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- Convenor:
-
Kevin Kind
(Johns Hopkins University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Jun Sugawara
(Lanzhou University)
- Discussant:
-
Jun Sugawara
(Lanzhou University)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Theme:
- History
- Sessions:
- Thursday 14 October, -
Time zone: America/New_York
Long Abstract:
In the past decade, the study of Turkic Muslims (largely referred to today as Uyghurs) in the administration of local institutions during the late Qing (1877-1911) and Republican (1911-1949) periods has benefited immensely from a wide array of newly available Chinese and Turkic language sources. Whereas before scholars were largely limited to discussions of high-level, Beijing-centered political narratives, these new sources have made it possible to examine the essential role of Turkic Muslims within the mechanisms of local state and society across a variety of fields. In the realm of legal and family history, Aysima Mirsultan draws upon a series of Turkic language adoption documents to emphasize the importance of local legal systems in Uyghur communities in Khotan, Yarkant, and Kashgar in the early Republican period. Also drawing upon never before utilized Turkic sources and Chinese archival documents, Eric Schluessel’s work examines the institution of the Qing Charitable Granary System to explore how Turkic Muslim elites in Turpan mobilized to facilitate the demands of the local bureaucracy at levels below the offices of the prefectural yamen. Local archives also inform work by Kevin Kind, who investigates the role of Turpan’s Turkic Muslim communities in late Qing security institutions. Finally, Yuan Gao utilizes a pair of reports produced by the Xinjiang Hydrology Council from 1915 to 1917 to examine the importance of Turkic Muslim knowledge and experience in early Republican irrigation projects. Thus, taken together, the papers of this panel place Turkic Muslim agency and expertise at the center of local government and society during and beyond the turn of the 20th century.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 14 October, 2021, -Kevin Kind (Johns Hopkins University)
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws upon documents from the Turpan prefectural archive to examine the critical role of Musulmans (Uyghurs) in late Qing security institutions. Musulmans in Turpan had played an essential role in security institutions ever since the Qing reconquest of Xinjiang in 1877. In 1901, however, the Qing court approved an ambitious series of reforms that included the establishment of “modern” policing institutions throughout the empire, and by 1905 local officials in Turpan began implementing these reforms in earnest. Whereas before Musulmans had participated in policing and security in an ad-hoc fashion by mobilizing local residents for bandit suppression, a large number of documents from the Turpan archive reveal that the new reformed police formally integrated many Musulmans into Qing policing institutions for the first time. A small but significant minority of local sheriffs and patrolmen were Musulmans, and they played an essential role in the enforcement of numerous late Qing reforms in Xinjiang. Perhaps more importantly, the late Qing witnessed the emergence of Musulman “investigators” in Turpan. Investigators (who were always Musulmans) accompanied police forces during routine patrols, arrests, and bandit suppression activities and provided support in the form of linguistic, geographic, and cultural knowledge. This growing Musulman participation in policing institutions during the late Qing, I argue, was the result of 1) a formal recognition of the indispensable role Musulmans had played in Turpan for decades, 2) the fiscal crises of late Qing politics, and 3) an increasingly cosmopolitan imperial center that afforded more opportunities for Musulman participation in local institutions.
Yuan Gao (Georgetown University)
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the two sets of reports produced by the Xinjiang Hydrology Council during Yang Zengxin’s administration. In the three years (1915-1917) covered by the reports, the Council worked on strengthening existing irrigation networks, restoring deserted canals, and building new water infrastructure. It supervised the construction of 11 dams, 17 main irrigation canals, and 47 branch canals, 2 dikes, 8 karez, and the repairment of 5,599 zhang (12 miles) of dikes. By examining the details of these water projects, this paper stresses historical continuities between late Qing and early Republican Xinjiang. I argue that the governance of early Republican Xinjiang relied upon local knowledge, workforce, and the collaboration of local elites. The water management of the early Republican Xinjiang faced similar socio-economic and environmental challenges as the late Qing administration. Building on the existing irrigation system, local knowledge, and past experiences from the Qing period, the Republican government continued to expand the water infrastructure in order to increase stable tax revenue and settle more migrants in this vast territory, as well as to support Yang’s isolationist goals. Moreover, this paper suggests that we often need to read such sources against the grain and take Han officials away from the spotlight in our study of Xinjiang. We need to prioritize social networks, expertise, and environmental dynamics on the ground, and put them at the center of the narrative.
Eric Schluessel (The George Washington University)
Paper long abstract:
The publication of the late Qing and Republican archives of Turpan prefecture have enabled unprecedentedly finely grained studies of the social and economic history of the Uyghur homeland. A newly discovered collection of documents in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin reveals yet another level of local history through their documentation of the charitable granary (yicang 義倉) system in Turpan in the 1890s. While these manuscripts pertain to a distinctly Chinese institution, they are nevertheless written in Chaghatay, although they incorporate much of the language, vocabulary, and even materiality of Chinese documents. In their inclusion of records of debts and assessments of land productivity, as well as correspondence between the granary heads and local farmers and merchants, they show how the charitable granary system articulated with preexisting socioeconomic structures and networks. Overall, they indicate, below the level of local government at the magistrate's yamen that is typically visible to us, a surprising degree of cooperation and transparency as Turkic Muslim elites operated an imperial institution in their own community.
Aysima Mirsultan (Berlin State Library, Germany)
Paper long abstract:
Throughout history, adoption has held a contentious and ambiguous role in the social imagination of many cultures. Adoption is a complex social, legal, and economic phenomenon that has existed in one form or another in most societies since ancient history. Before Islam, adoption was widespread among the Arabs, and remained valid during the early days of Islam. However, the practice was expressly forbidden under the later Quranic ruling. Not all Muslims will choose to follow the Islamic rules on adoption. Because in Islam the adoption is allowed but not the ownership. Here I will be dealing with adoption among the Uyghurs in Xinjiang in the first half of the 20th century, during the Republican era. To date there are hardly any sources or studies about adoption among the Uyghur available. The recent article “Uyghur Civil documents on child adoption in republican Xinjiang” by the Kazakhstani Uyghur scholar Ablet Kamalov (2018) makes an important contribution to this field. Based on several text corpora consisting of legal documents originating in southern Xinjiang (Khotan Yarkant and Kashgar) from the Republican era, in this paper, I will contribute to our knowledge of the types of adoption taking place in Republican Xinjiang, the reasons and motivations behind the contracts and the proper time to adoption.