The Early Modern Travels of ManchuA linguistic and historical study of the Manchu script in the early modern world Manchu was a language first written down as part of the Qing state building project in Northeast Asia in the early seventeenth century. After the Qing invasion of China in 1644, and for the next two and a half centuries, Manchu was the language of state in one of the early modern world's great powers. Its prominence and novelty attracted the interest of not only Chinese