Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier (Hellenic Study Series) - Hardcover

David Brophy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674660374 ISBN 13: 9780674660373

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2016

Synopsis

The meeting of the Russian and Qing empires in the nineteenth century had dramatic consequences for Central Asia's Muslim communities. Along this frontier, a new political space emerged, shaped by competing imperial and spiritual loyalties, cross-border economic and social ties, and the revolutions that engulfed Russia and China in the early twentieth century. David Brophy explores how a community of Central Asian Muslims responded to these historic changes by reinventing themselves as the modern Uyghur nation. A diverse diaspora of Muslims from China's northwest province of Xinjiang spread to Russian territory and became enmeshed with national and transnational discourses of identity among Russia's Muslims. In the tumult of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rhetoric of Uyghur nationhood emerged as a rallying point. A shifting alliance of constituencies invoked the idea of a Uyghur nation to secure a place for itself in Soviet Central Asia and to spread the revolution to Xinjiang. Although its existence was contested in the fractious politics of the 1920s, in the 1930s the Uyghur nation achieved official recognition in the Soviet Union and China. Grounded in archives from across Eurasia, Uyghur Nation provides crucial background to the ongoing contest for the history and identity of Xinjiang.

About this title

Review:

"Uyghur Nation breaks new ground in the study of modern Xinjiang. David Brophy takes a transnational approach to the formation of a Chinese ethnic group, offering a convincing account of the impact of tsarist and particularly Soviet institutions, evolutions, and interventions on the Qing and then Republican Chinese frontiers. He also demonstrates that the idea of a Uyghur nation had a conflicted, cross-border, twentieth-century history. Perhaps most important, he unites political, intellectual, social, religious, even economic history to create a story rooted in local conditions, not simple national or ethnic categories. He has written a strikingly original and impressive book." --Jonathan Lipman, Mount Holyoke College

Drawing on sources in several languages, this book demonstrates how the idea of a Uyghur nation emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Brophy shows how intellectuals in Taranchi and Kashgari communities along the Xinjiang Russian border, inspired by academic writings on ancient Uyghurs, negotiated a new concept of Uyghur identity. This study is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Uyghur national idea, and to Central Asian and Xinjiang studies. --Ablet Kamalov, Institute of Oriental Studies, Almaty, Kazakhstan

In Uyghur Nation, Brophy transforms our understanding of the history of the Uyghurs. At the center of Brophy s attention is the question of how the Muslims of Chinese Turkistan came to imagine themselves as Uyghur. He traces the emergence of Uyghurist discourse by placing Uyghur history firmly where it belongs in the very center of Eurasia at the crossroads of three empires. Brophy relates the emergence of Uyghurist discourse to developments in Muslim societies of Xinjiang and beyond as they came to terms with pressures and influences from the Qing, the Russian, and the Ottoman empires. Prodigiously researched across many archives and in multiple languages, Uyghur Nation is a major work of transnational history that deserves a wide readership." -Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College

David Brophy's Uyghur Nation offers a fresh perspective on Uyghur history by using Russian, Chinese and Turkic sources to chart the development of the discourses that would ultimately produce the modern Uyghur identity [...] Brophy's book thus deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in nation-building. --Times Literary Supplement

About the Author:

David Brophy is a Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Sydney.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0674660374
• ISBN 13: 9780674660373
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368