The Muslim Emperor of China: Everyday Politics in Colonial Xinjiang, 1877-1933

Abstract

This dissertation concerns the ways in which a Chinese civilizing project intervened powerfully in cultural and social change in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang from the 1870s through the 1930s. I demonstrate that the efforts of officials following an ideology of domination and transformation rooted in the Chinese Classics changed the ways that people associated with each other and defined themselves and how Muslims understood their place in history and in global space. Chinese power is central to the history of modern Xinjiang and to the Uyghur people, not only because the Chinese center has dominated the area as a periphery, but because of the ways in which that power intervened in society and culture on the local level. The processes and ramifications of the Chinese government in late-Qing and early Republican Xinjiang demonstrates strong parallels with colonialism in the context of European empire. This dissertation does not focus on the question of typology, however, but instead draws on methods from colonial history to explore the dynamics of a linguistically and religiously heterogeneous society. In order to do so, I draw on local archival documents in Chinese and Turkic and place them into dialogue with the broader Turkic-language textual record. This dissertation thus proceeds from the inception of the ideology that drove the civilizing project, through its social ramifications, to the innovations that emerged in Islamicate literature and history in Xinjiang in this period.