Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BhutIdBuddh (Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Travel: Identity- and Nation-Building in Bhutan)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
The BhutIdBuddh (“Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Travel: Identity- and Nation-Building in Bhutan”) research project (2022–24) investigated identity- and nation-building in 18th-century Bhutan with a particular focus on the agency of Bhutanese Buddhist masters as important intermediaries in Bhutan’s entangled history with Tibet as well as with, first, the East India Company and later the British Raj. In particular, it focused on the period between the diplomatic travels of the 9th Chief Abbot of the Bhutanese Drukpa Kagyü school Shākya Rinchen (1710–59) to Tibet from 1740 onwards until the first colonial encounters with the East India Company in the 1770s. Bhutan is considered part of the Tibetan cultural area that stretches from what today is the Tibetan Autonomous Region within the People’s Republic of China to parts of Western China, Bhutan, the Indian Himalayas, Nepal, Mongolia, and the former Soviet Union, depending on the point in Tibetan and Bhutanese history one is looking at. This is, therefore, the first systematic study on understanding Bhutan’s global role from an emic perspective and as an essential actor in the religious and political history of South and East Asia and colonial Europe. The research is based on historical-philological/text-critical work and translations of primarily unstudied Tibetan and Bhutanese textual sources and British colonial documents combined with a religious studies framework. This innovative, interdisciplinary approach contributes equally to the fields of Tibetology and Global Religious Studies and will be published as a comprehensive monograph.
The interdisciplinary and innovative research design combined historical-philological methods by translating and analyzing a thus far largely untranslated corpus of Bhutanese, Tibetan, and British colonial documents with a theoretical framework from religious studies focusing on both identity and social differentiation along with the corresponding conceptual distinctions and resources understood as "epistemic structures" (Kleine and Wohlrab-Sahr 2021; Wohlrab-Sahr and Kleine 2021). More specifically, the researcher traced the fourfold and multidimensional relationship between religious-doctrinal identity, socio-cultural identity, identity policies, and nation-building, thereby enabling an in-depth understanding of the main critical juncture in Bhutanese nation-building within the context of trans-cultural (Bhutanese-Tibetan) and global history (East India Company/British Raj). This locates Bhutan, thus far marginalized, for the first time, more precisely within scholarly and public discourses.
The project also included fruitful archival research at the British Library and collaboration with the British Library Endangered Archives Programme team. The main objectives of this intersectional secondment were to gain further training in digital and physical archival work at one of the largest and most important research libraries and deepen research skills in Tibetan paleography and codicology. In return, as a two-way transfer of knowledge, the researcher analyzed and provided detailed information about the five extensive open-access digitized Bhutanese collections/projects of the British Library Endangered Archives Programme in their blog. Moreover, in an open-access project report as a project deliverable, the researcher introduced the content, structure, and research value of these collections and addressed the role of preservation of the endangered textual collections in the context of natural disasters and the climate crisis to researchers in the field of Tibetan and Bhutanese textual studies and interested readers globally. In addition, this was aimed at Bhutanese scholars and the Bhutanese people within Bhutan, as the digital British Library Endangered Archives Programme collections enable them to have their own literary textual cultural heritage, which is often located in very remote parts of the country, at their fingertips.
As an additional, unplanned research achievement and result, the researcher was able to identify, digitally save, and work with numerous and very diverse 18th- and 19th-century, English-language primary sources of the India Office Records and Private Papers of the British Library. This enables the researcher to analyze an additional colonial British perspective on the early entangled histories between Bhutan, Tibet, the East India Company, and the British Raj, which will significantly contribute to the impact of the monograph as the planned primary research output by now explicitly addressing colonial and post-colonial history. Moreover, being located at the British Library enabled the researcher to add three archival research days at the Bodleian Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum Art, Architecture, Photography, and Design Department to work on additional Bhutanese materials, which benefitted the research project.
The researcher has produced a monograph draft for internal review and feedback from the two supervisors.
