Page "Treaty of Nerchinsk" Paragraph 9

The language used was Latin, the translators being, for the Russians, a Pole named Andrei Bielobocki and for the Chinese the Jesuits Jean-Francois Gerbillon and Thomas Pereira.

To avoid problems of precedence, tents were erected side by side so that neither side would be seen as visiting the other.

G. P.

March remarks that there were no mandarins with them, since the journey had to be made on horseback and few Chinese gentlemen had mastered this undignified skill.

However, there was little need for Chinese mandarins, just as there was no need for an immediate Chinese translation.

The language of the Qing court remained Manchu at this time, and Manchu continued to be the " official " court language into the eighteenth century.

Perhaps more significantly, Russian acceptance of the treaty required a relaxation of what had been, in Ming ( the former dynasty ) times, an iron rule of Chinese diplomacy, requiring the non-Chinese party to accept language which characterized the foreigner as an inferior or tributary.

The conspicuous absence of such linguistic gamesmanship from the Treaty of Nerchinsk, together with the equally conspicuous absence of Chinese language or personnel, suggests that the Kangxi emperor was using the Manchurian ( and Latin ) language as a deliberate end-run around his more conservative Han bureaucracy.

This was a tactic regularly used by early Qing emperors in matters which were particularly delicate or confidential.