While different periods of the history of Xinjiang have been explored in a number of excellent scholarly studies, this is the first volume to offer a comprehensive overview of the political history of this vast region for a general readership. James A. Millward pays particular attention to Xinjiang's interstitial position and relations to other regions, to its geography, and to the multiple ways in which its peoples have interacted and organized themselves over the centuries.

After a brief geographic introduction, the volume draws systematically on the archaeological evidence to reconstruct the history down to the eighth century. Rather than present a dogmatic lineal political history, the author carefully outlines uncertainties and alternative speculations. In chapter 1, he also highlights clear misrepresentations and inaccuracies, such as the case of the famous mummies of the Taklamakan. “Eurasian crossroads” is shown to be an apt designation of the region in prehistory, and this continued in the centuries during which the Tang dynasty, the Türks, and the Tibetans struggled for domination. Interaction between China-based and Mongolia-based powers, invasions, migrations, complex trade relations, and other forms of interaction between nomadic and sedentary polities, and linguistic diversity remained characteristic of this territory between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries, the period discussed in chapter 2. However, the long parallel processes of Turkification and Islamization that took place in this era were decisive in shaping the ethnic and religious makeup of modern Xinjiang. Although relations with China had long been important, from the sixteenth century onward, political and military influence from China increased substantially, culminating in the incorporation of the region into the Qing empire (chapter 3).

Following the Muslim rebellions of the late nineteenth century, Xinjiang was formally named as such and restructured as an imperial province. According to Millward, its history since the late Qing has been dominated by its relation to China, and by the tensions between the policies of the Chinese center and the ethnoreligious aspirations of the people who, by the middle of the twentieth century, were known as the Uyghur. These tensions are analyzed in chapter 4, “Between Empire and Nation,” which deals with the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, the Republican period is discussed within a different binary framework, as during these decades the influence coming from the Soviet Union also has to be taken into account (chapter 5). The discussion of Xinjiang's political fate after its incorporation into the People's Republic concludes with the reform period (chapter 6), while the last substantive chapter adopts yet another opposition: Xinjiang is both part of China and part of the wider world.

It is only to be expected that the author devotes more space to recent centuries, beginning with the eighteenth, to the understanding of which his own previous work has made major contributions. In addition to political history, he is particularly strong in his coverage of the impact of trade relations and religious developments. The attention paid to education and everyday life is more cursory.

Millward marshals his materials analytically. He is skilled in pointing out patterns that recur over the longue durée, in his willingness to address controversies in historiography, and in his criticisms of the policies of the central power in various periods. Occasionally, however, the organization of the narrative seems flawed: For example, it is not clear why an introduction to the Uyghur language and the history of its script changes is included at the beginning of chapter 6, “On the People's Republic of China.”

As the volume proceeds, what begins as a regional history gradually turns into a history of the modern Uyghur within the Chinese polity. The range of published sources, primarily but not exclusively in English, Chinese, and Japanese, is very impressive. It is a curious fact that most studies of Xinjiang's history have been written by Chinese and foreign authors, all of them outsiders from the point of view of the largest group of local actors, the Uyghur. This is particularly true of the literature that informs the chapters on the socialist periods. Millward grapples deftly with the difficulties of interpreting such materials. One can only hope that in the future, the voices of the subalterns will also multiply in Xinjiang historiography. This will require a more relaxed political atmosphere than the one that prevails at present, one that would allow local intellectuals to engage freely in the study of their own historical records and, at the same time, encourage researchers to write history “from below” by applying the methods of oral history to explore the recent past.

Millward's book fills an important gap in the growing literature on Xinjiang, and it will be indispensable to students of this region and of China and Central Asia more generally. Its attractive, jargon-free style also renders it a useful introduction for more general audiences.