One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet

Abstract

The late Tsepon W. D. Shakabpa needs no introduction to Western students of Tibetan history thanks to his prominent role in advancing the cause of Tibet’s independence in the years leading up to China’s annexation of Tibet in 1951 and to his popular Tibet: A Political History, first published in 1967. My personal acquaintance with Mr. Shakabpa began some years later, during the mid-1970s, when we were both living in New York and sometimes made use of Columbia University’s Tibetan collection, housed in the basement of the Lehman Social Science Library in a locked area that was referred to unironically as “the cage.”