East of Mecca

Blog Entry # 1 - Thoughts on Political and Cultural History of Xinjiang Region

A few words re the following quote from Millward and Perdue on "Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth Century".

"Finally, the Zunghar-Qing wars left an important national and geopolitical legacy. The fact that the Qing conquered up to, but not beyond, the Pamirs caused subsequent generations to think of the Tarim basin and Zungharia and Transoxiana as separate political units in a manner they had not done earlier. This began the process of leading the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang to conceive of themselves as a group distinct from other Central Asians and Turkic speakers. Thus, Beijing's eighteenth-century conquest of Xinjiang left historical fragments that all the disparate peoples of Xinjiang could eventually reassemble to creat new narratives of national unity."

It is suggested that the current situation in Urumqi – ethnic tension between the Uyghurs and Han Chinese – is the legacy of the Qing dynasty’s conquest of Xinjiang. Recently, the Ugyhur activist Rebiya Kadeer urges the world to pressure China on human rights matter and eventually this will lead to the claim of independence from China by the Uyghurs. In my opinion, it is unlikely that the Uyghurs will succeed in claiming their independence without the assistance of a third party as they are powerless on their own, and this party which supports the Uyghurs could reveal itself to be – as history has demonstrated so often – another invader of the region in the end!

Although my comment might seem a bit off topic, I am sure this is an issue we will revisit as the course progresses.