The examples in the following table are chosen from the chronological records of Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook and its Chinese translation. Although there is a clear match between the original Russian Мунгальский Приказ (The Mongol Department) and the translated Menggu yamen, the Russian terms that were translated as Lifanyuan diverge significantly from one another.

Three Russian terms were translated into Lifanyuan in EZHB. Two of them are quoted in the above table. The first is Посольский Приказ “the Ambassadorial Department,” which indicated an office in charge of foreign affairs in the Russian government from 1549 to 1718. The second is Трибунал “Court,” which starts to appear shortly before and after 1718 in Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook. The third is Китайский Сенат “the Chinese Senate,” to which the translators of EZHB provide a note (p. 434, note 2) stating that this Russian term should, if not must, be translated as “the Lifanyuan,” without further explanation. If one were only to follow the original Russian meaning and the Russian institutions of the time, this term is misleading, since there was no senate in the Qing government, and the Lifanyuan was not an institution on the upper level of government with deliberative and legislative power in the modern and Western, or Russian, sense.

It would be reasonable to assume that institutional contexts and changes within the Tsarist government had affected the choice of Russian terms for the Lifanyuan. Посольский Приказ “the Ambassadorial Department,” for example, could at one point have been thought to be the institution equivalent to the Qing Lifanyuan, but the removal of this Russian office in 1718 likely motivated its replacement with a new “equivalent” institution. The language barrier could have added another possibility of deviation. During the historical period under study, Qing-Russian communication was hindered by serious language obstacles, and translations from Manchu to Russian, or vice versa, through Latin, Mongolian, and even Turkic, could cause meaning discrepancies. To overcome the language barrier, the Russian envoy, during his 1676 visit to the Qing court, presented the Tsar’s request that the letters from the Qing to Russia written in Manchu be translated into Latin and Russian letters to the Qing be written in both Russian and Latin.¹¹ In the 1740s, more than a decade after Russian students began studying Manchu and Chinese in the Qing capital, an article of the 1728 Treaty of Kiakhta was completed, making it the first direct translation between Russian and Manchu texts. According to Tatiana A. Pang, the birth of the Chinese and Manchu collections of the Library of the Academy of Science [in Russia] is connected with the name of the first translator into Russian, Illarion Kalinovich Rossokhin—a student of the Second Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking (1729–1735), who was accepted in the Academy in 1741.¹² EZHB further confirms the 1740s as the decade in which Russian language students began engaging in direct translation from the languages of the Qing empire.¹³ Before this point, Manchu writings to the Russian court, as well as Russian writings to the Qing court, relied on the translation of Latin, Mongolian, and even Turkic languages.¹⁴

Кигайский Сенат “Chinese Senate” might have been chosen to match the Lifanyuan to the Russian Правительствующий сенат “Governing Senate,” which was the legislative, judicial, and executive body of the Russian emperors created by Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725). In 1728, the Treaty of Kiakhta confirmed that the managing institution between the two empires must be the Lifanyuan on the Qing side and the Senate on the Russian side.¹⁵ This treaty regulation reflects the possibility that the Russian government treated the Lifanyuan as a similar office to the Russian Senate at the time. The dispute over the equivalent rank between the two offices arose only later, as a result of Russian awareness that the Lifanyuan did not hold the same status as the Russian Senate. Трибунал “Court” could likely have been chosen the same way, by viewing the Lifanyuan as equal to the Qing court at a certain historical moment. These two equivalents were certainly not relevant to the Lifanyuan in the Qing system.

A passage that illuminates the Russian understanding of the Qing institution in Russian affairs appears in Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s introduction under the subtitle Какъ Китайцы называюмъ Россiанъ (How the Chinese Call the Russians).¹⁶ The following three tables provide passages from the Russian original, the transliteration of this quotation, the corresponding Chinese translation of it in the 1982 publication, and my own English translation. My analysis follows each part.

