Inner Asia Multi-Book Essays: Xinjiang Close-Up

1092 The Journal of Asian Studies
INNER ASIA
MULTI-BOOK ESSAYS
Xinjiang Close-Up
Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier. By
DAVID BROPHY. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. 387 pp.
ISBN: 9780674660373 (cloth, also available as e-book).
Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang. By TOM CLIFF. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2016. xi, 252 pp., 12 unnumbered pages of plates. ISBN:
022635993X (cloth, also available in paper and as e-book).
Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State. By JUSTIN M. JACOBS. Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 2016. Studies on Ethnic Groups in China. xvi, 297 pp.
ISBN: 9780295995656 (cloth, also available in paper and as e-book).
Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an

Eastern Market. By KWANGMIN KIM. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 2016. viii, 299 pp. ISBN: 9780804799232 (cloth, also available as e-book).
Constructing, Creating and Contesting Cityscapes: A Socio-Anthropological

Approach to Urban Transformation in Southern Xinjiang, People’s Republic of
China. By MADLEN KOBI. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016. vii, 214 pp. ISBN:
9783447105903 (paper).
doi:10.1017/S0021911817001024
In recent decades Xinjiang, portrayed as a political trouble spot, has gained broad
recognition in international media, which tend to rely on clichés of insurmountable con-
flict, ethnic unrest, and religious radicalization. Such stereotypical reporting is seldom
informed by scholarly engagement with the region, which has reached new heights
with five monographs published in 2016. These two anthropological and three historical
studies constitute important additions to existing scholarship. They shift attention away
from conflictual representations toward a much more nuanced understanding of the
complexities involved in historical processes since the early modern period, including
ongoing modernization and urban transformation. Xinjiang’s role as both pivot and
pawn in the greater scheme of global, national, and regional contexts, both past and
present, is illuminated by each one of these new books.
Kwangmin Kim’s historical study, Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing
Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market, takes the Qing expansion into Xinjiang in
the mid-eighteenth century as its point of departure, a process in which the Turkic-
speaking Muslim begs played a decisive role. The indigenous elites’ collaboration with
the Qing has been, by and large, ignored or deliberately overlooked both by contempo-
rary Uyghur elites and by modern scholarship focusing on Uyghur ethno-nationalism,
perhaps because it undermines the dominant narrative of the “Xinjiang problem,”
which presents the Uyghurs as victims and the Han and the Chinese leadership (both
party and government) as perpetrators.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of New England, on 02 Feb 2018 at 01:12:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,
available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911817001024
Book Reviews—Inner Asia 1093
Kim’s study, based on archival materials, argues that the Muslim headmen of seden-
tary farming communities supported the Qing in order to serve their own economic inter-
ests and thus contributed to the capitalist transformation of the political economy of
Xinjiang’s oases. They did this through developing and commercializing agriculture, con-
trolling human labor, organizing capital, and moving goods. Kim interprets these devel-
opments as part of the expansion of global commerce, in which international scholarship
until relatively recently has tended to emphasize the exceptional developmental path
taken by Europe. Challenging the narrative of European exceptionalism, Kim argues
that Europe and China followed comparable paths of capitalist and imperialist develop-
ment in their colonies and borderlands respectively. The oasis economies of Xinjiang
played a pivotal role in this process.
Each of Kim’s five chapters narrates the story of one or two borderland begs, focusing
on their careers, their role in the local economy, and their relations to the Qing. He
begins by exploring the complex process of the formation of the Qing alliance with the
Muslim elite against the Zunghars, as exemplified by the exploits of Emin Khoja from
Turfan in the eighteenth century. Kim argues that the Muslim begs actively sought this
alliance because the Zunghars posed a threat to the economic interests of the oasis com-
munities, whereas Qing support promised to open up Chinese markets. The begs’ com-
mercial enterprises are scrutinized through the activities of Udui, governor of Yarkand,
and his son Osman in the period of 1759–1825, which included both agricultural and
mining projects. This chapter demonstrates the mutual, almost symbiotic interdepen-
