Focusing on Xinjiang, today one of the most notoriously restive regions of the People's Republic of China, Justin Jacobs' book contributes to the growing body of historical work on the region. Unlike most recent additions to the scholarship, which have been devoted to the Manchu era, Jacobs' book takes a fresh look at the region's history during the republican period, using published as well as archival sources. The result is a longitudinal study of the strategies employed by the power-holders of three consecutive Chinese political formations (late imperial, republican and early socialist) to deal with internal diversity on China's western borderlands. Analyses of the manipulations of ethnic difference by various actors and interest groups inside and outside Xinjiang are framed by the author's insistence on paying equal attention to what Han officials said and did, rather than focusing solely on their abstract political discourses. Building on the insights of recent scholarship on other Eurasian continental empires, and taking his cue from scholars of “the new Qing history”, Jacobs convincingly demonstrates the ways in which modern China resembled (but also differed from) its imperial predecessor. Painstakingly avoiding negatively connoted terms such as imperialist or colonialist, he coins the term “national empire” to characterize modern China. Through a well-constructed narrative privileging the perspective of Han officials serving in Xinjiang, readers are introduced to the perpetuation of well-tested imperial strategies employed and pragmatically adjusted to new realities in face of the threat emanating from both Han and non-Han nationalisms and from Soviet political designs. Characterized by a heavy reliance on published Chinese materials, augmented by archival sources from both China and Russia, the unfolding regional history of Xinjiang simultaneously doubles as a narrative of the emergence of modern China.

Chapter 1 introduces the imperial tools of governance developed in the late Qing era, to which Han officials during the republican period could also resort in their efforts to manage diversity. These included territorial accommodation, the co-optation of dependent intermediaries between alien rulers and the subject population, the introduction of the idea of a supranational civic identity, strategies to deflect ethnic tension and, last but not least, narratives of legitimation.

Chapter 2 examines how Governor Yang Zengxin chose to deal with the nationalist threat emerging in Xinjiang in the wake of the collapse of the Chinese and the Russian Empires. Convinced that he alone could deal with the difficult situation, Yang familiarized himself with socialist ideology. He resorted to strategies of difference taken from the high Qing era, combining them creatively with new methods borrowed from the Russian imperial repertoire. Simultaneously he made every effort to keep Xinjiang free of nationalist currents. The chapter closes with a narrative of Yang's successor, Jin Shuren's rule. With his aggressive integrationist stance, reminiscent of late Qing attitudes, Jin not only changed the course of Yang's policies, but also prepared the ground for the inevitable ethnonationalist backlash from the region's non-Han populations.

Chapter 3 focuses on the rise of these ethnopopulist forces in Xinjiang under the governorship of Sheng Shicai. Like his immediate predecessors, Shang was preoccupied with countering influences emanating from the Soviet Union rather than from Beijing. The co-optation of leading ethnonationalists from among the ranks of non-Han peoples and affirmative action policies inspired by the Soviet model were soon followed by the elimination of traditional local leaders, a strategy possibly borrowed from Stalin. Jacobs' observation that Sheng did not favour the Han over non-Han peoples but had no choice but to staff his administration with Chinese communists following the marginalization of the traditional non-Han elite is a novel representation of the situation from the Han governor's perspective. The almost apologetic tone is mitigated in the closing section of the chapter, which does some justice to the workings of indigenous agency.

Chapter 4 focuses on the struggle between the Soviets and Chinese nationalists, epitomized by the Ili rebellion. Evidence drawn from both Chinese and Soviet archives substantiates earlier claims that from beginning to end the rebellion was the result of Soviet scheming, intervention and manipulation. Throughout the 1930s and 40s the Soviets exploited the Han crisis of political legitimacy in Xinjiang, using affirmative action policies as an attractive alternative, to which the Chinese nationalists responded by “raising the stakes of ethnopolitical patronage”.

Chapter 5 shows how the new powerholders, the Chinese communists, ostensibly continued to honour indigenous cultural autonomy, a hollow concept since power granted to non-Han ethnonationalists remained symbolic and free of any tangible substance. Jacobs argues that, in contrast to the nationalists, whose political legitimacy was considerably weakened due to their responsibility for the warlord period, the Chinese communists could argue from a position of strength. This enabled them to make fewer concessions to non-Han ethnonationalist demands, a fact masked by a more generous, progressive discourse. The nationalists' more chauvinistic discursive strategies were accompanied by more progressive policies, enabling the rise of some non-Han leaders to real political prominence. A tangible illustration of communist integrationist strategies was the institutionalization of the bingtuan, which the author evaluates as a fulfilment of Qing imperial economic and political aspirations in Xinjiang. A rare example of what happened on the shopfloor of an Urumchi factory in the 1950s serves to demonstrate the Chinese adaptation of Soviet nationality policies on the ground, which privileged affirmative action on the discursive level but subordinated it to higher goals such as economic advancement in practice. The concluding chapter asks why Uyghur exiles failed to create a credible narrative of ethnopolitical legitimacy and looks for answers in the divided nature of the exile community and the nationalists' efforts in Taiwan to defend Chinese rule over Xinjiang.

Teasing out continuities and changes in Han ethnopolitical engineering in Xinjiang during the republican period, Justin Jacobs offers a well-researched and highly readable exploration of how Han governors managed to hold on to Xinjiang during the breakdown of central authority in China. Thanks to its factual richness and analytical power, this work makes an important contribution to Xinjiang's modern history and to the history of Chinese nation-building.