Books Details
Author : Eric Schluessel Pages : 304 pages Publisher : Columbia
University Press Language : ISBN-10 : 0231197551 ISBN-13 :
9780231197557
Books Descriptions
At the close of the nineteenth century, near the end of the
Qing empire, Confucian revivalists from central China gained
control of the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, or East
Turkestan. There they undertook a program to transform Turkic-
speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians, seeking to
bind this population and their homeland to the Chinese cultural
and political realm. Instead of assimilation, divisions between
communities only deepened, resulting in a profound estrangement
that continues to this day.In Land of Strangers, Eric
Schluessel explores this encounter between Chinese power and a
Muslim society through the struggles of ordinary people in the
oasis of Turpan. He follows the stories of families divided by
war, women desperate to survive, children unsure where they
belong, and many others to reveal the human consequences of a
bloody conflict and the more insidious violence of
reconstruction. Schluessel traces the emergence of new
struggles around essential
