Ethno-national and local dimensions in the historiography of Kazakhstan's Uyghurs

Abstract

This article examines the changing relationship between ethno-national and local narratives in the historiography of Kazakhstan's Uyghurs through the parallel analysis of general and local histories compiled in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Uyghur history writing in the post-Soviet period is discussed in relation to the divided loyalty of the Uyghur community: while interest in writing ethno-nationalist histories is based on the growing feeling of being a part of the broad, transnational category of the Uyghur, deep attachment to the Semirech'e region is expressed in the emerging histories of Uyghur villages and neighbourhoods. In analysing the local histories of Kazakhstani Uyghurs in the post-Soviet period, the author focuses on the gradual transition from Soviet-style local histories praising the uniqueness of the ‘Soviet’ Uyghurs to new local histories emerging ‘from below’ as exemplified by the history of the Sultanqorghan neighbourhood of Almaty.

Keywords:

• Uyghurs
• Kazakhstan
• Soviet historiography
• ethno-national history
• local histories

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Sheripakhun Baratov, a Uyghur philologist from Almaty, for his help in collecting materials for this article.

Notes

See for instance Istoriia Kazakhstana s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei v piati tomakh [History of Kazakhstan from ancient times until nowadays in five volumes]. Almaty: Atamura, 1997–2001.

Semirech'e oblast' was established in 1867 within the Turkestan general-governorship. In 1871–81 the occupied territory of the Ili Taranchi Sultanate was included into the Semirech'e oblast' (Moiseev 1996, p. 93).

It was at this time that the first Uyghur ethno-nationalist narratives began to appear in Xinjiang; see Kamalov (2007, p. 33). The first attempt to write down Uyghur history was made by Muhammad Imin (Mamtimin) Bughra (Bughra 1940). Another Uyghur history was written by Polat Qadiri in 1948.

The ethnogenesis of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang was a complex historical process in which immigrant Turkic-speaking nomadic groups mixed with indigenous sedentary Iranian speakers. For a recent scholarly overview of Uyghur history, see Millward (2007).

See for instance Kabirov (1951).

Disputes over the use of the term ‘Uyghurstan’ versus ‘Eastern Turkistan’ were intensive in the 1990s, when the leaders of the older generation, such as Ashir Vakhidi, were alive but a decade later these disputes have significantly diminished as can be seen from the title of a recently published (2012) book by Dilinur Kassymova entitled ‘Uyghuriya: mysterious, distant and close’ [Uighuriia. Zagadochnaia, daliokaia i blizkaia].

The Chinese reaction to Turgun Almas' book is discussed by Rudelson (1997, pp. 157–159) and Bovington (2004, 2010). As Bovingdon mentions, one of the counter-publications organized by the Chinese authorities against the work of Almas was a textbook entitled Local history of Xinjiang, published in Chinese and Uyghur. Its ‘fundamental point was that Xinjiang was a region within China’ (Bovington 2004, pp. 363–368, Bovington 2010, p. 30).

See Appendix.