Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War is an exciting and important new work from historical anthropologist Carole McGranahan, who focuses on the often overlooked guerilla resistance organized by Tibetans against the People's Republic of China between 1956 and 1974. The surviving members of the major resistance group who carried out this struggle, “Four Rivers, Six Ranges” (Chu bzhi gangs drug), live in Tibetan exile communities throughout the world but are not publicly recognized as veterans. The resistance is often relegated to brief overviews or footnotes in popular Western-language histories of modern Tibet, and is absent from accounts of modern history in Tibetan exile communities. However, the resistance was a considerable one, lasting for almost two decades until the Dalai Lama convinced its members to lay down their weapons. Veterans estimate there were over ten thousand soldiers based in exile, and tens of thousands more in Tibet, during its period of operation (p. 3). McGranahan describes this period as a time of war and in her rich and nuanced study of its unfolding and aftermath, the first of its kind from a Tibetan perspective, explores why and how it has been forgotten. Above all, she problematizes depictions of Tibetans as passive victims in a non-violent struggle against early Chinese state building in Tibet.

Why has this resistance been forgotten? The author suggests several reasons. Firstly, as a guerilla war, it was by necessity secret. The transnational nature of support for the resistance has also complicated its reception in historical narrative, as India, Nepal and the United States (through the CIA) were all involved in its activities, and each country had its own motivations for supporting the training and equipping of resistance cells. Secondly, and crucially for this study, the guerilla war cannot be easily reconciled with the discourses of nonviolence that have helped foster a hegemonic pan-Tibetan identity and which have underpinned the development of Tibetan nationalism and a cohesive Tibetan state in exile. Thirdly, the resistance was a failed war.

McGranahan argues that this gap in the historical archive is necessary, since to acknowledge the resistance would be to challenge the normal, expected order of Tibetan exile society. She aims in her work to create a “subaltern history of war” (p. 2) that demonstrates the social processes of history making within the Tibetan community. This study necessarily disrupts assumptions about how the status quo functioned in “traditional” Tibet, since the guerilla war challenged hierarchies within Tibet, as well as the Chinese government. The process of how this war has been forgotten is more complex, and Tibetan veterans continue to wrestle with their participation in it. McGranahan explains how these veterans remain in a state of “lived impermanence” created through an ongoing negotiation between the veterans' resistance to the accepted nationalist narratives of modern Tibetan history in exile – in that they desire public acknowledgement – and their deference to the Dalai Lama, who in his calls for non-violent resistance against Chinese rule undermines their previously violent actions, which the veterans consider to have been in service to Buddhism and the Tibetan state (pp. 18–19). There remains a “pain of belonging” in Tibetan society for these veterans, who still wish to receive social recognition and acceptance for their participation, while their very presence is an undesired reminder of the war.

Arrested Histories outlines the stages of this forgotten war, but is also concerned with its present and future implications. Chapter 1 considers the modern historical context, the negotiation of Tibet's political status and factors leading to the war. The second chapter focuses on the personal ramifications of Tibet's current political status, particularly how the veteran guerilla fighters negotiate their place in contemporary exile society and as displaced refugees in a world that is propelled by economic gain and indifferent to Tibetan claims to sovereignty. The following chapter provides an overview of the beginnings of the resistance in conflicts between Tibet and the Chinese army in different parts of Kham. Here McGranahan draws from a variety of sources, including the fascinating (and under-used) Tibet Mirror newspaper, published in Kalimpong, India. Chapter 4 outlines political and military organization as it is developed in Tibet, and the founding of the “Four Rivers, Six Mountains” army, as well as the CIA's early involvement in training and equipping them, and their role in escorting the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959. These actions, along with prayers written by the Dalai Lama, have been taken by the Four Rivers, Six Mountains army as legitimation for their use of violence in a war against Chinese occupation. This legitimacy has not translated into public acknowledgement however, as Chapter 5 explores in its discussion of the processes of forgetting the resistance. The next three chapters outline the regrouping of the resistance in exile, and continued efforts in the 1970s to engage in guerilla war with the PLA, even after the withdrawal of CIA support. Chapter 9 discusses the replacement of the resistance in popular memory with the rhetoric of non-violent struggle as employed by the Dalai Lama and government in exile. The conclusion and epilogue consider the significance of forgetting and remembering in the creation of community, and make a strong case for a representative modern Tibetan history that includes the resistance and thereby returns agency and acknowledgement to all members of the exile community.

McGranahan succeeds admirably in the difficult task of remembering this forgotten part of Tibetan history, which runs counter to officially produced versions of the past from Tibetan, Western and also official Chinese communities. Though McGranahan's work provides an important service in allowing the memories of those soldiers who have passed into obscurity to be recorded, the work in no way comes across as a one-sided hagiography or memorial. Instead, it negotiates the complexity of discussing events that do not fit into assumed conventions of popular history from a non-centrist perspective (in this case, a Khampa narrative told from exile, p. 10). The text successfully navigates the relationship between Tibetans in exile, focusing on the veterans, and the most important figure of socio-cultural legitimation for them, the Dalai Lama. The book is nuanced and sophisticated in its politics, and contextualizes events through a rich, theoretically engaged model and an articulate narrative. There is much to consider in this surprisingly moving work, which examines the process of history-making and the highly emotive processes of forgetting, editing and censorship that create historical narratives, and how acknowledging all members of a community in this creation is crucial to its health and survival.

Scholars have debated how subaltern history can be made in a Tibetan context. This work paves the way for more scholarly exploration of diverse historical communities who self-identify as Tibetan (McGranahan's informants include not only veterans but a wide array of representatives from other social and economic groups in exile, mostly notably, women); and for considering Tibetan history outside of the most commonly recognized categories of religion and, to a lesser extent, politics, and outside of centers of power. The work avoids historical polemics and conflict, and demonstrates how scholarship regarding modern Tibet can be situated, as much of McGranahan's ethnography is, in contexts that have been created through processes of conflict, displacement and colonization (as well as decolonization).

Historians, ethnographers, and students of culture in Tibet particularly, and more generally in South Asia and China, as well as those in Cold War studies, Memory studies, and further afield should pay attention to this important work: It marks a milestone for how politically sensitive histories that are “arrested” through polemics can be released, and told in a nuanced and responsible way. Arrested Histories allows for new, unheard voices to enter the archive, while also creating new futures and possibilities for these voices, in its acknowledgement of a truly representative, engaged and relevant history for Tibet.