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Xinjiang
Under the Ming and the Qing Dynasties
Xinjiang is a large region in northwest China which consists of two basins which are surrounded by mountains on three sides. The Jungarian Basin lies south of the Altai mountains and north of the Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains). This latter range in turn provides the northern and western boundaries for the massive Tarim Basin, most of which is covered by the Taklamakan Desert. This basin is bounded to the southeast by the Pamir and Karakoram ranges and to the southwest by the Himalayas. The Taklamakan stretches into the western reaches of the Gobi desert to the east. As part of the People's Republic of China, the official name of the region today is the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The area has long played a key role in Asian history, although it is a little known part of the world. Its location in the middle of the Asian continent has resulted in a succession of conquerors and traders passing through the area over the last two millennia. For much of that time, it has lain within the Chinese sphere of influence. However, since the expansion of the Tsarist Empire into Central Asia in the nineteenth century, it has become one of a number of areas in Asia where the Chinese and the Russians have competed for the allegiance of the local inhabitants.
The earliest historical records that we have of Xinjiang portray the area as the staging ground for the raids of various Central Asian barbarians into neighbouring areas, especially the Chinese Empire. China was obviously concerned to protect her civilization from these intruders and sought to do so through the time-honored method of "using barbarians to control barbarians." The first Chinese venture into Central Asia was made during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when a diplomatic mission was sent out by the Han emperor Wudi (140-86 BC) in 138 BC to the Ferghana Valley (in present-day Soviet Central Asia), under the leadership of Zhang Qian. In 121 BC, the emperor's forces defeated the Xiong-nu (a term which may refer to the people we know as the Huns), a powerful Central Asian tribal confederation which had dominated Central Asia since about 200 BC.
Diplomatic ties between the Chinese and the Persians were established shortly after, in 106 BC. This significant event was followed in 102 BC by the capture of the city of Kokand in the Ferghana Valley by the Chinese. As a result of this extension of Chinese military and political power into Central Asia, it soon became possible for traders to pass safely between the Persian and the Chinese Empires and so arose one of the most famous trade routes in history: the Silk Road. A significant portion of this route passed through Central Asia. Thus, Chinese control of Xinjiang fulfilled the dual role of providing a protective buffer zone from marauding raiders and ensuring the continuation of the lucrative commercial trade with the West.
Not surprisingly, Chinese control in the border areas depended to a large extent upon the relative strength of the ruling dynasty. Thus, Chinese control in eastern Central Asia fluctuated during the next several centuries and the frontiers remained unstable. In AD 97, under General Pan Ch'ao, Chinese armies reached the Caspian Sea. However, as the Han dynasty declined in power, finally coming to an end in AD 220, a new power rose in Central Asia. The nomadic Turks, streaming out of their homeland in Mongolia and southern Siberia, began to move into the area. In 552, a Turkic Empire (or Khaganate) was founded which soon stretched from the borders of China proper to those of the Byzantine Empire. After regaining her strength, China, now ruled by the Tang dynasty (618-906), once again moved west under emperor Li Shi-min, capturing the cities of Kucha, Khotan, Kashgar, Yarkand, and Turfan (all in modern-day Xinjiang) between 630 and 640 and penetrating as far west as Bukhara and Samarkand in 659. Meanwhile, the area to the north, centered on Mongolia, came under the control of a series of Turkic empires, including the Turks again (in 683), the Uighurs (in 745), and the Kirghiz (in 840).
Chinese rule in the area was again challenged in the eighth century by the Arab armies which swept into Central Asia to spread the new faith of Islam. The Arab general Qutaiba ibn Muslim had crossed the Oxus River in 711, capturing Bukhara in that same year and Samarkand the next year. In 713 Arab armies penetrated into Xinjiang and sacked Kashgar. Chinese power in Central Asia was decisively crushed by the Arabs in 751 at the Battle of Talas, northeast of Tashkent. The armies of the Middle Kingdom once again retreated behind the Great Wall. Soon after, the Uighurs, fleeing from the Kirghiz in Mongolia, set up a kingdom in the Tarim Basin which was to last from about 850 until the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century. Xinjiang gradually came under the influence of Islam and most of the Uighurs adopted Islam under Abdulkerim Satuk Bughra Khan, the ruler of Kashgar, who became a Muslim in 934. Three centuries later, both the Arab and the Chinese Empires were conquered by the Mongols. Baghdad, the Arab capital, was captured in 1258, and the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1260-1368) was established in China two years later. Xinjiang was given to Chagatay, one of Chingiz Khan's sons, as his territorial allotment.
