Xinjiang and the Expansion of Chinese Communist Power

Xinjiang, China's far northwestern province where the majority of the population are Muslim Uyghurs, was for most of its history contested territory. On the Silk Road, a region of overlapping cultures, the province was virtually independent until the late nineteenth century, nominally part of the Qing Empire, with considerable interest taken in it by the British and the Russians as part of their Great Game rivalry in Asia. Ruled by warlords in the early twentieth century, it was occupied in 1949