dence that developed between the Muslim begs and the Qing, whereby the former
took advantage of the empire’s reliance on their resource management while themselves
remaining entirely dependent on the Qing as protectors of the market.
A whole chapter is devoted to the careers of Jahangir and Yusuf, two saintly khojas well-
known for their prominent role in the anti-Qing resistance of Xinjiang’s Muslims in the early
nineteenth century. Refugee communities on the slopes of the Pamir and the Tianshan com-
prised social groups that had fallen victim to the expanding commercialization of the oasis
agriculture. Kim challenges earlier interpretations of these “Holy Wars” led by the khojas
as resistance of the conquered against the conquerors in religious guise by substituting it
with a novel explanation in terms of anti-capitalist sentiments. The khoja wars resulted in
an increased Qing military presence in Xinjiang, which facilitated production while simulta-
neously giving rise to a new imperial policy aimed at the development of agricultural colonies.
The latter provided new investment opportunities for the begs to whom such government
land was contracted out. Simultaneously, however, it also reproduced social problems,
which crystalized in increasing discontent with Qing rule and the beg regime. These pro-
cesses, together with the repercussions of the Opium War, were the ultimate causes of
the crisis of Qing military financing and the cessation of silver transfers from China to the
borderlands. What Kim calls the “global crisis of oasis capitalism” culminated in the khoja
rebellion of 1864, an event that created chaos and marked the demise of the beg system.
Inasmuch as it follows earlier scholars who pursued signs of capitalist development
outside Europe, Kim’s work is a continuation of a well-established historiographical tra-
dition. But it breaks with this tradition when it questions the practice of privileging the
European experience by using it as a yardstick against which non-European experiences
can be measured. This is achieved by means of a more “organic” definition of the concept
of capitalism, which puts the emphasis on the global interconnectedness of commercial-
ization (p. 10). While transregional connectivities had long been in place, the emergence
of the begs as local capitalist entrepreneurs was new. It stimulated local production to
supply the Chinese market with jade, horses, livestock, cotton, and grain, thus facilitating
the influx of New World and Chinese silver into Central Asia. This symbiotic relationship
between the beg capitalists of the oases and the Qing sheds new light on the latter’s
expansion into Central Asia by supplementing the hitherto dominant China-centered
scholarly paradigm with a focus on the borderlands.
The main sources utilized to delve into local history are primarily Manchu-,
Chinese-, and Russian-language materials, augmented by Turki contract documents
mostly accessed in Chinese translation, and Sayrami’s famous chronicle in Turki. A
brief introduction to the Chinese and Manchu sources, as for example in the case of a
“local tale” narrated in the beginning of chapter 2 (p. 47), would have been helpful.
This particular story is important because it serves as a prelude to Kim’s argument that
bringing economic prosperity is a new legitimation strategy on the part of Muslim
rulers in the region. Kim speculates that before Qing rule the khans and amirs would
have referred to military strength and judicial independence as ultimate justification to
their rule (p. 48). A closer look at the Central Asian Islamic tradition would have sug-
gested good governance, Chinggisid descent, Sufi connections, ancestors participating
in the Islamization process of a locality, and support for Islamic patronage of the arts
and learning as crucial elements constituting the repertoire at the disposal of Muslim
rulers as potential sources of legitimation. Central Asian terms such as “Sart” (p. 99),
“baranta” (p. 102), or “white bones” are treated at face value as they appear in the
sources used, without reference to the scholarly literature exposing the complexity of
such terms. Such minor omissions, however, are outweighed by Kim’s skillful outlining
of his main tenets (even if the frequent repetition of these is a little overdone).
Studies that privilege economic factors and rational choices over cultural, religious,
and other considerations, however compelling they might appear, are generally vulnera-
ble to suspicions of reductionism. Nonetheless, Kim’s more specific claims, which present
the White Mountain supporters as economic refugees, interpret the khoja rebellions in
terms of an anti-capitalist movement, and see Qing expansion as an important stimulus
for capitalist production and the begs’ cooperation with the Qing and the Qing military pres-
ence in the light of market protection, will no doubt stimulate future research precisely
because of the major challenge they pose to accepted academic wisdom. New data com-