This sentence added коллергiю внешнiя провинцiи управляющую “Collegium of Managing the Outer Provinces” to the Russian list of names for the Lifanyuan. The translation of it into Guanli waifan shiwu yamen 管理外藩事务衙门 in Chinese is inaccurate. The Russians, however, considered it to be the same as the Menggu yamen. Furthermore, it informs us about the Russian assumption of the importance of the Lifanyuan as the organ that drafted the Manchu emperor’s correspondence to foreign states, including Russia. Qing historians today would correct such a statement by pointing out that the Lifanyuan ministers were able to join the court decision-making circle, but the Lifanyuan, as an executive rather than a policy-making institution for Inner Asian affairs in which Russia was placed, primarily fulfilled the responsibility of delivering the correspondence to Russia on behalf of the Qing court.¹⁷ Before the middle of the Kangxi reign, the Yizhengwang dachen huiyi “Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers” and Neige “Grand Secretariat,” both in higher power than the Lifanyuan, were responsible for correspondence with Russia.¹⁸ Later, the Grand Council took over that responsibility.¹⁹ The Russian perspective, however, highlights the Lifanyuan’s key position in Qing-Russian bilateral relations by assuming the Lifanyuan to be the highest authority in Qing foreign affairs.

The Russian transliteration of the Manchu Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan matched the Manchu pronunciation almost exactly in the form of Тулерги-Голоь-Бе дазараджурганъ. It indicates that around 1882 when Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook was published, the Russians knew the Lifanyuan’s Manchu name very well. Describing it as the Mongol Lifanyuan, Монгоь-ли-фань-юянь, further reveals that the Russians viewed the Lifanyuan as a Mongol-run office. This wording suggests that the Russian author of the sourcebook differentiated the Manchu name from the Chinese name of the Lifanyuan and distinguished the Lifanyuan as different from, but still closely tied to, the Menggu yamen when he compiled and completed this sourcebook. The sources that he compiled chronologically (as the above table shows), however, reflect the lack of such knowledge in Russia before his time. The “in Chinese: Mongol Lifanyuan” (по китайски Монгоь-ли-фань-юянь), another name on the Russian Lifanyuan list, will, however, easily leave a researcher at a loss.

This sentence acknowledges that the communication responsibilities of the “Mongol Lifanyuan” reached far beyond Mongol affairs, to Russia and other states. Like the cases mentioned before, the message shows the Mongol-centered nature of the Lifanyuan as the Russians conceived of it. Since the Lifanyuan did not engage in relations with other European and Asian countries outside Inner Asia, the “other states” would likely be referring to the powers and peoples between Qing and Russia.²⁰

In summary, Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook reveals six different Russian names for the Qing Lifanyuan during an era when Chinese sources suggest no Menggu yamen was in use: Мунгальский Приказ “the Mongol Department,” Монгоь-ли-фань-юянь “the Mongol Lifanyuan,” Посольский Приказ “the Ambassadorial Department,” Трибунал “Court,” Кигайский Сенат “the Chinese Senate,” and Коллергiю внешнiя провинцiи управляющую “Collegium of managing the outer provinces.”

All the Russian sources in Qing-Russian relations are well represented in this source book. Vladimir Stepanovich Miasnikov (Владимир Степанович Мясников), the contemporary Russian historian with the best expertise in the field, has pointed out seven different Russian names referring to the Qing Lifanyuan across Russian sources available to him. Two or three of them may be slightly different from those in Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook, judging by the Chinese translation.²¹ Although I have not yet been able to access these sources and Miasnikov’s article in the Russian original, I can confidently state that Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s sourcebook reflects imperial Russia’s use of the names for the Lifanyuan.

The Russians’ Mongol impression of the Lifanyuan, as reflected in Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s Russian sourcebook, came from the language use of the Qing correspondence. It was the Qing practice to write the emperor’s or the court’s letters to the Russian high authorities not only in Manchu but also in Mongolian. As early as 1655 when the Shunzhi emperor sent the first letter from the Qing court to the Russian Tsar, the letter was written in Manchu and Mongolian. The tsar’s envoy, who was present at the first official Russian visit to the Qing court, was asked to deliver it to the tsar.²² In 1686, the Kangxi emperor instructed the Lifanyuan to inform Russia that the tsar’s correspondence with the Qing court would now have a Mongolian translation in addition to Russian and Latin.²³ In that same year, in a letter to the Russian envoy, the Lifanyuan requested him to write back in Russian and Latin and gave his writing to the Mongol Tüsheet Khan for delivery to the Qing court.²⁴ Sometimes, the Russian envoy wrote directly to the Mongol religious leader Jebtsundamba Khutuktu and Tüsheet Khan to revise correspondence in a tone appropriate for writing to the Manchu emperor.²⁵ For the Russians, the role of the Mongolian language in Qing–Russian official communications increased Mongol importance in Qing management of Russian affairs.

