Since 2001, Islamic extremism has succeeded ethnic nationalism as perhaps the greatest perceived threat to the stability of nation-states and the international order. Gardner Bovingdon's The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land is a reminder of the persistent salience of nationalist politics based on land, language, and ethno-cultural identity. In the book, Bovingdon analyzes the politics of Chinese domination and Uyghur resistance in Xinjiang province, both past and present. Bovingdon's study also considers the influence of global Islam and transnational organizations on the development of a Uyghur political consciousness. While Islamic rhetoric and practice increasingly serve as vehicles for the expression of Uyghur discontent, Bovingdon argues that “most Uyghur resistance to Chinese rule is prompted by nationalism, not Islamism” (p. 3). His analysis underscores the fact that political claims couched in religious terms may obscure more “traditional” ethno-nationalist goals. Yet Islam is integral to the politics of contemporary Xinjiang. Global Islamic extremism and the war on terror provide the Chinese regime “a ready-made grand narrative of culture clash, terrorism, and global Islamic threat” (p. 3) with which to justify the repression of its Uyghur citizens.

Narrative is one of the central foci of The Uyghurs. Bovingdon analyzes what he terms the “representational politics” of Xinjiang: that is, the ways in which party-state and Uyghur actors frame identity, place, and people so as to buttress conflicting claims of sovereignty and membership. Early sections of the book include an overview of competing histories of Xinjiang and of the Uyghurs as an ethnic group. As Bovingdon makes clear, historically informed Chinese sovereignty claims over Xinjiang are complicated by a past marked by shifting territorial boundaries, warlordism, inconsistent imperial policies, and the origins of the Chinese nation-state. Uyghur nationalism is itself complicated by these and other factors, and has had to “overcome (and thus conceal) a number of gaps and significant changes of place, religion, and political stance in the story of Uyghur ‘national becoming’” (p. 28). Bovingdon's synthesis of competing histories illuminates continuities and discontinuities in state-Uyghur relations from the imperial era to the present.

One of the strengths of the book is its portrayal of the Chinese state, especially the post-Mao state. The Han-dominated regime emerges as perhaps the most potent factor in the hardening of Uyghur identity, anti-Han sentiment, and anger at the government. The state has accomplished this through neocolonial practices and institutions such as the Production and Construction Corps, whose control over much of Xinjiang's territory and resources has facilitated Han-centric state-building without improving conditions for most Uyghurs. Ethnic mistrust and hatred—which erupted in deadly Han-Uyghur clashes in the summer of 2009—are fed also by the government's ongoing effort to increase the Han presence in the region, a practice that belies the allegedly multiethnic character of the Chinese polity. Also aggravating Uyghur identity and grievance are the state's minority “autonomy” policies, which allow for token Uyghur leadership of state organs in Xinjiang. This autonomy is meaningless, as ultimate authority is wielded by an overwhelmingly Han Communist Party. The state has also used the promise of autonomy to divide the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (the region's official name) into a patchwork of autonomous prefectures, counties, and townships under the nominal control of other minorities such as Kazaks, Kirghiz, Russians, and Huis.

Bovingdon's portrayal of the state also reveals the extent to which the fortunes of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs are intertwined with policy shifts occurring elsewhere in China. The early post-Mao reform era saw more tolerant policies toward the Uyghurs and Islam in Xinjiang, and for a time, leaders in Beijing appeared committed to “nativization,” increasing the Uyghur presence in regional party and state organs. The fall of reformers such as Hu Yaobang and the ascendance of hardliners, especially after Tiananmen, generated a backlash against this openness. Nativization itself was blamed for unrest that emerged in Xinjiang in the 80s and 90s, and the policy was abandoned. In other respects, the experience of the Uyghurs diverges from that of other minorities elsewhere in China, except perhaps the Tibetans. Over the last two decades, the regime has loosened strictures on religion (including Islam) throughout the country, and it increasingly tolerates some kinds of popular protest. In Xinjiang, however, Islam remains greatly constrained, and expressions of discontent are ruthlessly suppressed even when protestors' grievances are identical to those of non-Uyghur Chinese in other provinces.

Bovingdon's account of contemporary Uyghur resistance suggests that, from the regime's perspective, repression appears to be working. A series of mass protests erupted in Xinjiang in the 1980s and 1990s, but in the last decade, protest has declined markedly in Xinjiang while skyrocketing elsewhere in China. Uyghur resistance today appears limited mainly to private expressions of disgust and anger, and the deployment of allegory and metaphor in popular culture as a way of talking politics while evading the censors. This discussion of resistance is somewhat less successful than other parts of Bovingdon's study. His stretching of the concept of resistance to include politically ineffectual private criticisms is problematic, a point he acknowledges (p. 86). Furthermore, the argument that discontent amounts to Uyghur nationalism is not adequately supported by the evidence. Based on material from more than one hundred unstructured interviews Bovingdon conducted in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, it is clear that many Uyghurs detest the Han, and many also reject the idea that they share membership in a single political community. However, it is not clear that anti-Han sentiment or anger at the regime are tantamount to Uyghur nationalism. Many of the mass protests of the 80s and 90s were motivated by concerns that have sparked uprisings by non-Uyghur Chinese, including the Han. Some of the resistance he details has involved Kirghiz, Kazaks, Huis, and other minorities, which raises questions about its Uyghur nationalist character. The matter of Islam's role in contemporary resistance needs fleshing out: Bovingdon raises but does not pursue the very intriguing fact that some disgruntled Uyghurs see religiosity as a barrier to mobilizing resistance (p. 93). I should point out that Bovingdon's ability to research such questions and even move about Xinjiang was greatly restricted by the regime. Given the limitations he faced, Bovingdon is to be commended for marshalling the primary and secondary materials he uses here to demonstrate the regime's failure to convince Uyghurs that they are full members of China's allegedly multiethnic national community.

The Uyghurs will be of great interest to scholars of Chinese Islam, state-minority relations in China, and the politics of ethnicity and religion in Central Asia. The book also contributes to contemporary debates regarding Chinese political reforms and what Andrew Nathan has termed the “authoritarian resilience” of the party-state, and should be read by scholars of the state and popular protest in China. Non-China specialists will also benefit from this work, which plumbs a case often neglected by comparative political analysis. One hopes, too, that this well-written book finds its way into the hands of US policymakers, whose prosecution of the global war on terror has given Beijing carte blanche to suppress any and all expressions of Uyghur discontent, no matter the cause.