bined with a focus on the entanglement of economic, religious, and cultural factors will
further substantiate or refute Kim’s extraordinarily bold claims. Regardless of the
outcome, as it stands, Borderland Capitalism constitutes a fresh approach to a hitherto
under-researched period of Xinjiang and Qing history; it will no doubt stimulate further dis-
cussion both in East Asian regional history and in economic history more generally.
Anglophone scholarship concerning modern Uyghur and Xinjiang history has long
been content to reproduce the assumption that the modern, twentieth-century
concept of an Uyghur ethnos or nation owed its existence to a Soviet Turkologists’ deci-
sion taken to this effect at a conference in Tashkent in 1921. In Uyghur Nation: Reform
and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier, David Brophy revisits the origins of the
Uyghur nation and the result is a profound study characterized by rich raw data, analytical
depth, and scientific rigor. This is achieved by means of a complex analytical framework,
which allows Brophy to explore sources in Russian, Chinese, and Turkic.
The scene is set by an overview of regional history and its main protagonists. Accord-
ing to Brophy, Uyghur nationhood had its roots simultaneously in multiple sources,
ranging from local Islamic tradition to transnational pan-Turkic ideas and foreign Orien-
talism. The historical backdrop to the emerging discourse was provided by the process of
the construction of a colonial frontier. Chinese and Russian Turkistan became increas-
ingly clearly demarcated administrative entities inhabited by diverse populations
divided by distinct senses of imperial subjecthood (political affiliation) but held together
by shared linguistic, religious, and cultural orientations. Russian empire building opened
up Xinjiang to influences emanating from Russian Muslims and the Ottoman Empire.
Jadidist (Muslim reformist) discourse flourished in the space created by the Qing
Empire’s relative indifference toward religion. The sense of belonging to China’s Muslim
community had equal resonance among members of the two distinct diaspora communities
living on Russian territory—the traders from Southern Xinjiang known as Kashgaris and the
Taranchis, exiles from Xinjiang’s Ili valley—in spite of the fact that for the former it was
contemporary political reality while for the latter it constituted a distant memory.
The demise of the Qing Empire and the proclamation of the Chinese Republic
resulted in what Brophy terms a racial turn in the discourses of Xinjiang’s Muslims.
Muslims in China now became classified as one of the nation’s five races, alongside the
Han, the Manchus, the Mongols, and the Tibetans. Western concepts of race transmitted
via the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire and of Russia—one promoting pan-Turkism, the
other narrower ideals of nationalism—both found resonance among the Muslims of
Xinjiang.
The Russian civil war had devastating consequences for the Taranchis and put pres-
sure on the Kashgari diaspora living in Russian Turkistan. Due to their diverging histo-
ries and different structural positions, the two communities continued to cultivate a
sense of difference that eventually exerted considerable influence upon modern
Uyghur nationalist discourse, catalyzed of course by the Soviet national delimitation.
Differences in political subjecthood (the Kashgaris were Chinese subjects while the
Taranchis were Russian/Soviet subjects) and economy (the former were traders and
seasonal laborers, the latter farmers) could be overcome by developing a unified com-
munal identity around the concept of “Uyghur,” which would fit the Soviet ideal of
nationality and allow members of the community to benefit from Soviet resource
allocations.
Old communal boundaries doggedly persisted, however, which explains why in the
early Soviet period political affiliation (subjecthood) rather than ethnicity played a deci-
sive role in delineating communities. This is exemplified by the initial inclusion of the
Dungans (later Hui, i.e., Chinese Muslims) in the conceptual category of Uyghur,
before it was narrowed to exclude them. As a result of increasing Soviet influence, by
1935 Xinjiang’s communities were forced into the straitjacket of nationalities. In contrast
to Soviet practice, however, Taranchis were still defined as a separate group. In the 1940s,
northwest Xinjiang came under Soviet political influence and Uyghur ethnonationalism
dominated, while the Chinese nationalists controlling the rest of the region supported
pan-Turkic ideologies. These ideological and political contestations came to an end
after 1949 when the Chinese Communists imposed Stalin’s approach to nationalities
and solidified the Uyghur ethnic category as we know it today. Brophy concludes that
the complex processes involved in the construction of the modern Uyghur nationality
are insufficient to explain ongoing conflict in Xinjiang (p. 265).
