In The Early Modern Travels of Manchu, Mårten Söderblom Saarela shows how-through observation, inference, and reference to ideas on language and writing-intellectuals in southern China, Russia, France, Choson Korea, and Tokugawa Japan deciphered the Manchu script and the uses to which it was put: recording sounds and arranging words.

Conventions
Introduction. A Cultural History of the Manchu Script
Chapter 1. To Follow Fuxi or Kubilai Khan? Written Manchu Before 1644
Chapter 2. The Beijing Origins of Manchu-Language Pedagogy, 1668-1730
Chapter 3. Phonology and Manchu in Southern China and Japan, c. 1670-1716
Chapter 4. Manchu Words and AlphabeticalOrder in China and Japan, 1683-1820s
Chapter 5. Leibniz's Dream of a Manchu Encyclopedia and Kangxi's Mirror, 1673-1708
Chapter 6. The Manchu Script and Foreign Sounds from the Qing Court to Korea, 1720s-1770s
Chapter 7. The Invention of a Manchu Alphabet in Saint Petersburg, 1720s-1730s
Chapter 8. The Making of a Manchu Typeface in Paris, 1780s-1810s
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments