Paper abstract:

After the Qing reconquest of Xinjiang in 1877, China-based, and particularly Tianjin-based, merchants increasing dominated the region’s agrarian economy. They did so by using close partnerships with Qing officials and access to long-distance credit markets to capture agricultural surplus through debt while also profiting from the overexploitation of farmland through zealous “land reclamation” projects. This paper explores how merchant dominance sparked off another wave of mobility as dispossessed and displaced farmers became migrant laborers seeking better wages in other parts of Xinjiang. It uses Turkic-, Chinese-, and foreign-language accounts to demonstrate how ecological degradation, settlement, and migration fed into to new patterns of settlement around the region and a shift in the production of foodstuffs, leading to a reconfiguration of Xinjiang’s economic and demographic centers.