Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang

James A. Millward

Paperback, 536 pages

Revised Edition

9781787383340

Xinjiang, the vast northwestern region comprising one sixth of the PRC today, borders on India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Russia and Mongolia. Since antiquity it has stood at the crossroads between China, India, the Mediterranean and Russia. In recent decades its historic silk road linkages have grown increasingly global, with issues of energy, development, separatism and terrorism bringing the region into the news. James Millward draws on primary sources and scholarly research in several European and Asian languages to provide the first general account in English of the history of Xinjiang and its peoples from earliest times to the present.

He discusses Xinjiang’s world historical role as a commercial entrepot and cultural conduit by which Buddhism, Christianity and Islam entered China and its interactions with Tibetan, Mongol and other Inner Asian empires as well as with Chinese dynasties. Eurasian Crossroads also examines the competing Chinese and Turkic nationalist visions of the region’s status in modern times and the recurring dissent and rapid development under the PRC. Within the broad perspective of this book it emerges that the factors underlying historical change in the region – its natural environment and geography, its physical location at the overlap of cultural realms and its legacy of ethno-linguistic diversity – remain as relevant to Xinjiang’s future as to its past.

Contents

1. Ancient Encounters (earliest times - 8th century)

2. Central Eurasia Ascendant (9th-16th centuries)

3. Between Islam and China (16th-19th centuries)

4. Between Empire and Nation (late 19th-early 20th century)

5. Between China and the Soviet Union (1910s-1940s)

6. In the People’s Republic of China (1950s-1980s)

7. Between China and the World (1990s-2000s)

8. Colonialism, Assimilationism and Ethnocide (2000s-2020s)

Appendix: Xinjiang Historical Timeline