Interest in the Uyghurs of Central Asia has increased dramatically since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Until recently, most studies have focused on the period since 1950, except for James A. Millward’s Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (2007), and have dealt specifically with the establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and relations between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government. Variations in Chinese communist policies toward the Uyghurs have been addressed, with toleration alternating with repression regarding the Uyghur language, religion, customs, and literary and artistic expressions. The Uyghurs’ responses to these policies, whether it be capitalizing on the economic, health, and educational benefits of communist rule or engaging in demonstrations, bombings, or other forms of violence in order to protest draconian regulations or discrimination against them or their religion of Islam, have also been described and analyzed in a spate of articles and books.

In this book, David Brophy provides the background for the development of Uyghur identity. One of his principal contributions is demonstrating the influence of Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and then the Soviet Union on the creation of a specific group within the Muslims of Turkestan. The fluidity and the relative ease of travel and migration from eighteenth to early-twentieth-century Central Asia permitted the so-called Uyghurs to be defined as a distinct group. Movement into nineteenth-century Russia, which was starting to identify the various Turkic and Iranian groups within its expanding domains, generated a distinct Uyghur identity that was distinguished from other Turkic peoples. Uyghur intellectuals and merchants had migrated to Russia, where they were exposed to nationalist currents from Turkey in their new homeland.

In the early years of the Soviet period, the Uyghurs were also not perceived as a national minority. In 1925, the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of Russia “reflected the prevailing skepticism toward the Uyghurs as a full-blown nationality” (199). Yet Soviet interest and involvement in the Uyghurs’ homeland accelerated in the late 1920s, as the Chinese government, under Chiang Kai-shek and his Guomindang government, did not control Xinjiang, offering the Soviet Union considerable opportunities for trade and cultural and political influence. Uyghurs from Xinjiang moved freely into Soviet Central Asia where they sought employment and tended to be exploited. Nonetheless, it suited the Soviets to treat the Uyghurs as a national minority independent of China, based on Stalin’s definition of a nation as one with a “common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (174).

Brophy writes that these favorable conditions temporarily permitted the development of a Uyghur identity, but Soviet support did not last long. Patriotic Central Asian and Xinjiang Uyghurs arose, but divisions among them, partly precipitated by the Soviets who became increasingly suspicious of Uyghur nationalism, sought to undermine them. The Soviet purges in the 1930s further decimated the leadership of the Central Asian Turks, as well as the Uyghurs, allowing Sheng Shicai, a Chinese military commander and Soviet ally until the early 1940s, to dominate Xinjiang. The bonds between the Uyhgurs and the Central Asian Turks began at that point to erode.

David Brophy relates this complicated history in a lengthy but clear manner. Using Russian, Chinese, Uyghur, and western sources, he fills in the portrait of Russian, Soviet, and Central Asian Turks’ involvement and influence on the Uyghurs of Xinjiang. Other studies have alluded to the Russian and Soviet roles, but Brophy’s work is the first detailed narrative. Brophy offers considerable detail on Russian, Soviet, Ottoman, Qing, and Republic Chinese policies concerning the Uyghurs and the various Central Asian groups that shaped a Uyghur identity.

Uyghur Nation, the title of the book, challenges the current Chinese communist view of a Chinese nation or Zhonghua minzu. The communists perceive of the Uyghurs as an ethnic minority, not a nation. Thus, Brophy’s title and the contents of his book have political implications. He concludes: “The immediate outlook for a reconciliation of Chinese and Uyghur historical narratives is not encouraging, but such a reconciliation will be a necessary part of any lasting peace in Xinjiang” (278). Fundamentalists and Chinese jingoists seek to impede such reconciliation.

Brophy’s book reveals the background for the present status of the Uyghurs.