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As I researched the epic of Gesar it became clear the epic played an important role in the identity of Tibetans, especially Eastern Tibetans. He was like Odysseus for the Greeks, King Arthur for the British and King Charlemagne for the French. King Gesar is what scholars refer to as “a cultural hero”. He embodies an extremely Tibetan ethic of bravery, clan loyalty, and shrewdness. This is likely what drew the interest of the Ri-mé in the 19th century and the interest of the People’s Republic of China in the 20th.

To my surprise, however, the larger questions of Tibetan identity and nationalism proved to be extremely slippery. I spent a huge part of my unfinished doctorate trying to answer two questions: What is Tibet? And what is Tibet’s relationship to China? You would think these questions were straight-forward but they’re anything but. I read book after book, article after article looking for an answer and finding nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. None of the scholars addressed these questions, let alone answered them. It was like some weird collective amnesia. The academic bon mot that comes to mind is lacunae.

Pinning down Tibetan identity and Tibet’s relationship to China is tricky because of our modern notions of nationalism and the nation-state. Both ideas are rooted in European history of the last several hundred years. Nationalism is the idea of a clearly defined people or nation (such as the English or French) who are associated with a clearly bounded territory (ie. England and France). It is around this territory that a nation-state is legally established (and some scholars would argue, and I think rightly, established artifically). Woodrow Wilson famously promoted this doctrine of the nation-state in the early 20th century. Many regions, however, lack easily demarcated nations, territories and borders and this is the case with the Tibetan plateau and China’s Qing dynasty.