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- Convenor:
-
Aisajiang Youshe
(Harvard University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Mark Elliott
(Harvard University)
- Discussant:
-
Ahmet Hojam
(Palacky University in Olomouc)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- History
- Location:
- 506 (Floor 5)
- Sessions:
- Saturday 8 June, -
Time zone: Asia/Almaty
Abstract:
At the eastern fringe of Central Eurasia, Tibetans and Turkic peoples east of the Pamirs are sociopolitical orphans in a world dominated by other people’s national states. Not only are they deprived of group sovereignty, separated from their brethren outside of the ethnic homelands, but the two societies also exist in near iron-clad isolation from each other in a presumed common political union of the People’s Republic of China. While this inverted engineering of human sociality and the weakened societies resulting from it has been recognized as a common source of misery in Eastern Europe living under the Iron Curtain, a figurative iron curtain dividing the Tarim Basin and the Tibetan Plateau has yet to be problematized. This panel aims to show how the two regions – physically contiguous to each other – have existed and continue to exist in close affinity, both material and discursive, historically as well as in the present. Advancing a longue durée perspective in understanding the two regions’ long-standing entanglement and interaction, the panel demonstrates how fixed geographical terms could conceal and distort human sociality defined by its embodied fluidity and mobility.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 8 June, 2024, -Abstract:
This paper reexamines the historical significance of Yarkand, a pivotal city in the Turco-Tibetan region, during the 18th and 19th centuries. It aims to uncover its critical role in the intricate web of trade, cultural exchanges, and power dynamics that shaped the period. Located at the strategic crossroads of essential trade routes, Yarkand stands out as a crucial link, bridging the gap between the restricted mobility and trade within Xinjiang and the vibrant, expansive trade networks that extended to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Mughal Hindustan. These networks were not just avenues for material trade; they also facilitated a rich exchange of religious and scholarly thought, particularly among Muslim communities across the Tibetan Plateau and in Yarkand. The paper delves into Yarkand’s economic and administrative importance under the Qing dynasty, with a specific focus on the establishment of the prominent 葉爾羌鑄錢局. This institution highlights Yarkand’s significant role in the monetary and financial systems of the time. Additionally, the study explores the influence of the Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya Sufi networks centered in Yarkand, which played a pivotal role in shaping the religious and social landscapes across Central Asia and China.
Abstract:
National provinces are governed, and their indigenous inhabitants are multigenerational permanent residents who have hukou – registered households who have an inalienable obligation and right to feed the mouths of their current household members and their future offspring. This is how Chinese territorial governmentality is generally understood. However, certain territories require to be ruled because their geosocial space is unruly. Certain people have no claim to permanent residency because their crude homeland make their settlement transient. These exceptions are vestiges of imperial governmentality, but they gain a new lease of life in modern China’s rule of its Turco-Tibetan frontier. This paper illustrates this subimperial governmentality with two wildly popular early 2000s movies that were purportedly China’s response to Hollywood “Westerns.” By retrieving this crucial image of China’s national geographic imaginary in recent memory, the paper offers insights on how the rhetoric and practice of subimperialism are sustained and proliferated in contemporary China with regard to its two massive Central Eurasian territorial holdings. The paper argues that despite the state’s desire to regulate centrifugal regionalism by solidifying inter-regional geosocial boundaries in its western periphery, resorting to a panacea frontier methodology may eat away the efficacy of its divide-and-rule construct.
Abstract:
This paper investigates the ambitions and strategies of the Tang Dynasty, Tibet, and Arabs to assert control over the lands of the former Western Turkic Khaganate around the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries. Following the collapse of the Khaganate, the Tang dynasty subsequently implemented a dual-Khagan system to respectively govern its western and eastern territories and exerted pressure on surrounding areas like Ferghana. Tibet, in response, strategically appointed single nominal supreme Khagan in Ferghana between A.D. 693-700 aiming to control the Khaganate’s territories piecemeal. Conflict with Tibet and its local agents led the Tang to adjust its strategy to appoint a single governor. The paper then challenges the notion of a ‘silent’ period in Ferghana from around 700 to the arrival of Arabic troops and the appointment of a ‘new’ king by Arabs and Tibet. It introduces overlooked materials to explore potential movements of the Tang dynasty in Fergana in this interval.
The practices of the Tang, Tibet, and Arabs introduced new meanings to the traditions and created new entanglement. These great powers had to compromise and adjust themselves to a Turkic ruling tradition while manipulating it as a rhetoric of their ambitions towards the former lands of Khaganate. The emperors from Tibet, Tang, and possibly Arabs positioned themselves as ‘the Khagan of Khagan’, creating a position beyond the supreme Khagan to bestow new Khagan. The adoption and deviation reveal how the imperial centers did not simply conform to tradition at the instruction of local agents, but actively created tradition to suit their own objective.
This paper elucidates the interplay between the strategies of the Tang Dynasty, Tibet, and Arabs, while considering how the Turkic ruling tradition was involved in their maneuverings. By uncovering such a comparatively ‘negative’ and unaggressive voice the study responds to prevailing paradigms. It argues that in contexts characterized by highly asymmetrical power relations, the focus on Great Powers’ contests has obscured the significance of local perspectives. Furthermore, the binary judgment regarding the continuity or discontinuity of pre-existing conventions ignores the constant flux and bi- directional nature of social discourses and practices. By contextualizing the power dynamics of the Tang and Tibet’s ambition, the Arabic conquest of Central Asia, and the responses from local elites, this study contributes to a broader understanding of a more comprehensive and inclusive narrative of Central Asian history.