The Pangdatsang Trading Firm: Politics, Currency Exchange, and Trans-Tibet Business during WWII

This talk introduces the Pangdatsangs, one of the wealthiest and most powerful Tibetan families of the mid-20th century. In the decades leading up to WWII, the Pangdatsang family expanded their long-distance transportation firm from India to China through strategic alliances with both the Tibetan Government and the Chinese Nationalists. This talk traces the Pangdatsang firm’s engagement with transnational and state-backed financial infrastructures as they learned to navigate the often opposing forces of an emerging state bureaucracy and unofficial market pressures. Additionally, it argues that managing long-distance trade in a borderland environment required the use of old and new financial networks, from monasteries to modern banks and foreign exchange, and an ability to adapt to rapidly shifting norms.