British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer (1863–1942)
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer and spiritual writer. He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, led by himself, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and president of the Royal Geographical Society.
Early life.
Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree, British India (now Pakistan), to a British military family, being the brother of Major-General George Younghusband and the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband and his wife Clara Jane Shaw. Clara's brother, Robert Shaw, was a noted explorer of Central Asia. His uncle Lieutenant-General Charles Younghusband CB FRS, was a British Army officer and meteorologist.
As an infant, Francis was taken to live in England by his mother. When Clara returned to India in 1867 she left her son in the care of two austere and strictly religious aunts. In 1870 his mother and father returned to England and reunited the family. In 1876 at age thirteen, Francis entered Clifton College, Bristol. In 1881 he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a subaltern in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards in 1882.
Military career.
Having read General MacGregor's book "Defence of India" he could have justifiably called himself an expert on the "Great Game" of espionage that was unfolding on the Steppes of Asia. In 1886–1887, on leave from his regiment, Younghusband made an expedition across Asia though still a young officer. After sailing to China his party set out, with Colonel Mark Bell's permission, to cross 1200 miles of desert with the ostensible authority to survey the geography; but in reality, the purposes were to ascertain the strength of the Russian physical threats to the Raj. Departing Peking with a senior colleague, Henry E. M. James (on leave from his Indian Civil Service position) and a young British consular officer from Newchwang, Harry English Fulford, on 4 April 1887, Lieut Younghusband explored Manchuria, visiting the frontier areas of Chinese settlement in the region of the Changbai Mountains.
On arrival in India, he was granted three months' leave by the Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Lord Roberts; the scientific results of this travel would prove vital information to the Royal Geographical Society. Younghusband had already carried out numerous scientific observations in particular, showing that the Changbai Mountains' highest peak, Baekdu Mountain, is only around 8,000 feet tall, even though the travellers' British maps showed [nonexistent] snow-capped peaks 10,000-12,000 ft tall in the area. Fulford provided the travellers with language and cultural expertise. Younghusband crossed the most inhospitable terrain in the world to the Himalayas before being ordered to make his way home. Parting with his British companions, he crossed the Taklamakan Desert to Chinese Turkestan, and pioneered a route from Kashgar to India through the uncharted Mustagh Pass. He reported to the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, his crossing through the Karakoram Range, the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs and where the range converged with the Himalayas; the nexus of three great empires. In the 1880s the region of the Upper Oxus was still largely unmapped. For this achievement, aged still only 24, he was elected the youngest member of the Royal Geographical Society and received the society's 1890 Patron's Medal.
In 1889, he was made captain and was dispatched with a small escort of Gurkha soldiers to investigate an uncharted region north of Ladakh, where raiders from Hunza had disrupted trade between Yarkand and India the previous year. Whilst encamped in the valley of the Yarkand River, Younghusband received a messenger at his camp, inviting him to dinner with Captain Bronislav Grombchevsky, his Russian counterpart in "The Great Game". Younghusband accepted the invitation to Grombchevsky's camp, and after dinner the two rivals talked into the night, sharing brandy and vodka, and discussing the possibility of a Russian invasion of British India. Grombchevsky impressed Younghusband with the horsemanship skills of his Cossack escort, and Younghusband impressed Grombchevsky with the rifle drill of his Gurkhas. After their meeting in this remote frontier region, Grombchevsky resumed his expedition in the direction of Tibet and Younghusband continued his exploration of the Karakoram.
Indian Political Service career.
Younghusband received a telegram from Simla, to attend the Intelligence Department (ID) to be interviewed by Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand, transferred to the Indian Political Service. He served as a political officer on secondment from the British Army. He refused a request to visit Lhasa as an interpreter, disguised as a Yarkandi trader, a cover not guaranteed to fool the Russians, after Andrew Dalgleish, a Scots merchant, had been hacked to death. Younghusband was accompanied by a Gurkha escort, celebrated for their ferocity in combat. The Forward policy was circumscribed by a legal offer to all travellers of peaceable security crossing borders. Departure from Leh on 8 August 1889 on the caravan route took them up the mountain pass of Shimshal towards Hunza, his aim being to restore the tea trade to Xinjiang and prevent any further raids into Kashmir. Colonel Durand from Gilgit joined him. Younghusband probed the villages to gauge the reception: calculating it was a den of thieves, they ascended the steep ravine. The Hunza was barred to them, a trap was sprung; the parley terms took him inside to negotiate. The nervous reception over, they were all relieved to find safety; Younghusband wanted to know who was waylaying innocent civilian traders, and why. The ruler, Safdar Ali extended a letter of welcome to his Kashmiri kingdom; the British investigated whence came the Russian infiltrators under Agent Gromchevsky. Further south at Ladakh, he kept a close watch on their movements. Reluctantly, Younghusband dined with the Cossack leaders, who divulged the secrets of their common rivalry. Gromchevsky explained that the Raj had invited enmity for meddling in the Black Sea ports. The Russian displayed little grasp of strategy, but basic raw courage; he betrayed the confidence of Abdul Rahman as no friend to the British. Younghusband tentatively concluded that their possessions at Bokhara and Samarkand were vulnerable. Having drunk large quantities of vodka and brandy, the Cossacks presented arms in cordial salute and they parted in peace. Woefully unprepared for winter, the British garrison at Ladakh refused them entry.