Furthermore, this sourcebook often presented the Qing Lifanyuan as being more powerful than it actually was. The reason should be investigated. Shen Jianshi 沈兼士 (1887–1947), Director of the Historical Documents Institute (Wenxian guan 文獻館) of the National Palace Museum, who decided on the publication of EZHB in 1936, offers an insight into this misconception as well as the strong Mongol influence on the Lifanyuan. According to Shen, both the Eluosi guan 俄羅斯館 (Russian House) and Menggu tang 蒙古堂 (Mongolian Document Section) under the Grand Secretariat, which was a clerical office dedicated to translating official correspondence to and from Mongolian, assisted bilateral correspondence in the two languages at the Qing court. After a communication was drafted in Russian or Mongolian, it would be translated into Manchu, although some remained in Mongolian. The Grand Secretariat stored all the Manchu copies and the writings received from Russia as well. When a Qing communication needed to be sent to Russia, the Grand Secretariat handed it over to the Lifanyuan, and the Lifanyuan delivered it.²⁶ On the Russian side, the Lifanyuan could thus easily be thought of as an institution on a par with the Grand Secretariat. A Russian view would certainly be influenced by knowledge, primarily received through the Russian House, of correspondence being drafted by the Mongolian Document Section.

Overall, “the significance of the Mongol factor in the state-building process” of the Qing, as Nicola Di Cosmo has pointed out,²⁷ was felt by the Russians in their relationship with the Manchu court. It is important for Qing historians to have this background in mind and pay close attention to Russian terms for the Lifanyuan with the knowledge that the shifting Russian names for the Lifanyuan likely correlated with political shifts in Russia and, also, with the evolving Russian conceptions of it. Hoping that Russian scholars would, someday, develop scholarly explanations for these terms in Russian history, the Russian sources certainly draw Qing historians’ attention to the Manchu, as well as the Mongolian, use of these terms inside the Qing ruling circle and their impact on communication with Russia. The various Lifanyuan names in Russian sources should have been based on the official correspondence with the Qing court as well as on the Russian contacts with the Qing officials in the Qing capital, frontier locations, and border markets. Qing historians must examine the Qing use of the Lifanyuan terms in non-Chinese language communications. As the Manchu and Mongolian sources are equally important for this purpose, this study will focus on the Manchu archives.

The First Historical Archives in Beijing holds three Manchu series in Qing-Russian affairs. The first is the twenty-four-volume Eluosi dang 俄罗斯档 (Russian Archives). It comes from the Grand Secretariat archives and covers the period of 1655–1850. The second is the ninety-one-volume Eluosi dang. It is the Grant Council archives and covers the Qianlong and Guangxu (1875–1908) reigns.²⁸ The third is Qingdai Zhong–E guanxi dang’an shiliao xuanbian 清代中俄关系档案史料选编 (Selected Qing archives on Sino–Russian relations), which is a Chinese translation of selected Manchu archives on Russian affairs and Russian letters to the Qing court, organized chronologically. The original plan for this title was to publish five sets of archival materials. However, only the first set for the years of 1653–1734 (two volumes) was published in 1981 and the third set, 1851–1862 (three volumes) in 1979.²⁹ In addition, Issue 3 of the 1987 Lishi yanjiu 历史研究 (The Journal of Historical Archives) published “Qianlong wushisinian Zhong–E maoyi shiliao xuanyi” 乾隆五十四年中俄贸易史料选译 (Selected translations of Sino–Russian commercial sources in the fifty-fourth year of Qianlong [1789]).³⁰ This translated source does not mention either the Menggu yamen or the Lifanyuan. Because I was unable to access the Manchu Russian Archives in the Manchu originals due to various reasons, I turned my investigation to my personal collection of Manchu archival sources: Manchu palace memorials (zouzhe 奏折), the volumes of routine memorials (tiben 题本) published in 2010, publications of translated Manchu archives, and studies of the Manchu archives. The chronological scope of my examination starts from 1654, when the Russian envoy from the tsar, representing the first Russian official visit to the Qing court and marking the beginning of the Lifanyuan charge in Russian affairs, visited the Shunzhi (r. 1643–1661) court.³¹ It extends to the last years of the Qianlong reign, where the Russian sourcebook ends. Evidence from the investigation is significant to address the name problems under consideration, even though the number of the archival items is small.

