Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
by James Millward
It’s hard not to be aware of what is going in Xinjiang (literally ‘new province’) in western China where concentration camps are making a comeback. It’s where the Uyghurs live, a generally Muslim ethnic minority who have never appreciated being ruled from Beijing. Historically, relations between the Uyghurs and Beijing have tended to go downhill when the centre is too controlling, and the last two decades have been a disaster. In this updated edition of Eurasian Crossroads James Millward, a leading American historian of the region, explains the historical context of a situation we all have a responsibility to be aware of.
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“It’s by James Millward who is, I think, the preeminent American scholar of Xinjiang, certainly among historians…He’s done a lot of different work, but this is a classic work of putting Xinjiang into historical perspective that came out in 2007 and he has just updated. He is one of the historians of China who, while his heart is in periods of the past, is continually looking at contemporary issues that you just can’t turn away from if you work on a place that’s undergoing new kinds of repression. So, I was very pleased when this very accessible, well written history of Xinjiang came out with a new section on the rise of this massive network of camps into which Uyghurs—especially Muslim Uyghurs, but also members of other Turkic ethnic minorities—have been disappearing in Xinjiang.” Read more...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian
