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Book Cover
E-book
Author Schluessel, Eric, author.

Title Land of strangers : the civilizing project in Qing Central Asia / Eric Schluessel
Published New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 289 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents Introduction -- 1. The Chinese Law: The Origins of the Civilizing Project -- 2. Xinjiang as Exception: The Transformation of the Civilizing Project -- 3. Frontier Mediation: The Rise of the Interpreters -- 4. Bad Women and Lost Children: The Sexual Economy of Confucian Colonialism -- 5. Recollecting Bones: The Muslim Uprisings as Historical Trauma -- 6. Historical Estrangement and the End of Empire -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary "At the close of the nineteenth century, near the end of the Qing empire, Confucian revivalists from central China gained control of the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, or East Turkestan. There they undertook a program to transform Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians, seeking to bind this population and their homeland to the Chinese cultural and political realm. Instead of assimilation, divisions between communities only deepened, resulting in a profound estrangement that continues to this day. In Land of Strangers, Eric Schluessel explores this encounter between Chinese power and a Muslim society through the struggles of ordinary people in the oasis of Turpan. He follows the stories of families divided by war, women desperate to survive, children unsure where they belong, and many others to reveal the human consequences of a bloody conflict and the more insidious violence of reconstruction. Schluessel traces the emergence of new struggles around essential questions of identity, showing how religious and linguistic differences converged into ethnic labels. Reading across local archives and manuscript accounts in the Chinese and Chaghatay languages, he recasts the attempted transformation of Xinjiang as a distinctly Chinese form of colonialism. At a time when understanding the roots of the modern relationship between Uyghurs and China has taken on new urgency, Land of Strangers illuminates a crucial moment of social and cultural change in this dark period of Xinjiang's past"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed on October 08, 2020)
Subject Uighur (Turkic people) -- History
HISTORY / Asia / China.
Colonies
Ethnic relations
International relations
Politics and government
Qing Dynasty (China)
Uighur (Turkic people)
SUBJECT Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu (China) -- History
Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu (China) -- Ethnic relations
Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu (China) -- Politics and government
China -- China -- Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu -- Colonies
Asia, Central -- Relations -- China
China -- Relations -- Asia, Central
China -- History -- Qing dynasty, 1644-1912. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85024078
Subject Central Asia
China
China -- Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2020010174
ISBN 9780231552226
023155222X