Joseph Gabet

Joseph Gabet (Chinese name QIN Gabi 秦噶哔,born 4 December 1808 at Nevy-sur-Seille, in the Jura, France, died 1853) was a French Catholic missionary belonging to the Congregation of the Mission Order, known as the Lazarites. He was active in Northern China and then Mongolia. He travelled to Tibet with Évariste Huc. After returning to Europe he was subsequently sent by the Order to Brazil, where he died in Rio de Janeiro in 1853.

Joseph Gabet was ordained priest in 1833 and joined the Lazarite order. In 1834, in company with his fellow Lazarite missionaries Jean-Gabriel Perboyre and Joseph Perry, he travelled to China. After arriving in Macao in 1835 he learned Chinese before being sent to Tartary in the north of the Chinese Empire, later known as Manchuria.

In 1844, together with Évariste Huc, another Lazarite missionary, and a young Mongol lama, he set out on a journey westward to explore "Mongol Tartary". They stayed for six months in the monastery of Kounboum near Koukou-Noor (Lake Qinghai), learning the Tibetan language and studying the Buddhist religion, before setting out for Tibet in August 1845.

They attached themselves to the caravan of the Dalai Lama's emissary returning from Peking (Beijing). Crossing the high plateaux in midwinter Gabet came close to dying of cold. The caravan reached Lhasa at the end of 1845. Évariste Huc described the journey in his book "Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine pendant les années 1844, 1845 et 1846" ("Memories of a journey through Tartary, Tibet and China in 1844, 1845 and 1846").

Although well received by the Minister-Regent who governed Tibet in the name of the Dalai Lama, the missionaries aroused the suspicion of Qishan, the Chinese Emperor's resident representative in Tibet, who secured their expulsion in February 1846. Gabet and Huc were sent with an official escort via "Ta-Tsien-Lou" (Kangding) and Chengdu to Canton, arriving there in September 1846. Huc described the journey to Canton in his book "L'empire chinois" ("The Chinese Empire").

Gabet hoped to secure permission from the Chinese and Tibetan authorities for himself and Huc to return to Tibet but was ordered to return to Europe without delay in order to help resolve the dispute that had arisen between the Lazarite order and the Missions étrangères over the reallocation of responsibility for mission work in Tibet after Gabet et Huc were thought to have disappeared.

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