Micah Muscolino interviews James Millward, a leading scholar on China and Central Asia at Georgetown University. They connect the history of Xinjiang in the Qing Empire, to assimilationist policies and terrorism of the 2000s, and to present day large-scale repression and cultural genocide of Uighurs under Xi Jinping.

This episode is adapted from the China Throughlines web series, which features UC San Diego’s China historians in conversation with their colleagues on the echos and connectedness of China’s storied past to the twenty-first century.

James A. Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He also teaches as invited professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: a History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: the Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998).

Micah Muscolino is Professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at UC San Diego. His research focuses on the environmental history of modern China. His first book, Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (2009), explored the environmental history of China’s most important marine fishery/ His second book The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950 (2015) engaged with the historiography of war and militarization in modern China and the interdisciplinary scholarship on war and the environment in world history. He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley (1999) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (2006).

Web series host: Micah Muscolino, UC San Diego
 Editor: Samuel Tsoi, UC San Diego
Music: Dave Liang/Shanghai Restoration Project

Get the future of podcasts.