Send message to Author

Abstract

In November 1933, a short-lived government was established in Kashgar in southwestern Xinjiang. Although it initially mobilized segments of local society, the regime collapsed within months under military pressure from the forces of Ma Zhongying. This paper reexamines the circumstances of its rapid demise by situating Kashgar within the wider geopolitical landscape of Central Eurasia in the 1930s.

Drawing on newly examined German diplomatic archives, the study argues that the Kashgar leadership’s prospects depended significantly on access to external military resources. In a frontier environment characterized by shifting alliances and limited institutional capacity, local political actors sought to consolidate authority not only through regional mobilization but also through cross-border procurement networks. Efforts to secure foreign arms were facilitated by an international intermediary whose connections extended to both European actors and Soviet authorities. Information regarding these negotiations reached Moscow and was subsequently communicated to the Nationalist government in Nanjing, prompting diplomatic protests and discouraging further external involvement.

German correspondence further indicates that foreign representatives in the region were aware of the intermediary’s complex affiliations but refrained from direct intervention, prioritizing broader strategic considerations. The interruption of anticipated arms supplies left the Kashgar authorities without the material resources necessary to withstand sustained military pressure. Deprived of external support, the regime was quickly defeated.

By tracing the circulation of information, diplomatic calculation, and material constraints across Eurasian networks, this paper highlights how political initiatives in Xinjiang were shaped by forces extending beyond the province itself. Kashgar functioned as a nodal space within overlapping spheres of influence, where local projects of governance were conditioned by regional power dynamics. The case illustrates how borderland politics in the 1930s unfolded within a transregional arena structured by competing strategic priorities, rather than solely by internal ideological agendas.

Send message to Author

Abstract

Erupting into Central Eurasian politics via a Soviet-backed ‘November Revolution’ against Chinese Nationalist rule in 1944, the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR) rapidly established a revolutionary state in northwestern Xinjiang which survived until its 1949 absorption into the People’s Republic of China. Although a multi-ethnic regime, the ETR holds particular significance to Uyghurs as the longest lasting Uyghur-led state in the 20th century.

Sources on the ETR have historically been rare. Its archives are inaccessible in China, while Soviet collections on the republic have been closed since the late 1990s. Retroactive autobiographies by ETR leaders, while valuable, are meanwhile shaped by their writers’ post-1949 experiences, as the republic’s cadredom and military split between those remaining in China or opting for exile.

Breaking with a historiography shaped by source scarcity, this paper rethinks the ETR and its absorption into the PRC through a critically underutilized source: the internal publication of the late ETR’s ruling party, the Union for the Defence of Peace and Democracy (abbrev. Ittifaq). Published from October 1948, Ittifaq’s journal (also named Ittifaq) was designed for extensive use in Ittifaq cadre study sessions, featuring direct contributions from the Ittifaq Central Committee and state leaders such as overall 1946-1949 ETR leader Ahmetjan Qasimi. Crucially, it continued publication past PRC takeover in late 1949 until 1951.

This paper argues that Ittifaq represents an almost-unique contemporary source on the ETR, the nature and content of which enables major revisions in understanding the republic.

Firstly, given its nature as a cadre-education tool printing leadership diktat, Ittifaq provides a window into the ETR’s information ecology, particularly how its institutions signalled the republic’s political line to officials. The fact that such a party journal existed, and its resemblance to internal journals in the PRC and USSR, further indicates how the late ETR increasingly resembled a Leninist party-state.

Secondly, shifts in Ittifaq’s content across the ‘1949 divide’ provide a real-time indication of how the ETR transitioned into a subordinate part of the PRC. Ittifaq’s platform shifted over 1948-1950 from messaging nationalist anti-(Chinese)colonial leftism to one emphasising Sino-Turkic unity and explicit socialism. Effectively compensating for the demise of a national project by proclaiming an internationalist socialist one, this rhetoric enabled the reconceptualization of the ETR as a non-state local ‘Three Districts Revolution’, and its folding into ‘New China’. Reading Ittifaq provides a direct contemporary vision into how ‘East Turkestan’ once more became ‘Xinjiang’ in the mid-20th century.

Send message to Author

Abstract

The paper examines a history of the dynasty of Hakim-begs who were rulers of the Ili region of East Turkestan (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China) for several centuries. The clan of the Ili Hakim-begs originated from the Hwaja clan, which established a theocratic rule in Kashgaria (East Turkestan) in second half of the XVII century. While early stages of the dynasty’s history is quite vague, clear lineage system of the Hwajas can be traced since the first years of the Qing conquest of Kashgaria (since 1759). This lineage was represented by the rulers of eastern oases of Turfan, Toqsun and Lukchun of Xinjiang. Their ancestor was Imin wang, who was bestowed the title of ‘wang’ by the Qing Emperor immediately after the conquest of Zhungaria and Kashgaria. For about 200 years, representatives of this clan gained positions of rulers in the Ili region, with the center in the city of Ghulja. After re-conquest of Xinjiang by the Qing forces, Xinjiang was turned into a province of the Qing empire (1884), and the beg’s position was liquidated, but the Ili Hakim-begs remained an authoritative and respectful clan. When the second East Turkistan Republic (ETR) was set up in three districts of Ili, Altay and Tarbaghatai in 1944, the revolutionary leaders invited the Ili Hakim-bek Giyassidin to the government of ETR. He was given a position of deputy Chair of the ETR government. After the Communist takeover (1949), some descendants of Hakim beg stayed in Xinjiang, while others migrated to Central Asia and today reside in Almaty and Bishkek, some of them migrated to Sweden. A high rank representative of the clan Hwaja Hakimov, b. 1936, passed away in Urumchi in 2023. The paper will discuss how Hakim-beg’s clan was used by the Qing/Chinese/ETR/PRC authorities in the governance and control of the Ili region.