A colleague passed on to me this very interesting article about feudal Tibet, that is, Tibet before the Communist invasion in the 50's:
The Tibet Myth
In short, Feudal Tibet was ruled pretty much like Feudal Europe: most people were serf with no rights, monks and lords (apparently usually the same people) would concentrate most of the wealth and power, ruling through violence and torture. Communism stopped all the slavery, abusive taxes, sexual abuse, and brought technologisation, roads, water and better crops (and its host of totalitarian-related problems -- we're not saying Tibet is ideal here now, we're just saying that it was not quite like movies like "7 years in Tibet" or "Kundun" make it out to be).