From 1727 until 1912, roughly corresponding to the era of
Tibet under Qing rule, the
Qing Emperor appointed "
imperial commissioner-resident of Tibet" (
Chinese: 欽差駐藏辦事大臣). The official rank of the imperial resident is amban (
Tibetan: བོད་བཞུགས་ཨམ་བན,
Wylie: bod bzhugs am ban, colloquially "High Commissioner"). With increasing diplomatic contacts between the British and the Qing in from the 1890s, some assistant ambans (
Chinese: 欽差駐藏幫辦大臣) were just as notable as the senior ambans. Two of them,
Feng Quan and
Zhao Erfeng, who were stationed in
Chamdo, were both murdered, the former in the
Batang uprising and the latter in
Xinhai Revolution.
List
The ethnicity of several ambans are unknown. By ethnicity, of the 80 ambans, most were
Manchu and four were
Han:
Zhou Ying,
Bao Jinzhong,
Meng Bao, and
Zhao Erfeng. At least fifteen
Mongols were known to have served as ambans, perhaps more.
Coleman, William M. (2014), Making the State on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier: Chinese Expansion and Local Power in Batang, 1842–1939, Columbia University (PhD thesis)