The officials of the capital city and the local administrators of high rank could both report on government work to the emperor and ask for instruction through the two memorial forms but by different procedures. The routine memorial was processed through the Tongzheng shisi 通政使司 “Office of Transmission” first and then the Grand Secretariat before it reached the emperor. The content of routine memorials was not strictly secret. In contrast, palace memorials were sent directly to the emperor by officials, many of them concerning frontier affairs. The emperor returned each memorial with his directives inscribed with the vermilion brush, also with no intervening institution. The content of this communication required strict secrecy. After the Kangxi emperor’s promotion of the palace memorial, it became the predominant form of emperor-official communication during and after the Yongzheng reign (1723–1735). Palace memorials, however, did not replace routine memorials. The two coexisted until 1901 when the routine memorials were abandoned.

Qingchao qianqi Lifanyuan Man-Mengwen tiben 清朝前期理藩院满蒙文题本 (Early-Qing Manchu and Manchu-Mongolian routine memorials, henceforth TB) combines 1,613 items, 917 Manchu and 696 Manchu-Mongolian bilingual, into twenty-four volumes. Only two of these, both dating from the Shunzhi reign, focus on Russian affairs and can assist in the investigation of the Lifanyuan’s name. Two Manchu memorials in my collection of thirty memorials from Gongzhongdang Kangxichao Manwen zhupi zouzhe 宫中檔康熙朝滿文硃批奏摺 (Manchu memorials with vermillion rescript of the Kangxi reign in the palace archive), jigoubao, stored at the First Historical Archives in Beijing,³² contain information significant for the purposes of this research note. One item is on Russian affairs written in the last year of the Kangxi reign (1722). The other is on Tibetan Buddhist Lamas residing in the capital city written in the second year of the Yongzheng reign (1724). (A few of the earliest Yongzheng-reign memorials were placed in this Kangxi package.) They provide clear evidence of the concurrent use of the Lifanyuan’s two Manchu names. In 1996, the lengthy volume Kangxichao Manwen zouzhe quanyi 康熙朝满文奏折全译 (Complete translation of the Manchu palace memorials of the Kangxi reign, henceforth KMY) was published. It provides researchers with 5,000 Manchu memorials, including those in the aforementioned microfilm box.³³ The original memorials in Manchu script, however, were not published along with the Chinese translation and have been, since then, no longer accessible for public use. Thus, the xeroxed images of the original Manchu memorials gathered during my 1994–95 trip have become invaluable for this research. Fortunately, some Manchu memorials of the Kangxi reign available in the Taiwan National Palace Museum were published in nine volumes in the 1970s. The following examples and analyses of these sources show that losing the original version of the memorials hinders researchers’ investigations of the Russian alternate terms for the Lifanyuan. The translated Manchu archives offer indirect, and therefore limited, support to the investigation.

The table below lists the two routine memorials (tiben) and three palace memorials (zouzhe) chronologically as tiben 1, tiben 2, zouzhe 1, zouzhe 2, and zouzhe 3. They show three different Manchu names for the Lifanyuan, which the Chinese language sources and the Chinese translation of the Manchu sources do not show. I have provided complete or partial transliterations and translations of them at the end of this research note.

The three Manchu names referring to the Lifanyuan are Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan (“the department which manages the outer regions,” Guanli waifan de buyuan 管理外藩的部院), Tulergi golo be dasara yamun (“the office which manages the outer regions,” Guanli wanfan de yamen 管理外藩的衙門), and Monggo jurgan (“Mongol department,” Menggu buyuan 蒙古部院, which usually appeared in Chinese sources as Menggu yamen 蒙古衙門). The Chinese translation KMY presents a similar 1696 case in which the Kangxi emperor used Monggo jurgan, as he did in zouzhe 3, when instructing his heir apparent. Its Chinese translation appears as ling menggu yamen yi lingcui chengyi songzhi zhenqian 令蒙古衙门一领催乘驿送至朕前 “[you should] order a corporal from the Menggu yamen to deliver the [letter] to me, the emperor, through the post stations.”³⁶ Another example comes from a 1706 memorial written by Funinggan, the minister of the Board of Personnel, to the Kangxi emperor. It states, yijiang menggu yamen zhushi Shi Zhong paiwang Hami 已将蒙古衙门主事石仲派往哈密 “have already sent the secretary of the Menggu yamen, Shi Zhong, to Hami.”³⁷ Readers not able to consult the Manchu originals cannot tell whether the Chinese phrase 蒙古衙門 translates Monggo yamun or Monggo jurgan. Still, these translated memorials suggest that both the emperor and Manchu officials in the later years of the Kangxi reign used Monggo yamun/jurgan to refer to the Lifanyuan in Manchu communications.

