"Harshest autocrats in history"? That's a pretty big claim that I think history proves is undeserved. (Tibet was one of the harshest autocracies in history? Howabout the Spanish Empire that categorized its conquered subjects into the *casta*, worked many of them to death, forced their religion and language on a hemisphere's worth of people, and had seemingly no qualms about essentially indiscriminate killing of native peoples. What about the Orwellian named "Congo Free State" which was personally owned by King Leopold II of Belgium, and was essentially a state run on the genocide of the Congolese peoples, with Belgian soldiers not having a particularly fun time either, forcing them to choose between what seemed like starvation or genocide of the natives to account for their bullet use? Howabout freaking *Nazi Germany* which developed a large military bureaucracy aimed towards genocide, and then executed *many* of their own citizens, never mind Jewish citizens, but German members of the SPD, and by war's end anyone who simply wasn't a party member.)

Anyway, as you can tell from my parenthetical tangent, I'm no fan of superlatives, especially when we're attempting to condemn a person, a nation, and by extension it's people. Tibet, even at its worst, never conducted the kind of large-scale genocide that the European Colonial and post-Colonial era has become known for. And even the modern tools of state that modern autocracies (or even pre-modern autocracies) are known for: a secret police, a ruthless spy network, religious persecution and inquisitons, etc. are absent for most if not all of the Dalai Lamas' rule over Tibet.

I've written extensively on the Dalai Lama and historic Tibet in the past. A quick refresher is that prior to the rule of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet was controled by a succession of more-or-less secular Kings of native dynasties. First the Phagmodrupa, then the Rinpung, then the Tsangpa. The Tsangpa King was overthrown and his crown usurped by the descendant of Altan Khan, Gushri Khan. Gushri Khan then gifted all of Tibet to his religious patron, Lobsang Gyatso, the Fifth Dalai Lama. This is the first Dalai Lama to obtain political control of Tibet, and more or less, the only Dalai Lama until the modern era to wield that power without major challenge until the 20th Century. There's a lot said and written about the "Great Fifth" and many people, especially Shugden supporters today, are critical of his rule, referencing his suppression of the Jonangpa, the Bodongpa, and his wars against Ladakh and Bhutan as proof of his autocratic and authoritarian rule. Really, this was more of an era of state-building, and a lot of these activities were the growing pains of a young country - not that it makes the criticisms any less relevant, but they are by no means particularly unusual. (And certainly don't qualify Tibet as the "worst" autocracy.)

The Sixth didn't want his predecessor's throne. The Seventh possessed it, though he seemed to think of himself primarily as a religious teacher and allowed his father and the rising star of Pholhanas ("P'o-l'a-nay", not "Poll-hah-nass") who seemed to try to position himself as a successor to the previous Khans and a new secular King of Tibet. The Eighth seemed to have some administrative control, but his control over Tibet waned in favor of the Manchu Empire which took over Tibet as a vassal state in the late 1700s. And if we're talking about "worst" autocrats, the Manchu Ambans (Imperial Representatives) were extremely autocratic, to the point that they basically inspired a simmering rebellion in Tibet throughout the 1800s. They commandeered local supplies, took what they wanted, could demand whole villages to do their bidding, all without approval by the Tibetan government. And they were extremely liberal with their use of the famous "death by a thousand cuts" execution method against Tibetans who resisted them.

Throughout the late 1700s and the entirety of the 19th Century, no Dalai Lamas assumed political office. They all died young, before reaching their age of majority, leaving Tibet mostly to the rule of the Panchen Lamas. That said, the decentralized nature of power, and the dominance of the Manchu Empire essentially meant that the Ganden Phodrang (the Geluk government of Tibet with the Dalai Lama at the top) was mostly ceremonial outside of Lhasa. They could theoretically demand taxes, tribute, raise armies, and grant legitimacy in courts of law, but for the most part, nomads of Ngari, farmers of Chamdo, and merchants in Lhasa had very little to do with each other and likely obeyed very different laws depending on the year, the political winds, and whatever power structure seemed to be in their locality, the hands of both Beijing and Lhasa of a variety of weights.

Which brings us to the 20th Century and the fall of the Manchu Empire. In 1911 the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Manchu in favor of the Chinese Republic, and a simultaneous revolution in Lhasa overthrew the Ambans in favor of an independent Dalai Lama government. Which is exactly what happened. Thubten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama conducted the war from a position of safety in India and then rode into Lhasa victorious. He issued the Tibetan Declaration of Independence and set about trying to make Tibet into a new, modern state. He went about building the Tibetan army, which involved siphoning money away from the huge, expensive budgets of the monasteries. This earned him no shortage of enemies, and a short-lived rebellion took place, in which the Dalai Lama essentially put one of Tibet's biggest and most famous monasteries to siege. When he died, writing a prophecy warning Tibetans about the coming storm of Communism to destroy Tibet and Buddhism, a conservative regent was put into power, and essentially destroyed the army Thubten Gyatso built, setting back Tibet's development into modernity by decades, and allowing the monasteries to go back to their bloated budgets and excessive lifestyles.

As you can imagine, whether Thubten Gyatso is considered a "harsh autocrat" depends greatly on whether you were an average Lhasa citizen, a member of his new, modern army, or a monk who sees his government stipend cut.

The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born in 1935. When the People's Liberation Army entered Tibet in October 1950, he was fifteen years old and more importantly to the point he never held unchecked political power in Tibet.

The idea that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso was an autocrat is completely false. His age of majority was rushed from 18 to 16, so that in 1951 he could negotiate directly with the Chinese, instead of the vacillating council of regents who felt themselves unprepared and disunited to meet and deal with the Chinese. So by the time the current Dalai Lama had the authority and power to rule Tibet, it was already under the political and military control of the People's Republic of China. And the rebellions that took place in Tibet at that time were entirely pro-Dalai Lama and anti-Chinese. If the Dalai Lama was the harsh autocrat that the past couple of decades of propaganda* tried to paint him as, then why was he not overthrown by Tibetans? Chinese propaganda would like to paint the story that working class Tibetans welcomed the PLA in favor of the Dalai Lama, and while every invasion has its own local defectors, and the Tibetans did not resist the Chinese to the degree (or coordination) that would suggest outright rejection of their rule, it is clear that the Tibetans preferred the Dalai Lama and his governance than the outsiders.