"This definitive history of modern Tibet - based entirely on unpublished primary sources and written by a Western-educated Tibetan author - shatters the popular perception of Tibet as an isolated Shangri-la unaffected by broader international developments and rises above the simplistic dualism so often encountered in accounts of Tibet's contested recent history. "--BOOK JACKET. "With careful and thorough documentation, the author details the Chinese depredations of Tibet and the many concomitant shifts in policy and political fortune. However, he also reveals the failures of the Tibetan leadership's myopic and divided strategies to engage the Chinese by on the one hand pursuing a policy of coexistence with communist China and on the other trying to preserve her unique identity as a Buddhist state under the leadership of the Dalai Lama. "--BOOK JACKET.