Brophy’s transnational narrative situates the discursive emergence of the Uyghur
nation(ality) at the intersection of Chinese, Russian/Soviet, and Islamic/Ottoman imperial
and local (i.e. subnational) histories. He contributes to the New Qing History but also
critiques it by pointing out that a Qing-centered history, though an improvement over
China-centered historiography, is still too limited to do justice to Xinjiang as a multiple
imperial periphery. Brophy acknowledges circumspectly that his study does not deal
with grassroots responses to nationalist agitation (p. 265). Rather, he briefly takes issue
with earlier studies that have sought proto-ethnic forms of identification in the pre-
socialist period, since he can convincingly demonstrate that the ethnic associations of
the concept of Uyghur were a secondary, later development preceded by communal
identities primarily rooted in religion and subjecthood.
Contrary to accepted academic wisdom, which locates the origins of the modern
Uyghur nation primarily in the classificatory activities of socialist states, Brophy opens up
complex vistas of transnational (primarily Ottoman and Russian Muslim intellectual)
ideas. He draws on an impressive spectrum of archival and published sources (including Jap-
anese, Mongolian, and Persian as well as Chinese, Russian, and Turkic). The wealth of
sources and the ensuing overabundance of detail are both virtue and hindrance; while
they enhance Uyghur Nation’s credibility and amply support the work’s main arguments,
the surfeit of information sometimes impedes readability, in spite of Brophy’s clear prose
style. Some readers might prefer to sacrifice some of the minutiae to enable more engage-
ment with existing scholarship on the subject, such as Ondrej Klimeš’s recent study of
Uyghur nationalist discourse in the first half of the twentieth century, many of whose
claims Brophy’s book implicitly argues against.1 But such minor points aside, it is fair to con-
clude that Brophy’s analysis of how a diffuse “Uyghurist” discourse became broad enough to
accommodate narrowly delineated nationalist programs with supra-national, pan-Turkist
visions is a monumental achievement, setting new standards with its impressive scholarship.
At this point it is appropriate to turn to Justin Jacobs’s study of the republican period,
Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State, which I have reviewed elsewhere in more detail.2
Jacobs compares and contrasts the strategies employed by the power-holders of three
consecutive Chinese political formations (late imperial, republican, and early socialist)
to deal with the diversity of China’s western borderlands. He pays equal attention to
what Han officials actually did in practice, rather than engaging exclusively with their
abstract political discourses. Explicitly taking his cue from the New Qing History and
building on the insights of recent scholarship on other Eurasian continental empires,
Jacobs convincingly demonstrates the ways in which modern China resembled (but
also differed from) its imperial predecessor.
Jacobs coins the term “national empire” to characterize modern China, thus avoiding
the heavily laden concepts of imperialism and colonialism. In a highly readable narrative
that privileges the perspective of Han officials serving in Xinjiang, he describes officials’
pragmatic adjustments to new realities in the face of the threats emanating from both
Han and non-Han nationalisms, as well as from Soviet political designs. Although it
makes some use of both Russian and Chinese archival sources, Xinjiang and the
Modern Chinese State is characterized by a heavy reliance on published Chinese
sources. This does not diminish its value as a new political history of Xinjiang’s Han-
dominated governance in the first half of the twentieth century, which simultaneously
doubles as a narrative of the emergence of modern China.
Shifting the focus from past to present, I now turn to two new ethnographic studies.
Building on well-known anthropological theories, Madlen Kobi investigates contempo-
rary urbanization processes in Constructing, Creating and Contesting Cityscapes: A
Socio-Anthropological Approach to Urban Transformation in Southern Xinjiang,
People’s Republic of China, a study that is innovative in at least two respects. While exist-
ing academic treatments of the subject focus mainly on eastern China, this is a pioneering
exploration of the transformation of urban space in Xinjiang, a region which, compared to
the coastal areas, has experienced large-scale urbanization only recently. In addition, her
1
Ondrej Klimeš, Struggle by the Pen: The Uyghur Discourse of Nation and National Interest, c.
1900–1949 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). For Brophy’s review of this monograph, see Journal of Asian
Studies 75, no. 1 (2016): 235–36.
2
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 80, no. 1 (2017): 178–80.
approach privileges a grassroots, bottom-up perspective, which also represents a certain

