Amdowa

The Amdowas are the Tibetans of Amdo, the northeastern Tibetan plateau. Their valleys entered the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century; the Tibetan kingdom Tsongkha ruled from 997 to 1104. The Mongol conquest of the 1240s opened the priest-patron bond between khans and lamas.

By 1337 Yuan garrisons were already crumbling and Mongol fiefs around Kokonor lacked leaders; a rising in 1347 shook eastern Tibet. The Ming held little beyond the Hezhou and Xining garrisons, while Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug order, marked Amdo's religious life: Kumbum rose in 1583 and Labrang in 1709.

After Güshi Khan's wars of the 1630s and 1640s, Kokonor stayed under Mongol rule until the Qing drove out the Dzungars; in the 1720s the Yongzheng Emperor folded Amdo into a new Xining administration, leaving headmen and monasteries to manage local affairs under imperial commissions. Speaking a conservative, tone-free Tibetan, the Amdowas long felt themselves apart from the Tibetans of Lhasa.