Jabsar
Chahar town whose Chinese administrative name, Huade, was itself a political statement, and which became the seat of the Mongolian Military Government and the Chahar Provincial Mongolian Political Council after Bat-khaalag's political role collapsed in 1936.
Jabsar is the physical location, in the Shangdu Banner of the Chahar Tribe; Huade (also transliterated Dehua) is the Chinese administrative name imposed on it, and that act of naming was itself political, not neutral. Per Jagchid, the Chahar Provincial Government under Song Zheyuan ignored the Principles of Mongolian Local Autonomy, which allowed the Chahar Tribe to reorganize as a league and barred new Chinese administrative districts on Mongol territory without league and banner consent. Song blocked the league reorganization while establishing a “Huade preliminary xian” at Jabsar, part of a wider policy of what Jagchid calls “nibbling away” at Mongolian territory (Jagchid). The name was pointed: “the word Huade in Chinese means ‘winning over Prince De’” (Jagchid). A Chinese administrative label was placed directly over a Mongol banner, naming the government’s own aim of drawing Demchugdongrub into the Chinese fold. This entry’s name, “Jabsar,” is used throughout in preference to that imposed name.
Administrative and military center
Jabsar’s political importance grew as Bat-khaalag’s declined. After the Mongolian Political Council was ordered disbanded and its officials told to withdraw from Bat-khaalag (Bailingmiao) in 1936, following the death of Prince Sodnamrabdan, Nanjing established a new Chahar Provincial Mongolian Political Council at Jabsar in its place, with Demchugdongrub as chairman (Jagchid; see the Bailingmiao entry for that transition in full). The Mongolian Army’s headquarters moved from Sunid to Jabsar around the same time, and on May 12, 1936 the Mongolian Military Government was formally established at Dehua (Jabsar), adopting an official calendar counted from Temüjin’s elevation as Chinggis Khan in 1206, so that 1936 became “year 731” (Jagchid). See the Chinggis Khan worship / imagery entry for that calendar as part of a wider pattern of Chinggisid symbolism in the movement’s official acts.
Because of the town’s new importance, Li Shouxin was appointed its mayor, with his close friend Burinbiligtu (Zhang Zirong) as vice-mayor, who in practice carried out most of the mayoral duties (Jagchid). During the Suiyuan campaign later that year, Demchugdongrub’s own Second Army was deployed in western Chahar specifically to protect Dehua (Jabsar) while Li Shouxin’s First Army held the front line further east (Jagchid). That deployment is a measure of how much the movement’s leadership now had riding on this one administrative center, alongside Bat-khaalag itself. When Bat-khaalag fell to Fu Zuoyi that November, Jabsar’s position as the movement’s working capital only mattered more; see the Bailingmiao entry for that battle.
The Hua Teh / Teh Hua wordplay
A second account of the renaming comes from the historian John Hunter Boyle, drawing chiefly on Boyle’s own informant, John Gombojab Hangin. Per Boyle, shortly after the Mongolian Local Autonomous Political Council was inaugurated in April 1934, Chahar provincial authorities created a new hsien at Jabsar named Hua Teh 化德, in violation of an agreement barring further Chinese administrative encroachment on Mongol territory (Boyle, p.125). “Mongolian Local Autonomous Political Council” is Boyle’s own name for the same Pailingmiao body this atlas’s Mongolian Political Affairs Council entry covers; see this atlas’s project notes for that naming-variant reconciliation.
The name was, per Boyle, a specific piece of wordplay: 化德 reads on its face as “influence through virtue,” but can also be parsed as “assimilate Teh (De).” Demchugdongrub is said to have answered by reversing the two characters to 德化 Teh Hua, “virtue will pervade” (Boyle, p.125, citing Hangin, p.38). This claim rests on Boyle’s single informant, Hangin, and is recorded here as such. It is also a more specific gloss than Jagchid’s own characterization above, “the word Huade in Chinese means ‘winning over Prince De,’” and the two are set side by side here rather than merged, since they come from different informants relayed through different scholars.
Boyle’s own note on the same page records an alternative reading of who bore responsibility for the encroachment. Owen Lattimore attributed it not to the Chahar provincial government as such but to the “Shansi-Suiyuan interests” of the warlord Yen Hsi-shan, said to have sponsored a set of rival puppet councils, one per Mongol league, as a counter to Demchugdongrub’s own movement. On this reading, Demchugdongrub was, in Lattimore’s phrase, “tied hand and foot and thrown to the Japanese,” rather than acting as a willing defector (Boyle, p.125, n.4).
A competing, benign etymology
Not every account of the name Hua Teh reads it as pointed. This atlas’s master chronology records a second, administratively benign etymology, set here side by side with Hangin’s affront reading rather than resolving between them. On this account, 化德 (Hua Teh) was simply one of a set of four new Chahar hsien names built from a shared Confucian phrase, alongside Chongli, Shangyi, and Kangbao: an ordinary bureaucratic naming convention for newly created counties, not a targeted jab at Demchugdongrub specifically. On this account, the hsien was established in 1934 as a 設治局 (preliminary administrative bureau, matching the “Huade preliminary xian” already recorded above from Jagchid) split from the existing Kangbao and Shangdu banners. This atlas cannot adjudicate between this administrative reading and Hangin’s “assimilate Teh” wordplay reading above; both are recorded rather than one being preferred. The master chronology itself flags the precise founding month as unsettled even among the Chinese sources behind this benign reading. March, May, and September 1934 are all attested, and this is a separate uncertainty from, and not to be conflated with, the April 1934 Bailingmiao council’s own founding date recorded above.
The name’s persistence
The Chinese imposition, not Prince Teh’s reversal, is what endured, through a documented chain of renamings this atlas’s master chronology records as a genealogy: 化德設治局 (Hua Teh preliminary bureau), established 1934; renamed 德化 (Teh Hua) in 1936 under the Mongolian Military Government, per Jagchid’s account above; renamed again 新明縣 (Xinming County) in 1946 under the Nationalist government; and renamed a final time 化德縣 (Huade County) in 1949 under the Chinese Communist government, the name it holds today as part of Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia. This atlas does not have a specific, citable bibliographic entry for the “Chinese local histories” this genealogy is attributed to. No title, author, or publisher has been supplied, and that gap is flagged explicitly here rather than invented around; this is the same treatment this atlas gives Zorigt’s incomplete citations elsewhere (see this atlas’s project notes).
Sources
- Sechin Jagchid, The Last Mongol Prince: The Life and Times of Demchugdongrob, 1902–1966 (Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 1999), cited above as “Jagchid.” See the Sechin Jagchid entry for his biography and this atlas’s standing caveat on weighing his participant-partisan perspective.
- Boyle, John Hunter. China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. Chapter 7, “Inner Mongolia,” pp. 124–133, cited above as “Boyle.” Secondary, scholarly monograph (Stanford University Press). This atlas holds only the maintainer-supplied page range, not the full chapter or volume. The Hua Teh/Teh Hua wordplay gloss above rests on Boyle’s single informant, John Gombojab Hangin (thanked in Boyle’s acknowledgments); treat it as attributed via Boyle/Hangin, not independently corroborated. Distinct from James Boyd, a different, unrelated scholar cited elsewhere in this atlas; see this atlas’s project notes for the do-not-merge note.
- “Chinese local histories,” cited above for the benign etymology and the persistence genealogy (化德設治局 → 德化 → 新明縣 → 化德縣). Citation incomplete: no specific title, author, or publisher has been supplied to this atlas; this atlas’s master chronology itself cites this material only under this general label. Flagged as an open citation-completeness gap, not invented beyond what was supplied; see this atlas’s project notes.