deviation from the bulk of the literature.
Although she acknowledges the inspiration of Henri Lefebvre, space analysis is only one
aspect among many others deployed by Kobi to make sense of urban transformation. Her
methods were constrained by the difficulties faced by all foreign researchers when trying
to collect empirical data in Xinjiang. Relying on informal interviews conducted in Chinese
in rapidly urbanizing districts of southern Xinjiang, namely Aksu and Kashgar, Kobi partic-
ipated in mundane group activities ranging from shopping to cab rides and visiting sporting
and cultural events. Writing her field diary from memory at the end of the day, she supple-
mented her empirical data with materials gleaned from published documents (to the extent
that these were available). In her overview of the political economy of Xinjiang’s rapid urban-
ization, Kobi pays special attention to institutional decision-making processes on the one
hand and the connections between ethnic discontent and infrastructural development on
the other. She then explores ongoing transformations of the urban morphology in Aksu
through combining statistical data with narratives told to her by residents from all walks
of life. Making use of theories of segregation and ethnic identity, she analyzes public
spaces ranging from squares to “food spaces,” the bazaar, and the mosque, all of which
serve as sites for performing ethnic identity. Urban residential communities include tradi-
tional neighborhood centers around the mosque; the socialist work unit (danwei), which
combines workplace and residence; and the more recent development of administrative
and commercialized communities, which, befitting the rapidly expanding socialist market
economy, provide opportunities for both residence and real estate investment.
The geographical focus shifts in chapter 6 from Aksu to Kashgar. Kobi discusses the
infamous redevelopment of the Old Town that some years ago aroused international
indignation and criticism. The ensuing reconstruction of new, “ethnic style” housing is
skillfully described through the narratives of local residents, highlighting intersecting
but divergent representations of both the gains and the human costs of this particular
instance of urban development.
Conceptualizing her subject matter in terms of “capitalist urbanization,” Kobi situates
her work in the broader context of national processes, which she perceives as an inevitable
outcome of political and economic interests represented and acted out by a multiplicity of
institutions and state officials. She pays close attention to the effects of internal migration
and the needs of the emerging middle classes in post-reform China. Land-grabbing may be
detrimental for traditional livelihoods, but simultaneously it provides new financial oppor-
tunities for some villagers in the form of urban residence and compensation. These ambiv-
alent developments, together with the reconstruction of traditional old towns as protected
heritage sites, do not benefit all Uyghur residents equally; on the contrary, they contribute
to the widening gap between middle-class and lower-class Uyghurs.
This timely, well-written, and important account fully delivers what it sets out to do; it
is nicely produced and illustrated with a number of useful maps, tables, and photographs.
Small irritants include Kobi’s orthography of Kashgar as Kaxgar, a few imprecise details in
the summary of pre-socialist history (pp. 28–31), and a few of what Kobi calls “method-
ological digressions.” The unevenness of the ethnography is no doubt due in part to field-
work constraints. For example, a whole subsection is devoted to mosques as Uyghur
spaces, but this is not supported by ethnographic data.
Tom Cliff’s ethnographic study, Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang, is located in
Korla, capital of the Bayingguoleng Mongol Autonomous Prefecture in Southern Xinjiang.
Described by Cliff as a “‘palimpsest’ of post-Han settlement in Xinjiang” (p. 4) and with 70
percent of its total population Han, thanks to its hydrocarbon resources, Korla presents a
laboratory in which to investigate Han immigration patterns into Xinjiang’s urban centers.
The value of such a study cannot be emphasized enough, since Han presence in Xinjiang,
though always invoked as one of the main causes of Uyghur discontent, has hardly been
investigated hitherto. Cliff’s theoretical scaffolding includes the concepts of empire, colo-
nialism, center-periphery relations, and the “new imperialism,” which combines domina-
tion and exploitation with development. Due to the ethnic division of space and the
limited interaction even when space is shared, the otherwise absent Uyghur make their
presence felt, justifying extreme security measures and making Xinjiang different from
the rest of China. Oil and water constitute important resources in Xinjiang, enabling and
sustaining Han immigration, but Cliff’s title also stands as an apt metaphor for the very dif-
ferent experiences of the Han and Uyghur living in Xinjiang.
Han experiences are transmitted through words and evocative images. The latter are
intended to be more than mere illustration; the images open up alternative vantage points
for the reader to access the experiences of the protagonists. Data collection was carried
out over the course of two years between 2007 and 2010. The representation of Han
internal diversity is organized around categories of identity that circulate in everyday con-
versation, doing ample justice to the emic perspective favored by anthropologists.
The focus is primarily on the experiences of long-term Han residents employed in
the oil industry and people with past or current connections to the bingtuan (the Produc-
tion and Construction Corps). The quintessential protagonist is the constructor, while the
main casualties of the demolition and rebuilding of urban villages in Korla have been
Uyghurs. The constructor’s central role in the development and the social transformation
of Xinjiang looms large in the discourse of recent migrants. In a metaphorical sense, all
Han in Xinjiang are constructors. However, the concept is used by Han with a longer
history of residing in Xinjiang in a different sense in order to draw boundaries
between themselves and the recent arrivals. Such discourses of difference are deployed
by people with bingtuan connections who claim for themselves archetypal constructor
status by insinuating that they have made a decisive contribution to nation-building
and fulfilled a civilizing mission on China’s restive periphery.
In addition to the quasi-military bingtuan, the other major organization that has trans-
formed Korla from a primarily agricultural settlement into Xinjiang’s second city has been
the Tarim Oilfield Company, which increasingly displaced the bingtuan in the 2000s as the
primary agent of change. Shared structural features aside, the two are also intimately con-
nected through individual biographies: Mr. Jia, for example, was a bingtuan child who has
