The Turks in World History by Carter Vaughn Findley

Author:Carter Vaughn Findley
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2005-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

East Turkistan

With the division of Central Asia between Russia and China, the historic Turkic territories of the Tarım basin and vicinity passed under Chinese rule in 1759 as Xinjiang, the “new province”—a province larger than Alaska and three times the size of France.43 Far from being motivated by sinocentrism, the ethnically Manchu Qing emperors made Xinjiang a family possession of the dynasty rather than integrating Xinjiang into the Chinese provinces. The shaved forehead and queue that Han Chinese men were required to wear as a sign of submission to the Qing likewise were not enforced on East Turkistanis. The Qing left considerable autonomy to the indigenous Turkish-speaking Muslims and forbade Chinese immigration. The result was a large measure of peace and contentment until after 1810. Then uprisings began, led by successors of the seventeenth-century khwajas (here, Nakshibendi Sufi sheykhs) with support from the khanate of Khokand to the west. In Xinjiang, relations between the Muslims and the Chinese and Manchus began to break down. In 1835, China had to conclude a treaty with Khokand that infringed Chinese sovereignty in Xinjiang and granted Khokand extensive rights. Thereafter, some Chinese statesmen suggested strategic retreat from the region, whereas others advocated colonization by Han Chinese and an increased military presence. The latter option appealed increasingly to the Qing regime as its ability to control the region’s Muslim population diminished.

As a result, the Khoja jihad flared from 1847 on. After the revolt of the Chinese Muslims (Tungan) in Gansu and Xinjiang provinces in the 1860s, Qing control of Xinjiang collapsed. The Russians occupied the Ili valley, and a Khokandi army under Muhammad Yakub Beg (1820–77) invaded. Yakub established himself as ruler of a Muslim state, Yettishahr, or “Seven Cities” (Kashgar, Khotan, Yarkand, Yangihisar, Aksu, Kucha, and Korla, 1867–77). In a context of Russo-British rivalry over the “Great Game in Asia,” Yakub attracted considerable international attention, including some from the Ottomans, receiving honors from them and minting coins in the name of their sultan, Abdülaziz (1861–76). That did not save him from defeat by the Chinese, after which Xinjiang was integrated into the normal system of provincial government in 1884, albeit with a menacing growth of Russian interests and influence.

With the Chinese revolution of 1911, Xinjiang became a province of the Republic of China. Xinjiang felt the effects of World War I and revolution, with the influx of Kyrgyz and Kazakh refugees from Russian territory, and again in 1920 when anti-Bolshevik White forces retreated from Russia into Xinjiang. The ferment of the times stimulated the growth of nationalism among Muslim Turks of Xinjiang, who in the 1920s revived the long-extinct term “Uyghur” for their collective name. Developing a new sense of Uyghur identity, and working out its accommodation with Chinese and other local claims, would remain a task for the future.

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