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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Attempting to observe Central and Inner Asia from North America or Europe is like looking through a glass that is badly refracted, or even like trying to view the invisible. I propose a new approach toward the understanding of Central and Inner Asia that actively takes stock of East Asian countries’ activities, interests, perspectives, and scholarship in the region, and that interrogates dominant definitions of Asian regionalism.
[1] I am grateful to Mark Selden, Peter Perdue and Kären E. Wigen for their vigorous comments on an earlier draft of this essay. This is an exploratory essay intended to provoke fresh thinking about how to strengthen understanding of Central/Inner Asia or Central Eurasia in North America and Europe. As such, it cannot cover everything and it may have left out some important contributions made by Euroamerican scholars.
[2] Cf. Martin W. Lewis & Kären E. Wigen. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
[3] Some important exceptions are: Peter Perdue. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005; Fred W. Bergholz. The Partition of the Steppe: The Struggle of the Russians, Manchus, and the Zunghar Mongols for Empire in Central Asia, 1619-1758. New York NY: Peter Lang, 1993; S. Frederick Starr (ed.). Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004; Dru C. Gladney. Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press and London: C. Hurst Publishers, 2004; Christopher P. Atwood. Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia's Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2002; Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath. The End of Nomadism ?: Society, State and the Environment in Inner Asia. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
[4] Andre Gunder Frank. The Centrality of Central Asia. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1992.
[5] Cf. Orlando Figes. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002.
[6] Sally N. Cummings. “Eurasian Bridge or Murky Waters between East and West? Ideas, Identity and Output in Kazakhstan's Foreign Policy.” Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics, September 2003, Vol. 19 Issue 3, pp.139-155.
[8] Cf. Nicola Di Cosma. Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Thomas Barfield. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
[9] Cf. Piper Rae Gaubatz. Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996; Hodong Kim. Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004; James A. Millward. Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998; Mark C. Elliott. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001; Pamela K. Crossley. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
[10] Owen Lattimore. Inner Asian Frontiers of China. New York: American Geographical Society, 1940.
[11] Cf. the debate between Evelyn S. Rawski and Ping-Ti Ho. Evelyn S. Rawski. “Presidential Address: Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 55, No. 4. (Nov., 1996), pp. 829-850; Ping-Ti Ho. “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's “Reenvisioning the Qing.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Feb., 1998), pp. 123-155.
[12] Cf. Stefan Tanaka. Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Prasenjit Duara. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003; Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb (eds.). Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1949. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
[13] See The Center for East Asian Cultural Studies. Bibliography of Central Asian Studies in Japan: 1879 - March 1987. Tokyo: The Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1988.
[14] Gray Tuttle. Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005; Xiaoyuan Liu. Frontier Passages: Ethnopolitics and the Rise of Chinese Communism, 1921-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
[15] Chinese publications on the “Northwest”, i.e. the Inner Asian frontiers are numerous, and most of them have recently been reprinted in a number of series such as Zhongguo xibei wenxian congshu. Lanzhou: Lanzhou guji shudian, 1990.
[16] Perdue (2005); Laura Newby. “The Chinese Literary Conquest of Xinjiang.” Modern China, Oct 1999, Vol. 25 Issue 4, pp. 451-74.
[17] Egami Namio. Kiba minzoku kokka: Nihon kodaishi e no apurochi. Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1967.
[18] Tadao Umesao. An Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context (edited by Harumi Befu; translated by Beth Cary). Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2003.
[19] The designations of these transnational organizations betray two contrasting understandings of Central Asia: China is strongly egoistic, seeing itself as “center” to Central Asian countries, whereas Japan is willing to “advance” into Central Asia. For a revisionist view on China's perspective on Asia, see Wang Hui, “Reclaiming Asia from the West: Rethinking Global History.” Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1781. See also Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
[21] The Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University, UK, is perhaps the only place that has made a serious effort to nurture scholars of Inner Asian origin through graduate training, collaborative researches, and publishing their articles in its peer-reviewed journal Inner Asia. http://www.innerasiaresearch.org/index.html
[22] There are indications that business is moving ahead of scholars in seeking access to the region. A case in point is that in March 2005 Canada's Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and Japan's Mitsui & Co. Ltd. agreed to jointly develop copper, gold, coal and infrastructure projects at Oyu Tolgoi, Mongolia, reportedly the world's largest green-fields copper and gold mining projects.
[23] There are a few prominent exceptions to this observation: Prasenjit Duara (2003), Stefan Tanaka (1993), and perhaps Selçuk Esenbel. “Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900-1945.” American Historical Review, October 2004, Vol. 109, Issue 4, pp. 1141-70. But these are largely historical studies. I have yet to find any work that critically engages contemporary East Asian scholars on studies of Central/Inner Asia.
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