Description
Book SynopsisEric Schluessel explores the late nineteenth-century encounter between Chinese power and a Muslim society through the struggles of ordinary people in the oasis of Turpan. He traces the emergence of new struggles around essential questions of identity, recasting the attempted transformation of Xinjiang as a distinctly Chinese form of colonialism.
Trade ReviewAn expert collector, reader, and translator of difficult materials, Schluessel provides us with a window into frontier society in the late nineteenth century.
Land of Strangers is an exceptionally well-researched work grounded in a stunning assortment of primary sources, replete with memorable close-up encounters with an engaging cast of characters. -- Tobie Meyer-Fong, author of
What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth-Century ChinaEric Schluessel combines prodigious linguistic skills with exhaustive archival research and conceptual sophistication to bring the Turpan oasis to life in all its human complexity.
Land of Strangers is a fine-grained account of history from below, unlike anything we have on any part of Central Asia. A stellar achievement. -- Adeeb Khalid, author of
Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSRThrough this theoretically rich exploration of Qing philosophy and practice of colonial rule, we see how violence and forced intimacy shape enduring group identities in Xinjiang. Using his multilingual skills to draw on diaries, memorials, and documents from court cases, Schluessel uncovers the interactions of everyday life among colonizing Chinese, intermediaries, and colonized Uyghurs in late Qing Xinjiang. -- Marianne Kamp, author of
The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling Under CommunismIn this fine monograph, Eric Schluessel describes the local articulation and hardening of boundaries between people in late Qing Xinjiang. Using Turkic, Manchu, and Chinese sources on Turpan, he introduces (among others) local elites, Hunanese Confucian statecraft ideologues, mediatory
tongchi interpreters, and Chinese-speaking Muslim brokers. His narratives describe culture clashes, identity negotiation, gender ideologies, colonial discipline, and naming practices, persuasively and subtly connected to today’s troubled conditions. -- Jonathan N. Lipman, author of
Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest ChinaA valuable contribution to our understanding of the actions of the modern Chinese state to pacify Xinjiang through this same combination of force and cultural transformation first attempted by the Xiang Army one hundred and fifty years ago. * Asian Review of Books *
He uncovers many fascinating stories about the people who mediated the relationship between rulers and ruled, concluding with a nuanced discussion of comparative colonialism...Highly recommended. * Choice *
Writing a 'history from below' of any society in any historical period is no easy task, but
Land of Strangers has offered an outstanding example of such history and has provided illuminating insights into this method of exploring modern China and
Eurasia. -- Yuanchong Wang, University of Delaware * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
A Note on Conventions
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
