Pre-1959 Tibet was not a “closed off land” as is often assumed, but a place of dynamic economic structures and a diverse body of economic actors. The Trehor region, an area located in modern day northern Kardze Prefecture, was a center of trade, and due to its proximity to Sichuan and to Lhasa, the route through the Trehor area became a primary trade and communication route during the first half of the twientieth century. The Younghusband expedition (1903-1904), instigated by British India, and the forceful colonizing projects of General Zhao Erfeng (1908-1911) of the Qing, catalyzed new economic structures and strengthened long distance commercial ties between Tibet, China, and British India. The influx of goods and multiple currencies into Kham had a direct influence on Tibetan monasteries in the Trehor region. According to the Kardze Prefecture Gazetteer, in 1947, the monasteries and their “monastery merchants” (simiao shang) controlled roughly 60% to 70% percent of commercial pursuits in the Kham area. Monasteries in the Trehor area were able to take advantage of economic networks by stationing their monastic merchants throughout China, Tibet, and possibly India. They maintained sophisticated economic bureaucracies that were managed by high level monks with both business acumen and religious clout. Monasteries furthermore acted as money lenders, controlled a monopoly on tea imports in the area, imported and traded British Indian products, and some even printed their own paper currency which circulated inside and outside the monastery. By utilizing Chinese gazetteers, investigative reports from the 1950s as well as later Tibetan language surveys and a Tibetan language monastic history, this paper focuses on the Trehor area, paying particular attention to three Geluk monasteries Dargye, Kardze, and Drango. Overall, this paper investigates economic power of monasteries and demonstrates how monasteries maintained strong economic agency into the first decade of Communist rule. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Monasteries, Merchants, and Long Distance Trade: The Economic Power of Tibetan Monasteries in Northern Kham (1900-1959), Elizabeth Reynolds, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Columbia University