Natural Resources and the New Frontier

Kinzley turns material objects--gold, oil, furs--into subjects around which human actors organized their systems of political economy and infrastructure. What did multiple layers of state and nonstate actors do in Xinjiang over the course of the twentieth century that turned this arid and remote interior of Eurasia into an integrated, productive region in the service of neighboring regimes? And what are the accumulated consequences of these various advanced systems of extraction? This is a groundbreaking work that opens up a new page in the study of China and its frontiers. --Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley Placing the pursuit of natural resources at the center of his narrative, Kinzley effectively reframes the development of state power in Xinjiang during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Making expert use of Chinese and Russian archives, Kinzley constructs a revelatory account of the layered history of state formation in Xinjiang. He details how Chinese planners, provincial officials, and foreign powers collaborated to survey and exploit this Eurasian crossroads, transforming its political and socioeconomic geography in the process. The book offers a novel way of thinking about state building and economic development in China's other borderlands, while shedding important light on the material roots of inequality and interethnic tension in contemporary Xinjiang. --Micah Muscolino, University of Oxford With Natural Resources and the New Frontier, Kinzley provides a truly transnational and material approach to the history of Xinjiang. This is an outstanding work that gives us new insights on this important region of China, and its argument connects closely with current concerns about China's position in Central Eurasia and the world. --Peter C. Perdue, Yale University