The area was known in European languages as Manchuria, as it was the homeland of the Manchu people who ruled China as its Qing dynasty from the 17th to early 20th century. The name was not used by the Qing themselves,[3] who called the area their "Three East" or "Eastern Provinces",[4][note 1] and its use is discouraged by the People's Republic of China, which associates the exonym with the Manchu puppet-state installed by the Imperial Japanese in 1932. It is known more specifically as Inner Manchuria when it needs to be distinguished from Outer Manchuria, the parts of Manchuria ceded to the Russian Empire through the Amur Acquisition in the 1850s.