The project also included fruitful archival research at the British Library and collaboration with the British Library Endangered Archives Programme team. The main objectives of this intersectional secondment were to gain further training in digital and physical archival work at one of the largest and most important research libraries and deepen research skills in Tibetan paleography and codicology. In return, as a two-way transfer of knowledge, the researcher analyzed and provided detailed information about the five extensive open-access digitized Bhutanese collections/projects of the British Library Endangered Archives Programme in their blog. Moreover, in an open-access project report as a project deliverable, the researcher introduced the content, structure, and research value of these collections and addressed the role of preservation of the endangered textual collections in the context of natural disasters and the climate crisis to researchers in the field of Tibetan and Bhutanese textual studies and interested readers globally. In addition, this was aimed at Bhutanese scholars and the Bhutanese people within Bhutan, as the digital British Library Endangered Archives Programme collections enable them to have their own literary textual cultural heritage, which is often located in very remote parts of the country, at their fingertips.
As an additional, unplanned research achievement and result, the researcher was able to identify, digitally save, and work with numerous and very diverse 18th- and 19th-century, English-language primary sources of the India Office Records and Private Papers of the British Library. This enables the researcher to analyze an additional colonial British perspective on the early entangled histories between Bhutan, Tibet, the East India Company, and the British Raj, which will significantly contribute to the impact of the monograph as the planned primary research output by now explicitly addressing colonial and post-colonial history. Moreover, being located at the British Library enabled the researcher to add three archival research days at the Bodleian Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum Art, Architecture, Photography, and Design Department to work on additional Bhutanese materials, which benefitted the research project.
The researcher has produced a monograph draft for internal review and feedback from the two supervisors.
As a result of the researcher's diachronic approach, which included micro- and macro-historical approaches by systematically addressing individual and collective perspectives, it is now possible to go back and forth both in time between the 18th and 21st centuries and scope to trace critical processes of continuation, disruption, and transformation in Bhutan's identity- and nation-building but also its role in entangled global religious and political history. In particular, for the first time, Bhutan's historic role in linking South Asia, the British Raj, and East Asia was systematically addressed and analyzed from the emic Bhutanese perspective as the only Tibetan-Buddhist country in Asia that has not been colonized and possesses a unique structural continuity in the governmental form of the "Joint Twofold System of Governance" (Tibetan: chos srid gnyis ldan/chos srid zung 'jug), a very early form of social differentiation between the social spheres of religion, politics, law, and economics in the Tibetan Cultural Area. This contributes to a comprehensive understanding of Bhutan's non-Western alternative pathway to modernity.
Beyond these empirical results, the researcher further developed an analytical framework during the project that can systematically trace and describe the complexity of this structural continuity and its transformation into today's constitutional monarchy with its Buddhism-induced development model of Gross National Happiness (GNH). While Gross National Happiness (GNH) gained a particular global popularity as a role model of sustainable development, the form of Buddhist constitutionalism that Bhutan belongs to is not yet understood sufficiently in political and development studies. Acknowledging the severity of the threats of the climate crisis, this research enables an in-depth understanding of Bhutan as a likely important role model, having systematically, since the 1970s, developed an alternative sustainable economic model that systematically includes ecological and socially inclusive factors in its politics despite financial restraints and being already heavily impacted by climate change itself.
Moreover, in its theory and methodologies, the research project can be considered beyond the state of the art, as it brings together in one project the analysis of primary sources from Tibet and Bhutan and British historical colonial sources, thereby additionally explaining a critical juncture of British colonial history, namely the transition from the East India Company to the British Raj and its ambitions to gain access to China via Bhutan through a land route.
Beyond these empirical results, the researcher further developed an analytical framework during the project that can systematically trace and describe the complexity of this structural continuity and its transformation into today's constitutional monarchy with its Buddhism-induced development model of Gross National Happiness (GNH). While Gross National Happiness (GNH) gained a particular global popularity as a role model of sustainable development, the form of Buddhist constitutionalism that Bhutan belongs to is not yet understood sufficiently in political and development studies. Acknowledging the severity of the threats of the climate crisis, this research enables an in-depth understanding of Bhutan as a likely important role model, having systematically, since the 1970s, developed an alternative sustainable economic model that systematically includes ecological and socially inclusive factors in its politics despite financial restraints and being already heavily impacted by climate change itself.
Moreover, in its theory and methodologies, the research project can be considered beyond the state of the art, as it brings together in one project the analysis of primary sources from Tibet and Bhutan and British historical colonial sources, thereby additionally explaining a critical juncture of British colonial history, namely the transition from the East India Company to the British Raj and its ambitions to gain access to China via Bhutan through a land route.