Although emperors during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) received tribute from various kingdoms in Central Asia, including Khotan, Samarkand, and Bukhara, Chinese military control of Xinjiang was not re-established until the late seventeenth century, under the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The reconquest began under the Kangxi emperor in the 1690s. By 1759, during the reign of the Qianlong emperor, the entire Tarim basin had been subjugated. In 1768, what had been known as "Chinese Turkestan" was renamed Xinjiang, the "new territory" of China. At the same time, the Chinese borders were extended beyond the Tien Shan into the Kazakh steppe, as far as Lake Balkash, as a result of the defeat of the Mongol Jungars in 1757. In 1771, the Qing dynasty unsuccessfully sought to bring the khan of the Kazakh Great Horde into a vassal relationship to the emperor. Thus, China's westward expansion stopped. The great distance of Xinjiang from the imperial Chinese capital resulted in a situation in which the local government representatives, both Manchu and Chinese, enjoyed a large measure of autonomy and ran the region according to their own whims, a situation which was also prevalent during the Republican era.
The isolation of the area also made it susceptible to both internal unrest and external interference, both of which threatened Chinese control. Internal disturbances came in the form of frequent Muslim rebellions, often in the form of a "holy war" against the "infidels." One such insurrection, the Aqtaghlik rebellion, was led by Jahangir, an exiled pretender to the throne of Altishahr (as the Tarim Basin was then known), and lasted from 1820 to 1828, when he was captured and executed by the Chinese. Although these revolts were largely unsuccessful, they made the area less stable and therefore more vulnerable to external forces.
During the nineteenth century, two foreign powers were especially interested in Xinjiang: Imperial Russia and Britain. The Russians, after throwing off the Mongol yoke in 1480, had begun a rapid expansion eastward into Asia, in a relentless search for solid borders to protect the vast Eurasian steppe from a reoccurrence of the devastation which the armies of Chingiz Khan had unleashed. This eastward movement had resulted in the tsar's armies eventually occupying most of the area which had previously made up the Mongol Empire, except for Mongolia and China. There had been clashes between Russian and Chinese troops in Manchuria as early as the 1680s, culminating in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. The two empires had also come close to conflict in Central Asia in the eighteenth century as each advanced upon the Kazakhs from opposite sides, but contact had not been made at that time. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the Tsar had extended his authority into what came to be known as Russian Turkestan, west of the Tien Shan range. This movement was perceived by the British as a potential threat to their interests in India. Thus, "The Great Game" between the two imperial powers was played out during much of the nineteenth century, especially in Persia and Afghanistan, as each attempted to carve out "buffer states" as a protection against the other.
Xinjiang too played a crucial role in the Game, located as it was between Russia and British India. Both powers soon became active in trading in the province, although the Manchus had imposed a ban on European trade in the area. According to a Soviet source, "the British, with their record in India, were the more dreaded of the two, and Peking lived in constant fear of intrigue in East Turkestan by these inveterate colonizers." However, despite British efforts, Russia eventually gained the upper hand in the area. As a result of a number of the "unequal treaties" which China was forced to sign with the Western powers after the Opium Wars, specifically the Ili Treaty (1851), the Tacheng Protocol of the Treaty of Peking (1860), and the Treaty of Tarbagatai (1864), China had to surrender nearly 350,000 square miles of territory to Russia, as well as giving the Russians special trading privileges and the right to station consuls in the area. At the same time, China suffered massive territorial losses to the Russians in Manchuria.
China's weakened state as a result of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), the second Opium War (1857-60), and Muslim Rebellions in Yunnan (1855-1873) and Shaanxi (1862-1873) set the stage for the next phase in the Game. Between 1864 and 1877, the Muslims in Xinjiang revolted and set up an independent state, which came to be known as "Kashgaria," under the leadership of the Kokand adventurer Yaqub Beg, who attempted to maintain good relations with both Britain and Russia, in hopes that they would be able to protect him against the inevitable Chinese attempt to once again bring the area and its inhabitants under the control of the Qing dynasty. Under these unstable conditions, the Russians proceeded to annex the Ili Valley in 1870-71, giving as their reason the need to maintain law and order in this area adjacent to their newly-conquered territory in Russian Turkestan. In 1877, Yaqub Beg was defeated by the Chinese general Zuo Zongtang. However, the "Ili Crisis" lasted until 1881, when the Treaty of St. Petersburg was signed, resulting in the return of most of the annexed territory to China, although Russia kept some of it and China had to pay indemnities to her and allow her to open up more consulates in the area. In 1884, Xinjiang officially became a province of China.
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