Pashmina wool trade and the Great Game

WILLIAM Moorcroft (1767–1825) is known for his masterpiece, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab, in Ladakh and Kashmir, in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara (1819-1825). He was no British military strategist but simply a veterinary surgeon employed by the East India Company in Calcutta, later sent to the remotest part of the empire in Leh in the 1820s for procuring Turkmen horses from Yarkand and exploring the potential of Pashmina wool trade and a market for British goods in Central Asia.

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Moorcroft was no ‘Great Game’ warrior either; he carried no political mandate, but during his two-year stay in Leh, he sent a series of despatches to London/Calcutta, underscoring the point that the geopolitical struggle among the powers (Russia, China and Britain) in the trans-Himalayan region was intricately linked to the lucrative Pashmina wool trade. He stood alone in drawing the company’s attention to how India’s interests would be best served by: (a) playing off Russia and China against each other, and (b) gaining monopoly over the wool trade between Tibet-China and Hindustan.

The core point Moorcroft drew, much before others got down to drawing a boundary strategy, was the usefulness for Britain to strike a political bargain, a “treaty of allegiance” with Ladakh, to potentially become a commanding commercial hub dominating China’s vulnerable western and northern flanks.

Moorcroft noted: “No military science is required to defend the defiles of Ladakh… no military genius… however perfected by experience, aided by all the projectiles of modern warfare could force a passage against a band of the hardy Natives.”

Ladakh, interposed between the Russian and Chinese empires, gave an incisive view to the veterinary surgeon as he also witnessed that St Petersburg was so desirous of connecting Leh through the Ferghana valley that Tsar Alexander I despatched an envoy to seek closer ties with Ladakh. Pashmina trade would also have prompted Sikh-Dogra rulers to make quick inroads into Ladakh in 1834.

Ladakh’s economic importance was so esteemed that Moorcroft thought it could prove to be a fief of Delhi. A weak China then was neither in a position to protect its trading rights nor could it risk any political trouble near such a remote part of its empire.

Peking, nonetheless, had deep security interests in Ladakh as Moorcroft saw a despatch from the Chinese Emperor, sealed with the ‘imperial signet’, requesting the Ladakhi ruler to provide intelligence inputs on the military movements of the Khuja of Kashgar. The letter was accompanied by presents of silk, lapis lazuli and jasper, et al, reflecting the importance the region held for Peking. Some recent Taiwanese publications have cited that Ladakhi rulers had received regular gifts (bribes) from the Tibetans and the Chinese for maintaining surveillance over the movements of Dzungar Mongols who threatened Sino-Tibetan security.

Interestingly, Peking, Moorcroft observed, never encouraged the Tibetans to annex Ladakh and Baltistan, but he was surprised by the Chinese absurdity of endorsing frequent Tibetan usurpation of Changthang (western Tibet) against Ladakh. It is a fact that repeated Tibetan assaults since the 10th century led to a weakening of Ladakh’s autonomy, divesting half its territory of the colossal revenue Ladakhi Changpas earned from Pashmina wool and mineral wealth of Rudok and Gartok, respectively.

In 1684, the Mughal Army helped Ladakh push back the invading Sino-Tibetan forces, but Lhasa enforced the Tingmosgang Treaty obligating Leh to pay the most contentious Lopchak tributary to Lhasa, which in turn went to the Middle Kingdom.

Unlike others, who focused on the northern frontiers of Kunlun, Karakoram and Aksai Chin, Moorcroft’s attention to Changthang was farsighted. Changthang is presently restricted to west Tibet after Ladakh was divested of it in 1684. But its loss has had many implications that only Moorcroft could foresee. The cultural influence from the east eventually overwhelmed it; even the remnants of Indian Buddhist tracks became non-existent. The eastern foray resulted in the subjugation of the Dardic/Aryan settlers.

Other European writers built a dominant Ladakhi political narrative around 10-century Tibetan feudal ruler Nyimagon, while Moorcroft took the native path for building a Ladakhi reality. It is the European/colonial narrative that remains problematic even today, which in turn invariably prompts the Chinese to link Ladakh with Tibet. Chinese officials raised this point in 1960. In 2020, Chinese portal zhuanlan.zhihu.com carried a provocative piece, ‘Ladakh — the heart of Kashmir once belonged to China’; it argued that the Ladakh kingdom was established by the Tibetan Tubo empire; that during the Yuan period, Ladakh was controlled by Zongzhiyuan (ministry of political and military affairs in Tibet) until the 17th century, when the Qing empire helped the Tibetans bring it under the control of the Tibetan government in Potala.

Such a tendentious write-up on Ladakh couldn’t have been written for only academic historical disquisition. It is surely the first step to test the waters for China’s potential future claims over Ladakh. India needs to build a counter-narrative based on Moorcroft’s strategic forethought.

Moorcroft was astonished by China frequently shutting off trade routes to India, for he thought that a route via Ladakh would have better served China’s interests in Khotan.

The strategic importance of Changthang, formerly a part of Ladakh, was remarkably assessed by Moorcroft. He foresaw the criticality of re-annexing this territorial appendage adjoining the Indian frontier, for it was a commercial hub catering to China, India and Turkistan even during the reign of Shah Jahan. By regaining Changthang, he thought, the company would commercially benefit from access to Pashmina wool of Rudok and the goldmines of Gartok, apart from gaining ‘spiritual access’ to the Kailash-Manasarovar-Rakhshastal, the source of Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra and Karnali rivers.