ABSTRACT
In 1984 and 1985, official accounts of each of the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region’s three largest autonomous Kazak areas appeared in Urumqi bookstores, providing brief official histories and general overviews of cultural and economic development since 1949. As evinced by each book’s appended dashi nianbiao, giving a chronology of significant events from the third century b.c. through the early 1980s, these small volumes were intended not only to provide Chinese readers with an understanding of the Kazak areas of Xinjiang, but also to illustrate these areas’ historical development as parts of China. By linking the Kazak past with that of the Chinese empire, the present government conveys its message of historical Chinese sovereignty over the northwest and offers an implicit justification for continued Chinese governance there.