become a high-ranking employee of the oil company. The theme of social mobility is
expanded in chapter 3, where Cliff looks at the status and hierarchies of employees in
the oil company and emphasizes continuities between the traditional danwei and the con-
temporary oil compound in terms of the wide range of benefits and services they provide
for their permanent employees, and the relatively low social mobility. Both here and in the
bingtuan, marriage choices are constrained by socioeconomic status. Characterized by
deep-seated paternalism and a general acceptance of existing hierarchies, the oil compound
is portrayed as a site of transition, where individual and institutional aspirations get entan-
gled with the state’s wish to perpetuate economic and social stability.
The two patterns that emerge in the life-histories of veteran employees of the Tarim
Oilfield Company are summed up as legends of hardship and sacrifice and legends of
potential. Cliff distinguishes the narrative strategies of the older generation from those
of persons born after 1970; the former put the emphasis on the constraints imposed
upon them by social structure, but the latter tend to foreground personal agency in
line with the increased individualism characteristic of the new discursive environment
in which they grew up. Similar themes are pursued in later chapters relating the experi-
ences of non-oil-company Korla residents (all of whom were brought up in the bingtuan),
where Cliff demonstrates the importance of guanxi for strengthening group cohesion and
contributing to the normalization of Han cultural, political, and economic hegemony.
At the end of Oil and Water, Cliff turns to analyze the large-scale violence that
erupted in Urumqi in July 2009 and its aftermath. He criticizes the dominant view
that Xinjiang has an Uyghur problem and puts forward the idea that Xinjiang in fact
has a Han problem. Predicated on a partnership of mutual dependence between the
Han population of Xinjiang on the one hand and the party and the government on the
other, Cliff argues that the key to Xinjiang’s stability lies in the hands of the Han main-
stream. The narrative of a Uyghur threat to this stability needs to be maintained in
order to perpetuate the idea of a permanent state of emergency in Xinjiang, which jus-
tifies extraordinary securitization policies and further economic investment from the
center. This in turn mitigates growing socioeconomic inequalities within the Han and
contributes to strengthening ethnic solidarity among them. This argument runs against
accepted wisdom according to which the center’s (or core’s) ultimate aim is the integra-
tion of an ethnically defined periphery. Cliff demonstrates instead that the legacy of
imperial logic makes this integration not only impossible but also undesirable, since
full integration would jeopardize the very raison d’être of the center.
Faithful to the well-established traditions of their discipline, Kobi and Cliff rely on
ethnographic methods augmented by the use of available published materials, while
the historians discussed earlier depend on a range of archival sources. Both disciplines
are constrained by accessibility issues, and the anthropologist is particularly vulnerable
to political fluctuations. Kim, Brophy, and Jacobs all make a case for replacing a China-
centered framework with a focus on Xinjiang. Extraordinary linguistic expertise in the
case of Brophy and the analytical skills of all three authors enable them to do justice
to many (if not all) the complexities of historical processes. Where Kim and Jacobs inter-
pret the nature of Chinese (imperial and republican) control of Xinjiang and the ways in
which subjecthood was manipulated, Brophy’s exploration of the emergence of Uyghur
nationalism situates the process at the intersection of empires. Where Brophy attributes
agency to the headmen of trading colonies, the aqasaqal, the Jadids, and numerous other
local actors on both sides of the Sino-Russian border, Kim emphasizes the proactive role
of the beg-managers in exploiting the economic advantages offered by Qing protection.
Jacobs’s exploration of Han ethnopolitical engineering from the perspective of Han offi-
cials can also be read as a study of agency, complementing Brophy’s work on Uyghur
nationalism. In a way, all three historians challenge dominant scholarly paradigms.
Jacobs does so by conceptualizing the modern Chinese state as a “national empire” in
which strategies of control over Xinjiang were consistently informed by power holders’
perceptions of ethnic diversity. Brophy’s study replaces the paradigmatic view of the cre-
ation of the modern Uyghur nation with a more nuanced history that emphasizes local
forces operating across political borders. He converges with the anthropologist Cliff in
asserting that these processes of identity formation among Uyghurs do not provide a sat-
isfactory explanation for ongoing conflict in Xinjiang. Kim makes the most direct connec-
tions to global economic history, challenging endemic Eurocentrism and claiming a
proactive role for the borderlands and their entrepreneurs in the making of Eurasian
commercial and capitalist history.
Like the historians, Kobi and Cliff both touch upon important facets of Chinese
domination. But while the historians urge moving away from the China-centered frame-
work of earlier scholarship, these two anthropologists in some ways do the opposite by
bringing a Chinese perspective into their study of Xinjiang. Socioeconomic factors, devel-
opment, and modernization are important points of reference in both studies, as are the
threads that connect Xinjiang to the rest of China, both structurally and through personal
links. Both ethnographers are to some extent biased toward the affluent middle classes,
though these elites clearly differ from the elite agency dominating the historical studies.
The focus on capitalist urbanization in Kobi’s study and on entrepreneurs in that of Cliff
hark back to Kim’s perception of the begs, just as Cliff’s understanding of the extension of
guanxi to certain “willing Uyghurs” reminds us of the begs’ economically motivated
collaboration with the Qing.
In sum, 2016 was a bumper year for Xinjiang-related monographs. Very different in
topics, approaches, and execution, all five works can be credited with originality in their
choice of subject matter, all introduce new perspectives to challenge existing assump-
tions, all favor an actor-centered approach by foregrounding flesh and blood individuals
(data permitting), and all have relevance to political and identity discourses and the dis-
tribution of power in contemporary Xinjiang. All make important contributions to
ongoing discussions within their respective disciplines and beyond; the 2016 crop sets
new academic standards and is likely to shape research on this region in both national
and transnational contexts for many years to come.
ILDIKÓ BELLÉR-HANN
University of Copenhagen
ildiko@hum.ku.dk
SINGLE-BOOK ESSAYS
The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. By

