Nationalism and modernism in the East Turkestan Republic, 1933–34

This study explains the intellectual history and ideology of the Turkic insurgency and the East Turkestan Republic in Kashgar in 1933–34. Texts in periodicals from the period suggest that the insurgency was defined by its intellectual elites more as a nationalist enterprise than as a religious one. The insurgency's ideologists established important national attributes of the East Turkestani nation, particularly its national name, homeland, symbology, and history, and they also articulated East Turkestani national interests, particularly political independence, representative government, and modernization. Regardless of the arguably low degree of social penetration of the ideas of the elites among common society and the small extent to which policy was actually implemented, the intertwining of East Turkestani national identity and interests with political self-government and modernization was an ideological concept that had a profound impact on all subsequent administrations in Xinjiang.