Looking through the Manchu routine memorials of the Qianlong reign, Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan was the standard term used by Lifanyuan officials when they identified their titles to the emperor. A record in the Heitudang (the Hetu archives) in the Mukden/Shengjing Palace, written in the fourteenth year of Qianlong (1749), attests to this fact. It says that tulergi golo be dasara jurgan i jergi yamun de daci damu manju hergen unggire bithe be baitalambi “The Yamen like the Lifanyuan has used Manchu script to conduct official writings from the very beginning.”³⁸ In his study of the Manchu Hetu dangse, Tong Yonggong, a noted scholar in Manchu language and archival studies, however, revealed that in the fourteenth year of Qianlong (1749), the Board of Revenue sent an instruction to regulate official written correspondence. In its Chinese translation, Menggu yamen ji lifanyuan xingwen hubu 蒙古衙门及理藩院行文户部 “The memorandum of the Monggo y amun and Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan to the Board of Revenue” appeared in the emperor’s instruction.³⁹ According to this translation, both the Manchu names for Lifanyuan were still used during the reign of Qianlong. While Monggo yamun was not the most standard form during this time, it nevertheless co- existed with Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan. All these archival documents prove that in the Manchu writing there was no sudden end to the use of Monggo yamun in 1638.

Corroborating evidence can also be found on the Russian side. Miasnikov’s study of the Russian envoys in Beijing during the last decade of the Kangxi reign shows that a Qing letter sent to the Russian court was signed by the Menggu yamen, but the returning letter from the Russian authority called this same office, in the Chinese translation, the “Beijing Office of Foreign Affairs” Beijing waiwu yamen 北京外务衙门.⁴⁰ This fact underscores the Manchu use of Monggo yamun in conversations with the Russian court. In addition, the Qing emperor’s letter to the Russian tsar was sometimes written only in Mongolian. The Kangxi emperor’s letter to the Russian tsar in 1688 was one such example.⁴¹ This leads us logically to inquire about the Mongolian name of the Lifanyuan. As mentioned above, in Mongolian, the Lifanyuan was still clearly identified as an office for the management of Mongolia. Thus, since in both Manchu and Mongolian languages, a mention of some kind of Mongol office might appear in the Qing letters to the Russian authorities, Russians were not likely to be surprised by the perception of the Lifanyuan as a Mongol affairs office, and the Russian tendency to name the Lifanyuan in seemingly random ways according to the Russian perspective can be better understood.

In sum, the influence of the Manchu language on bilateral communication was the primary reason for the Russian mixture, or confusion, of Monggo yamun and Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan, and for causing the multiple Russian names for the Lifanyuan. In relation to these mixings and confusions, the Russian perceptions of this Qing institution varied considerably over time, or even within the same time period.

A study of the Lifanyuan in Qing–Russian relations requires a nuanced analysis of variations in the Russian names for this Qing institution. A researcher must understand the simultaneously existing Manchu and Chinese linguistic worlds of the Qing dynasty. Political terminology, like everyday language, varied in these two worlds. It was in the Manchu language that the two empires communicated. Following 1638, when Menggu yamen no longer had a place next to its successor Lifanyuan, the Manchu Monggo yamun/jurgan accompanied the more prevalent Manchu term Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan from which the Chinese term Lifanyuan was derived. Whenever there was a bilateral conversation, whether it was for government work, trade, or other purposes, the Russians had only access to the Manchu language, in which the Mongolian translation played an important role. The early Qing policy to prohibit Chinese officials from undertaking Russian affairs of any kind had completely blocked Qing–Russian communication in the Chinese linguistic world.

The Manchu adherence to the Mongol roots of the Lifanyuan, as reflected in the lasting use of Monggo yamun in Manchu-language sources, provides a linguistic explanation for the Russian “Mongol attachment” in the conception of the Lifanyuan. This attachment was further strengthened by the Lifanyuan’s staff, which consisted exclusively of Manchus and Mongols, as well as the Qing-Russian contact points, which were also positioned along the Mongolian border, if not in the Qing court in Beijing. All these entangled elements in a specific language environment should have influenced the Russians in their understanding of the Lifanyuan with a “Mongol character.” It was owing to the Lifanyuan’s work in the Manchu linguistic world that the Russian knowledge and conception of the Lifanyuan took the shape as we see in Bantysh-Kamenskiǐ’s Russian sourcebook.