Hugh Edward Richardson
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Hugh Richardson CIE OBE FBA |
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|---|---|
Hugh Richardson, 1936, Tibet
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| Born |
22 December 1905 St. Andrews |
| Died | 3 December 2000 (aged 94) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Diplomat, Tibetologist |
| Spouse(s) | Huldah Rennie, m. 1951 |
| Parent(s) | Colonel Hugh Richardson |
| Awards | Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) Light of Truth Award Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) |
Hugh Edward Richardson CIE OBE FBA (22 December 1905 - 3 December 2000) was an Indian Civil Service officer, British diplomat and Tibetologist. His academic work focused on the history of the Tibetan empire, and in particular on epigraphy. He was among the last Europeans to have known Tibet and its society before the Chinese invasions which began in 1950.
Born in St. Andrews, Fife, the son of a British Army medical officer, Richardson studied classics at Keble College, Oxford. He entered the Indian Civil Service on 9 October 1930. Transferring to the Foreign and Political Service of the Government of India, Richardson was posted to Baluchistan as an Assistant Political Agent. In July 1936, he was appointed as the British Trade Agent at Gyantse. He represented Britain in Lhasa, capital of Tibet, from 1936 to 1940 and again from 1946 to 1950, in the final years having become the diplomatic representative of the recently independent India.
Of the Tibetan government during his time in Lhasa, Richardson said:
"My counterparts were...experienced negotiators. . .and masters of procrastination and evasion, and might assume the cloak of simple people with no experience of the outside world. . .There could be no doubt I was dealing with ministers of a government that was completely independent in both its internal and external affairs."
Like many ICS officers, Richardson was an accomplished linguist who spoke Bengali fluently, a skill he put to use when conversing with Rabindranath Tagore, and his fluent Tibetan was described by the Tibetan politician Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa as "impeccable Lhasa Tibetan with a slight Oxford accent." As Secretary to the Agent-General for India at Chungking, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1944 New Year Honours list, and was further appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) on 14 August 1947, in the last imperial honours list. After Indian independence, Richardson remained in the renamed Indian Administrative Service, serving in Lhasa until his retirement in September 1950. After his retirement from public service he taught in Seattle and Bonn. He subsequently returned to St. Andrews and spent the remainder of his life as an independent scholar.
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