Kitad: The Dual Meaning of "Chinese" and "Slave" in Qing Mongolia

This presentation explores the use of the Mongolian word kitad, which means “Chinese” or “China,” as a term of slavery in Mongolian literary and administrative contexts from the 16th and 19th centuries. While kitad originally referred to Kitans of the medieval Liao Dynasty, and then later China and Chinese people, it also took on the meaning of "slave" in the early modern period after the dissolution of the Mongol Empire. I trace out the use of kitad as “slave” in Mongolian language literary works, legal codes, lexical works, and archival records related to emancipation and fugitive capture. I suggest that the diminishing use of kitad as “slave” in literary and official contexts in the 18th century was due to Qing literary censorship as the term was not only associated with the Chinese but also with the Manchu ruling house, making it a potentially anti-Manchu and anti-Qing term and therefore taboo. Nonetheless, use of the term persisted in records of colloquial Mongolian and in Buryatia in the Russian Empire. By examining language as a site of contestation at the intersection of ethnic and hierarchical categories, this paper complicates formalistic approaches to social histories of slavery in the Qing and draws our attention to the complexities of trans-lingual practices in imperial frontiers.