Mongolian Allied League Autonomous Government

state · 1937–1939

Japanese-sponsored Mongol government formed in Hohhot in late 1937, during which the name 'Mengjiang' came into common use for the region.

The Mongolian Allied League Autonomous Government succeeded the Mongolian Military Government after a second Mongolian Congress met at Guisui (Hohhot) on October 27, 1937, following Demchugdongrub’s forces taking the city that month. It was formally inaugurated in Hohhot on December 1, 1937, headquartered in the former Suiyuan provincial government compound. The elderly Prince Yondonwangchug held the nominal chairmanship while Demchugdongrub, as vice chairman, headed its Department of Administration; Li Shouxin, more closely aligned with the Japanese military, served as commander in chief of the Mongolian Army (Jagchid; Zorigt, “Cooperation with the Japanese”).

It was around this time that the name “Mengjiang” entered common use for the combined territory, with the Japanese-run “Joint Committee of Mongolian Territories,” formed on November 22, 1937, unifying this government with puppet regimes in Southern Chahar and Northern Shanxi (Jagchid). Folding this government’s puppet-Chinese counterparts under one Japanese-controlled committee fits the pattern of leashed, counterweight-style sponsorship the Mengjiang entry describes at more length. That body is now built out in full as its own entry, the United Committee of Mengchiang; see that entry for how this atlas identifies it with Tuo’s “Mengjiang Federation Committee” and Boyle’s “United Committee of Mengchiang,” a high-confidence identification (four independent sources converge on the same November 22, 1937 date) though still the atlas’s own synthesis rather than a single source’s explicit equivalence statement.

Yondonwangchug died on March 20, 1938, and Demchugdongrub was elected chairman outright by a Third Mongolian Congress on July 1, 1938 (Jagchid). Jagchid’s chapter divisions place the government’s end in August 1939, after which it was reorganized into the Mongolian Allied Autonomous Government.

A second name and an unresolved internal tension in the source material

This atlas’s master chronology independently corroborates this government’s formation via Hirokawa 2024, and adds a name for it from Boyle 1972: the “Federated Autonomous Government of Mongolia,” which Boyle dates to a princes’ convocation on October 27–29, 1937, the same October 27 date already recorded above for this government’s founding Congress, headed by Yun Wang (Boyle p.127; see the Yondonwangchug entry for that identification). Two independent T1 sources, Boyle and Hirokawa, now converge on “Yun Wang” as this government’s chairman and on late October 1937 as its founding. This substantially strengthens what an earlier pass in this atlas had flagged only as a probable, unconfirmed identification (see the mapping table in this atlas’s project notes).

There is a wrinkle worth recording rather than smoothing over. The master chronology’s own summary genealogy of Mengjiang-era government bodies lists the October 27–29 “Federated Autonomous Government of Mongolia” convocation and this government’s December 1937 formal setup as two separate numbered items, even though both carry the same Chinese lineage name (蒙古聯盟自治政府) and the chronology’s own narrative log reads them as continuous stages of one process: a princes’ convocation that decided to form the government, followed by its formal inauguration and the occupation of Baotou. This atlas treats them as one government, consistent with how this entry has always presented the October 27 Congress and December 1 inauguration above, and records the chronology document’s own internal inconsistency here rather than either resolving it or importing it into this entry’s structure.

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.
D. Zorigt, “De Wang Begins Cooperating with the Japanese” (Олон Улс Судлал journal), cited above as “Zorigt, ‘Cooperation with the Japanese.’” Full publication year, volume, and issue are not established; see this atlas’s project notes for the consolidated citation-completeness flag.
John Hunter Boyle, 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.” See this atlas’s project notes for this source’s tier and single-source caveats, which apply to different material than what is cited here.
Hirokawa, Ajia Keizai 65, no. 4 (2024), cited above as “Hirokawa 2024.” T1 scholarly (Japanese, IDE-JETRO). This atlas holds only the material relayed via the master chronology, not the original article; see this atlas’s project notes for the citation-completeness flag.