Talk:Outer Manchuria

From Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/2023/April#Outer_Manchuria:

I provisionally conclude that this sense of this term originates in the 21st century: see diff. This is a kind of unexpected result for me, which is why I bring it here-- I hope someone more adept can show me wrong, probably easily. I'm looking for unambiguous reference to territory inside Russia called 'Outer Manchuria' from the period 01 Jan 1980 to 12 Dec 1999 (or 01 Jan 1900 to 12 Dec 1999). The cites I have from Henry Kissinger &c. prove that the English langauge term 'Outer Manchuria' can refer to an area in Russia near to China as of circa 2010. But I would like to determine when this specific sense originated in English. For instance, did this term exist in 1990? 1980? Please note that some Google results talk about an 'outer Manchuria' that is inside China (the 'outer part' of Manchuria), for instance: "Like many urban youth of her generation, she was sent to a military farm in the Great Northern Wilderness of outer Manchuria to accept education from farmers and soldiers during the Cultural Revolution in 1969." That seems to be a reference to an area inside the PRC and not a reference to a place in the USSR. Something interesting to me is that I would expect Chiang Kai-shek's English literature from Taiwan to mention ROC claims on 'Outer Manchuria' (the English langauge term) if that term were an established term in the 20th century. Or failing that, I would expect Ivy League texts to mention this term in conjunction with territorial claims of the ROC. Yet I don't see it! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC) (Modified)Reply

After a few days, I am still not yet finding 'Outer Manchuria' (English term) referring to a Russian area before the year 2000, or perhaps 2005. (See also this Google Ngrams chart: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Outer+Manchuria%2CHaishenwei%2CHaishenwai&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true]. WOW!) I keep thinking that I will find an obvious case of 'Outer Manchuria' unambiguously inside Russia from a pre-2000 work and that all this will be rendered silly. Words like Haishenwai/Haishenwei/Hai-shen-wei are EASILY discoverable, back to the 19th century even. "outer Manchuria" in 20th century texts I'm looking at seems like northern Manchuria or border Manchuria- seems like Heilongjiang Province basically. (Also: there are a few books where "Outer" from Outer Mongolia on a map is connected via OCR mistake to nearby "Manchuria". And there seem to be a few uses like the figurative sense of Outer Mongolia/Timbuktu.) I think what has happened is this: there was an 'outer Manchuria' concept in 20th century literature. It referred to remote parts of the northeastern area of the PRC/ROC. 'outer' seems a good descriptor for this area in English, because I understand that this area is very remote and sparsely populated, and that central/southern Manchuria is less so. Then in the 21st century, that 'outer Manchuria' concept became equated with the territories outside PRC control inside Russia, because the analogy to the 'Outer Mongolia'/'Inner Mongolia' concepts was so strong. (see also diff) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC)Reply