji certainly looks like a scholar. But he is writing a broad overview of all of India's borders. Whether he has studied this particular issue in any detail is unclear. And, he didn't specifically attribute the "virtual falsification" to Caroe.

There is nothing in any of these sources that is able to override Steven Hoffmann's thorough scholarship on this particular dispute. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Your dismissal of Neville Maxwell is a bit ludicrous. He was both a journalist and a scholar, and the most influential authority on the China-India border dispute. See Steven Hoffmann's own assessment:

Maxwell, a former London Times New Delhi correspondent and an Oxford scholar, provided the most detailed and comprehensive treatment of the subject available for many years; and his views became widely accepted.

Karl E. Meyer was not a professional historian, but he was one of the most influential foreign policy journalists in the US, who taught at prestigious universities such as Yale and Oxford and served as a judge for the Toynbee History Prize and the Pulitzer. And his book cited here, Tournament of Shadows, was reviewed by historians such as L. Carl Brown, who called it a "tour de force", see here.

Alastair Lamb, like all renowned historians, attracts critics. However, most critics I've seen do not prima facie appear to be neutral observers.

Subramanian Swamy is better known as an economist and influential politician, but he is also one of India's China experts (he even briefly taught Chinese economic history at Harvard).

In short, all of these should satisfy WP:HISTRS. -Zanhe (talk) 09:37, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the Asiatimes source per your concern re WP:HISTRS, as well as Shah's book even though it may well satisfy HISTRS (you mentioned that Vij Books India focuses on war history), and added a few scholarly books. I've also added attribution to Lamb's comment about Caroe per your concern. Check it out. -Zanhe (talk) 08:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Proposed NPOV write-up

Here is my proposal for a write-up for the McMahon Line affair:

When he was deputy foreign secretary, Caroe is credited with getting the Government of India to reaffirm the McMahon Line, which had been negotiated by a former Foreign Secretary Henry McMahon with Tibet in the Simla Convention of 1914. The McMahon Line ran along the crest of the Himalayan ranges east of Bhutan, and incorporated the present day Arunachal Pradesh within the territory of India. For various reasons, the Simla Convention was not operationalised until 1935 and the official publication of the treaties of the Government of India, Aitchison's Treaties, did not include it. Caroe obtained the British government's permission to revise the official Indian maps to show the McMahon Line as the new boundary and to to include the Simla Convention in a revised volume of Aitchison's Treaties but to do so "unobtrusively". Caroe reissued the new volume in 1938, but still carrying the original 1929 date, and had the original volumes withdrawn. When the matter was discovered in 1963, it gave rise to accusation of a "virtual falsification" of the official records. Scholar Karunakar Gupta states that Caroe's zeal in operationalising the McMahon Line warrants it being renamed the "McMahon–Caroe Line".

Notes

References

I would appreciate your comments. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 04:37, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for putting your thought into this. Your draft looks fine overall, but a bit too mild in tone IMO. Note that Gupta also described Caroe's deed as "not far short of diplomatic forgery" (p. 536). I think Lamb's note that "a great deal of scholarship has been devoted to attempts to correct Caroe-inspired distortions" should be added (with attribution). Also, it should be noted that his action contributed to the still unresolved Sino-Indian border dispute and the 1962 war, which is without doubt a major part of his legacy. -Zanhe (talk) 09:56, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Zanhe. I will get back later this week, because I am pressed for time at the moment. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:25, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Take your time. I'm a bit occupied in real life as well. -Zanhe (talk) 08:47, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Zanhe, sorry for the delay in getting back. If my version appears "mild", it is because it is covering facts rather than opinions. The facts, as far as I can see, are that Caroe wanted the Simla Convention published "immediately" whereas London insisted that it should be done "unobtrusively". Hence the 1929 volume was reprinted without a new date. I would put both the British government and the Indian government as equal participants in this irregularity, whereas all the pro-China commentators (Lamb, Maxwell, Gupta,... ) for some reason want to put the blame on Caroe alone. It seems convenient to make Caroe the "fall guy". But historians don't do that. Recall Hoffmann's wording: "India Office (and probably Caroe)" did it.

I can't accept the term "forgery" because forgery would mean that the text of the Convention was forged. But it was not. As far as I know, the Convention was published as it was.

