Batang uprising

The Batang uprising (Chinese: 巴塘事變) was an uprising by the Khampas of the Kham region of Tibet against the assertion of authority by Qing China.

The uprising began as an opposition to the new policies of land reclamation and limits of the monastic community. The policies were implemented by Feng Quan, Qing's assistant amban to Tibet, stationed in Chamdo (in western Kham). Feng Quan was murdered in the uprising and four French Catholic missionaries, perceived as Qing allies, fell victim to mobs led by lamas. One was killed immediately (his remains were never found), another was tortured for twelve days before he was executed, while the other two were pursued for three months and beheaded upon capture. Ten Catholic churches were burned down and a mass of locals that had converted to Catholicism were killed. Under French pressure to protect missionaries and domestic pressure to stop the threat of the British invading from the west frontier, Feng Quan's successor Zhao Erfeng led a bloody punitive campaign to quell the uprising in 1906. Zhao brought political, economic, and cultural reform to Batang and the rest of Kham. Direct rule of Batang under Qing was established by Zhao. With the 1911 Chinese Revolution, Zhao was murdered in turn and the status quo ante was reestablished.

Batang was at the frontier of Qing China where authority was shared between local Kham chiefs and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. The lamas in the monastery were under the suzerainty of Lhasa, Tibet. While Kham chiefs and Tibet were under Qing rule, Qing authority over Tibet was weak.

The British expedition to Tibet in 1904 had repercussions in the frontier region between Tibet and China (called "March country" or "Marches"). A Qing intervention within Tibet's frontier east of the Dri River (upper Yangtze river, also called Jinsha) was triggered in an effort to open up Tibet's frontier roads to Qing forces.^{[citation needed]}

Tibetan Khampas in the frontier marches are known for their hostility towards outsiders, and for their strong devotion to their monasteries from specific schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and to the Dalai Lamas.

Decades before the Batang uprising, around 1852 the French Catholic Marist missions from Paris Foreign Missions Society, operating under Qing China's protectorate and ushered into Kham's frontier region, were "[d]riven back from the frontier and forced to withdraw to the Western confines of the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan", where they "vegetated for a century within small Christian communities", until expelled by Communist China in 1952.

From 1873 to 1905, there were five attacks on churches (this Batang uprising being the fifth), known as "missionary cases" in historiography. Upon the complaint of the French consul, the Foreign Ministry of Qing settled the cases and gradually got involved into Batang politics.

Qing China sent Feng Quan as the new Qing's assistant amban, stationing him in Chamdo. Qing emperor instructed him to develop, assimilate, and bring the Kham regions under strong Qing central control. Feng Quan began initiating land reforms among traditional autonomous polities of kingdoms governed by warrior chiefs, and initiating a reduction to the number of monks, whose monasteries were among the autonomous polities. Feng Quan recruited Chinese soldiers and Sichuan farmers to convert idle land in Batang to cultivable land in the hope of attracting settlers.