This revised and updated edition of James Millward's 2007 history of Xinjiang is a highly accessible and welcome addition to the growing body of excellent scholarship on this deeply troubled region. Beginning in 2014, the government of China began to implement a series of harsh and repressive policies targeting the Turkic-Muslim Uyghurs, among others in the region. Human rights violations include religious repression, the destruction of the region's centuries-old religious infrastructure, the forced internment of well over one million Uyghurs in a growing network of prison camps, reports of torture, separation of children from their parents, forced sterilization, and much more. In this new edition, Millward has added a chapter that addresses events that unfolded in Xinjiang during the fifteen years that elapsed since 2007.
That final chapter is preceded by seven others. The first chapter makes the case for titling the book Eurasian Crossroads. Beginning even before the Bronze Age, readers learn about the ancient Tarim mummies and other archeological evidence that indicates an impressive level of human movement through the region, and settlement in it. By the Classical Period, the Indo-European Tokharians were the principal inhabitants of Xinjiang, living for some time under the rule of the nomadic Xiongnu, and then the Han Chinese. Moving forward to the sixth and seventh centuries, we find this Eurasian crossroads at the intersection of the Tang Empire, Tibetans, the nomadic Türks, the Iranian Soghdians, and then their Arab Muslim conquerors.
Chapter 2, “Central Eurasia Ascendant (9th–16th centuries),” begins with the migration of one segment of the earlier Türks Qaghanate, the historical Uyghurs, southward from the steppe into the Turfan Basin in what is now northern Xinjiang. There, they took up residence among the dominant eastern Iranian population in the region. This set the stage for a variety of successive migrations of Turkic and Mongolian peoples into the region, all of whom, along with the earlier Iranian peoples, constitute the ancestors of the modern Uyghurs.
The third chapter highlights the major historical processes on the eve of the modern age. With Mongol rule in decline, Millward introduces the proselytization efforts of Naqshbandi Sufis in the region, illustrating the process by which the ancestors of today's Uyghurs came to identify as Muslims. Secondarily, he addresses the friction between the Manchu Qing and the Zunghar Mongols, which culminated in the 1750s with the Qing westward campaigns, putting the region under Chinese control for the first time since the Tang era, a millennium earlier.
While previous chapters cover centuries, coverage from the late nineteenth century forward is considerably tighter. Following a series of rebellions and brief period of rule under the Khoqandi adventurer Ya‘qub Beg (r. 1865–77), the Qing recovered Xinjiang. Between that restoration and the Qing collapse in 1912, the Qing engaged in a sustained effort to consolidate authority and expand both agricultural production and international trade, primarily with Russia and Russian Central Asia. Focus then shifts to the period from the 1910s to the 1940s. Following the Qing collapse, the peoples of Xinjiang suffered severely under the rule of warlords and faced high levels of insecurity, conflict, and rebellion. Out of this mayhem came the Eastern Turkestan Republic (1933–34), which, while very short-lived, has continued to serve as an inspiration for Uyghur nationalists.
Under the rising People's Republic of China, the people of Xinjiang faced a multitude of administrative changes and infrastructure projects. During this period, the province of Xinjiang became a “Uyghur Autonomous Region,” which included a basketful of autonomous counties, districts, and prefectures designated for Mongols, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and others. The final chapter of the 2007 edition, “Between Two Worlds (1990s–2000s),” then illustrates the dramatic demographic shifts brought about by Han Chinese migration to Xinjiang and the effects of policies aimed to integrate Xinjiang more directly with the rest of China, and the outside world. This brought development and economic opportunities for Chinese business interests, but pushed Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples to the margins. By 1990, the central government was again enforcing repressive religious policies. In 2007, elevated tensions drove occasionally violent Uyghur resistance and forceful governmental responses.
Millward's new final chapter, “Colonialism, Assimilationism, and Ethnocide (2000s–2020s),” brings this story to the present day. In his prefatory comments, Millward characterizes this effort as “both an urgent task and a premature effort” (xxi), insofar as the ethnocide continues to unfold. The result is a heart-wrenching forty-one-page survey of the horrors that have since befallen not only activists and scholars, but millions of Uyghurs and other minority populations of Xinjiang. The chapter begins with the case of the Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, whose research examined the effects that China's highly extractive colonial-style economic policies have had in Xinjiang. Tohti is currently serving a life sentence in China for “separatism.” The chapter then weaves together recent scholarship to present the finest survey of the subject available.
Writing in 2007, Millward noted that Xinjiang was becoming more central to national and international affairs than had been the case for centuries. This revised and updated edition demonstrates that, as this process continues, it does so to the great detriment of the peoples who have long called it home.