Xikang map

A treaty exists when it is signed and the signatories have copies. Whether it is published or not makes little difference to the treaty itself. In the British setting, publication was needed to let its own officials in London, in New Delhi and in the provinces know the state of affairs. Caroe's urgency was because the British officials in Assam and their envoy to Lhasa did not know that the McMahon Line existed. Without knowing, they could not implement it. The urgency was also because he believed that China might any moment defeat the Tibetan forces in Kham and reach the Assam Himalaya which it was claiming as part of "West Kham" (Xikang or Hsikang).

In addition, the newly carved provincial boundary also extended deep into the Tibetan-Assam tribal territory, including areas south of the theoretically existing McMahon Line that had been signed away to British India by Lhasa in 1914.

But even then Caroe did little more than publish the McMahon Line on the maps. He couldn't proceed to occupy the areas themselves. That exercise began only after the end of the World War II, by which time, Caroe wasn't the Foreign Secretary any more. But we can certainly credit him with aligning all the British officials towards the project of operationalising the McMahon Line.

Had Caroe not done that, independent India would have had a harder time implementing the McMahon Line, but it would have still wanted to do it, because the documents existed in the government archives, including voluminous correspondence between London and New Delhi.

More important, the Indian government came to believe that the McMahon line was not merely a British invention. Political control over all the northeast tribal region had been exercised, in various indirect fashions, from the Assam side for centuries before the British appeared on the scene. Therefore, the McMahon line itself constituted recognition that the watershed crest of Assam Himalaya formed the natural geographical divide between Tibet and an area (the Assam Himalaya) where Indian states had regularly exercised jurisdiction while Tibet and China had not.

So, Caroe's actions made India's life easier, but it cannot be called the "cause" of the conflict. And, let us not forget that the real conflict was over Aksai Chin, not Assam Himalaya. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Apologies for my late response as well. Real life has been intervening big time.

I don't see the point of delving into the boundary dispute, which is too complicated to discuss here. As I said, this article is about what Caroe did, not about the dispute. And I never said Caroe was the "cause" of the conflict (there were multiple causes such as Aksai Chin as you pointed out), but merely that his action "contributed" to the dispute.

I don't think it's fair to characterize Lamb, Maxwell, Gupta all as "pro-China". All three scholars had far more personal connection with India than China (and Gupta was an Indian scholar) and had no reasons to be predisposed to pro-China bias. They merely examined the evidence available and determined that Caroe committed forgery. Are you going to claim that Subramanian Swamy, Indian MP and government minister, British diplomat Sir John Addis, and American journalist Karl E. Meyer are all "pro-China"? Besides, as far as I know, Caroe himself never went on the record to rebut the accusation.

That being said, I won't insist on using the word "forgery", your wording 'accusation of a "virtual falsification"' is good enough. This discussion has been dragging on for too long already and it's not worth the time to keep arguing endlessly. -Zanhe (talk) 09:44, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Since we are broadly in agreement with the current wording, I will install it.

The "boundary dispute", as you call it, began with Zhao Erfeng's advances, and both McMahon and Caroe were part of it. So, I don't know what you mean by we shouldn't delve into it. This is very much the boundary dispute. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:18, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

By the way, I have now located the Addis paper. He never used such terms as "forgery". See pages 26-27. He seems like quite a nice guy in fact. But the British government apparently scuppered his report, possibly under Indian pressure. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:40, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Bibliography

• Marshall, Julie (2004). Britain and Tibet 1765–1947. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-32784-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Shah, S K (2015). India and China: The Battle between Soft and Hard Power. Vij Books India. ISBN 978-93-85505-28-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hoffmann, Steven A. (1990), India and the China Crisis, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-06537-6
• Meyer, Karl E.; Brysac, Shareen (2009). Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-7867-3678-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Raghavan, Srinath (2010), War and Peace in Modern India, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-137-00737-7
• Mehra, Parshotam (February 1972), "A Forgotten Chapter in the History of the Northeast Frontier: 1914-36", The Journal of Asian Studies, 31 (2): 299–308, JSTOR 2052598
• Goldstein, Melvyn C. (1991), A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-91176-5
• Garver, John W. (2011), Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century, University of Washington Press, ISBN 978-0-295-80120-9
• Lin, Hsiao-Ting (2004), "Boundary, sovereignty, and imagination: Reconsidering the frontier disputes between British India and Republican China, 1914–47", The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 32 (3): 25–47, doi:10.1080/0308653042000279650, ISSN 0308-6534
• Van Eekelen, W. F. (1967), "Simla convention and McMahon Line", Journal of The Royal Central Asian Society, 54 (2): 179–184, doi:10.1080/03068376708731991, ISSN 0035-8789