Description
In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner provides the first in-depth study of an ethnic minority region during the first decade of the People's Republic of China: the Amdo region in the Sino-Tibetan borderland. Employing previously inaccessible local archives as well as other rare primary sources, he demonstrates that the Communist Party's goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state-building but also nation-building. Such an objective required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community.
As Weiner shows, however, early efforts to gradually and organically transform a vast multiethnic empire into a singular nation-state lost out to a revolutionary impatience, demanding more immediate paths to national integration and socialist transformation. This led in 1958 to communization, then to large-scale rebellion and its brutal pacification. Rather than joining voluntarily, Amdo was integrated through the widespread, often indiscriminate use of violence, a violence that lingers in the living memory of Amdo Tibetans and others.
Author: Benno Weiner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 11/15/2023
Pages: 312
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9781501772306
ISBN10: 1501772309
BISAC Categories:
- History | Asia | China
- Religion | Buddhism | Tibetan
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
About the Author
Benno Weiner is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and coeditor of Conflicting Memories.