1. This book will demonstrate that the transformation of the Qing Empire’s language regime was not an inevitable or inviolate progress towards Chinese national monolingualism. 2. This book will show how complex borderlands associate languages with various ethnic, national, and imperial powers behind them on official occasions and in everyday life and will direct our writing of language history to encapsulate more diverse and dynamic perspectives. 3. In discussing the Manchu-Mongolian-Chinese translingual practice in the early twentieth century from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, this book will investigate the significance of Manchu and Mongolian as an independent research topic and demonstrate the power and enduring legacy of Qing multilingualism in Manchuria. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Jirim League witnessed a linguistic wrestle between Manchu, Mongol, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian powers. The Qing Empire envisioned a trilingual educational system, with the aim of improving the Jirim Mongols’ ability to read Chinese, Manchu, and Mongolian. Through this policy, the Qing sought to transform loyal imperial subjects into modern patriotic nationals and incorporate them into an integrated and united China under a Manchu constitutional monarchy. The late Qing’s linguistic practice for ruling the Mongols of Manchuria was an attempt to cope with the enduring legacies in Qing administration and people’s everyday life, growing local ethnic tensions, cross-boundary connections, imperial rivalries, and the rise of new ideas concerning nation, modern state, and international relations in East Asia. This book challenges the notion of Chinese language reform as a story of linear progress towards national monolingualism, unfolds the power of multilingualism in Chinese nationalist discourse from a peripheral, non–Han Chinese perspective, and questions the extent to which national languages dominate the writing of history.
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