section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  Yarlung kings founded the Tibetan Empire in 618. By the end of the 8th century, the empire reached its greatest extent. After a civil war, the empire broke up in 842. The royal lineage fragmented and ruled over small kingdoms such as Guge and Maryul. The Mongols conquered Tibet in 1244 and later ruled it under the Yuan Dynasty but granted the region a degree of political autonomy. The Sakya lama Drogön Chögyal Phagpa became a religious teacher to Kublai Khan in the 1250s and was made the head of the Tibetan region administration c. 1264.
  
  From 1354 to 1642, Central Tibet (Ü-Tsang) was ruled by a succession of dynasties from Nêdong, Shigatse and Lhasa. In 1642, the Ganden Phodrang court of the 5th Dalai Lama was established by Güshi Khan of the Khoshut Khanate, who was enthroned as King of Tibet. The Khoshuts ruled until 1717, when they were overthrown by the Dzungar Khanate. Despite politically charged historical debate concerning the nature of Sino-Tibetan relations, some historians posit that Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang (1642–1951) was an independent state, albeit under various foreign suzerainties for much of this period, including by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Dzungar forces were in turn expelled by the 1720 expedition to Tibet during the Dzungar–Qing Wars. This began a period of direct Qing rule over Tibet.
  
  From the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 until 1950, the State of Tibet was de facto independent, as were other regions claimed by the successor Republic of China. The Republican regime, preoccupied with warlordism (1916–1928), civil war (1927–1949) and Japanese invasion (1937–1945), did not exert authority in Tibet. Other regions of ethno-cultural Tibet in eastern Kham and Amdo had been under de jure administration of the Chinese dynastic government since the mid-18th century; they form parts of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan.
  
  In 1950, following the proclamation of the People's Republic of China the year before, the People's Liberation Army entered Tibet and defeated the Tibetan army in a battle fought near the city of Chamdo. In 1951, Tibetan representatives signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with the Central People's Government affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet and the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China. The 14th Dalai Lama ratified the agreement in October 1951. After the failure of a violent uprising in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India and renounced the Seventeen Point Agreement. During the 1950s and 1960s, Western-dispatched insurgents were parachuted into Tibet, almost all of whom were captured and killed.: 238 The establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965 made Tibet a provincial-level division of China.