PETER JACKSON. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2017. xx, 614 pp.
ISBN: 9780300125337 (cloth, also available as e-book).
doi:10.1017/S0021911817001036
In Monty Python’s Life of Brian there is a classic scene where the Jewish “terrorists”
discuss their plans to “dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State,”
which, as the leader, Reg (played by John Cleese), says has “bled us white, the bastards.
They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our
fathers’ fathers.”
But then the discussion quickly turns to what the Romans had actually given Pales-
tine. Reg summarizes it as follows: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine,
education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health,
what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Xerxes: “Brought peace.”

Reg: “Oh. Peace? Shut up.”
Empires are obviously very complicated realities that invariably generate both boost-
ers and critics. In the case of the Mongol empire, the last twenty-five years have wit-
nessed a scholarly turn—one that coincidentally correlates well with the post–Cold
War neoliberal agenda—that may be deemed as being on the booster side of the

Inner Asia Multi-Book Essays: Xinjiang Close-Up

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Inner Asia Multi-Book Essays: Xinjiang Close-Up

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1092 The Journal of Asian Studies

Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an

Constructing, Creating and Contesting Cityscapes: A Socio-Anthropological

approach privileges a grassroots, bottom-up perspective, which also represents a certain

The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. By

Xerxes: “Brought peace.”

You might also like