This fast-moving narrative, written by a key official of the Kuomintang regime in Republican China, offers an astonishing insider's view of politics and rebellion in Chinese Turkistan in the 1930s. Posted to the western Chinese province of Xinjiang in 1932, Aitchen Wu's challenge there was to impose the authority of the central government upon the recalcitrant region and to negotiate between the warring factions whose power sturggles had brought political chaos to the province. In telling the stormy tale of Chinese officials and White Russian cavalrymen, ambitious Muslim generals and Tungan and Kurghiz tribesman, Turkistan Tumult lays the background for an understanding of subsequent events in Central Asia.

This book provides a detailed study of Sinkiang - China's largest province, and of great strategic importance on the Russian border during the Warlord and Kuomintang Eras. It is an analysis of the internal warlord and Islamic politics of Sinkiang, as well as to take account of 'great power' interests in this region, during a period in which it was essentially a Han Chinese colony in the heart of Central Asia. The study is of relevance not only to the history of twentieth-century China, but also to the politics of Islamic reassertion in Central Asia; to the development of the Soviet Union as an imperial power in the Tsarist Russian mould; to an understanding of the cultural and political aspirations of China's national minorities; and should serve - in a world preoccupied with 'Western' colonialism and imperialism - as a reminder that colonial kin and imperialism was not, and is not, an exclusively European preserve.

Closed to the world for half a century, like a black hole in the Asian landmass, the wilderness of Xinjiang in northwest China is returning to the light. The picture it presents is both fascinating and disturbing. Despite a savage landscape and climate, Xinjiang has a rich past: sand-buried cities, painted cave shrines, rare creatures, and wonderfully preserved mummies of European appearance. Their descendants, the Uighurs, still farm the tranquil oases that ring the dreaded Taklamakan, the world's second largest sand desert, and the Kazakh and Kirghiz herdsmen still roam the mountains. The region's history, however, has been punctuated by violence, usually provoked by ambitious outsiders--nomad chieftains from the north, Muslim emirs from Central Asia, Russian generals, or warlords from inner China. The Chinese regard the far west as a barbarian land. Only in the 1760s did they subdue it, and even then their rule was repeatedly broken. Compared with the Russians' conquest of Siberia, or the Americans' trek west, China's colonization of Xinjiang has been late and difficult. The Communists have done most to develop it, as a penal colony, as a buffer against invasion, and as a supplier of raw materials and living space for an overpopulated country. But what China sees as its property, the Uighurs regard as theft by an alien occupier. Tension has led to violence and savage reprisals. This portrait of Xinjiang should be essential reading for travelers and for anyone interested in today's China and the fate of minority peoples.

This set includes all four volumes of the critically acclaimed History of Central Asia series. The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. This set includes The Age of the Steppe Warriors (Volume 1), The Age of the Silk Roads (Volume 2), The Age of Islam and the Mongols (Volume 3) and The Age of Decline and Revival (Volume 4)

In this ground-breaking study, Hsiao Ting Lin demonstrates that the Chinese frontier was the subject neither of concerted aggression on the part of a centralized and indoctrinated Chinese government nor of an ideologically driven nationalist ethnopolitics. Instead, Nationalist sovereignty over Tibet and other border regions was the result of rhetorical grandstanding by Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier makes a crucial contribution to the understanding of past and present China-Tibet relations. A counterpoint to erroneous historical assumptions, this book will change the way Tibetologists and modern Chinese historians frame future studies of the region.

The purpose of this book is to examine the strategies and practices of the Han Chinese Nationalists vis-à-vis post-Qing China’s ethnic minorities, as well as to explore the role they played in the formation of contemporary China’s Central Asian frontier territoriality and border security. The Chinese Revolution of 1911, initiated by Sun Yat-sen, liberated the Han Chinese from the rule of the Manchus and ended the Qing dynastic order that had existed for centuries. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the Mongols and the Tibetans, who had been dominated by the Manchus, took advantage of the revolution and declared their independence. Under the leadership of Yuan Shikai, the new Chinese Republican government in Peking in turn proclaimed the similar "five-nationality Republic" proposed by the Revolutionaries as a model with which to sustain the deteriorating Qing territorial order. The shifting politics of the multi-ethnic state during the regime transition and the role those politics played in defining the identity of the modern Chinese state were issues that would haunt the new Chinese Republic from its inception to its downfall. Modern China's Ethnic Frontiers will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese history, Asian history and modern history.

'Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) on the North Western Border of China is one of the most important regions of China. In terms of area, XUAR is the largest province of China with Uyghur Muslims as the majority. Uyghur Separatists have been demanding an independent state out of China.' (Publisher)