Younghusband finally arrived at Gulmit to a 13-gun salute. In khaki, the envoy greeted Safdar Ali at the marquee on the Karakoram Highway, the men of Hunza kneeling at their ruler's feet. This was colonial diplomacy, based on protocol and etiquette, but Younghusband had not come for merely trivial discussions. Reinforced by Durand's troops, Younghusband's arguments were to prevent criminal looting, murder, and highway robbery. Impervious to reason though Safdar Ali was, Younghusband was not prepared to allow him to laugh at the Raj. A demonstration of firepower "caused quite a sensation", he wrote in his diaries. The British major was disdainful, but content when he left on 23 November to return to India, which he reached by Christmas.
In 1890, Younghusband was sent on a mission to Chinese Turkestan, accompanied by George Macartney as interpreter. He spent the winter in Kashgar, where he left Macartney as British consul. Younghusband sought to investigate the Pamir Gap, a possible Russian entry route to India, but first needed to address issues with the Chinese authorities in Kashgar. It was for this reason he recruited a Mandarin interpreter, junior officer George Macartney, to accompany his missions into the frozen mountains. They wintered in Kashgar as a listening post, meeting in conference with the Russian Nikolai Petrovsky, who had always resisted trade with Xinjiang (Sinkiang). The Russian agent was well-informed about British India, but proved unscrupulous. Believing he had succeeded, Younghusband did not reckon on Petrovsky's deal with the "Taotai" of Xinjiang.
In July 1891, they were still in the Pamirs when news reached them that the Russians intended to send troops "to note and report with the Chinese and Afghans". At Bozai Gumbaz in the Little Pamir on 12 August he encountered Cossack soldiers, who forced him to leave the area. This was one of the incidents which provoked the Hunza-Nagar Campaign. The troop of 20 or so soldiers planted a flag on what they anticipated was unclaimed territory, 150 miles south of the Russian border. However, the British considered the area to be Afghan territory. Colonel , decorated with the Order of St George, approached his camp to announce that the area now belonged to the Tsar. Younghusband learnt that they had raided the Chitral territory; furthermore, they had penetrated the Darkot Pass into the Yasin Valley. They were joined by eager intelligence officer Lieutenant Davison, but the British were disabused by Ivanov of British sovereignty: Younghusband remained polite, maintained protocol but hospitable to the big Russian bear hug.
During his service in Kashmir, he wrote a book called "Kashmir" at the request of Edward M. J. Molyneux. Younghusband's descriptions went hand in glove with Molyneux's paintings of the valley. In the book, Younghusband declared his immense admiration of the natural beauty of Kashmir and its history. Younghusband participated in the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and Russia, known as 'The Great Game,' which persisted into the 20th century before being formally concluded by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty. Younghusband, among other explorers such as Sven Hedin, Nikolay Przhevalsky, Shoqan Walikhanov and Sir Marc Aurel Stein, had participated in earnest. Rumours of Russian expansion into the Hindu Kush with a Russian presence in Tibet prompted the new Viceroy of India Lord Curzon to appoint Younghusband, by then a major, British commissioner to Tibet from 1902 to 1904.
Expedition to Tibet.
In 1903, Curzon appointed Younghusband as the head of the Tibet Frontier Commission; John Claude White, the political officer of Sikkim, and E. C. Wilton, served as his deputy commissioners in the commission. Younghusband subsequently led the British expedition to Tibet, which had the putative aim to settle disputes over the Sikkim–Tibet border, but eventually exceeded instructions from the government of the United Kingdom and became a "de facto" invasion of Tibet. Roughly inside Tibet, on the way to Gyantse, thence to the capital of Lhasa, a confrontation outside the hamlet of Guru led to a victory by the expedition's troops over 600–700 Tibetan soldiers. The expedition's troops, equipped with rifles and machine guns, overpowered the less-equipped Tibetan forces, who were armed with hoes, swords, and flintlocks. 
Ultimately, 202 men of Younghusband's expedition were killed in action while 411 died of non-combat causes. The expedition was supported by Ugyen Wangchuck of the Kingdom of Bhutan (who was to become the King of Bhutan in 1907), who was knighted in return for his services. However, the invasion of Tibet embarrassed the British government, which desired good relations with the Qing dynasty for the sake of Britain's trade with Chinese coastal settlements. Accordingly, the British government repudiated the Treaty of Lhasa, signed by Younghusband and Tibetan leaders, due to concerns over its impact on relations with the Qing dynasty and trade with Chinese coastal regions.
In 1891, Younghusband received the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire, and then he was awarded the honour of Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India in December 1904. He was also awarded the Kaisar-I-Hind Medal (gold) in 1901, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1905. In 1906, Younghusband settled in Kashmir as the British Resident representative before returning to Britain in 1909, where he was an active member of many clubs and societies. In 1908, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. During the First World War, his patriotic Fight for Right campaign commissioned the song "Jerusalem".
Himalaya and mountaineering.
In 1889, Younghusband reached base of Turkestan La (North) from north, and he noted that this was a long glacier and a major Central Asian dividing range.
In 1919, Younghusband was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee which was set up to coordinate the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest. Younghusband supported efforts to summit Mount Everest and endorsed George Mallory's participation in early expeditions, and they followed the same initial route as the earlier Tibet Mission. Younghusband remained Chairman through the subsequent 1922 and 1924 British Expeditions.
In 1938, Younghusband encouraged Ernst Schäfer, who was