#also funny an article published in '17 assumes no prior knowledge abt xuar

[zvaigzdelasas]

In April 1950, Owen Lattimore, one of America’s most esteemed Sinologists, received a request for a copy of his brand new book, Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian Frontiers of China and Russia.

Such requests for Pivot of Asia—an insightful work on the history, culture, and economy of Xinjiang (Sinkiang), a province in Northwest China sharing a long land border with the Soviet Union—were probably not rare, but this one was different.

Postmarked from New Delhi, the letter was written by a group of three political refugees from Xinjiang. The authors of the letter asked not just for a copy of the book; more importantly, they wanted Lattimore and his “friends” in the American government to support Xinjiang in the wake of the Chinese revolution.

The names of the letter’s three signatories—Muhammad Amin Bughra, Isa Yusuf Alptekin, and Colonel Adam Sabri—would have been immediately familiar to Lattimore, an expert on China’s ethnic borderlands. Describing themselves as “Turkestanis,” the trio of Uyghur men had long served the Chinese Nationalist Government in Xinjiang.

When the Chinese Nationalist Army in Xinjiang capitulated in September 1949, the three men faced an uncertain future. Accompanied by some 600 other Uyghur politicians and family members, they fled the provincial capital, Urumqi, just days before troops of the Chinese Communist Party arrived.

Writing from India, Bughra, Alptekin, and Sabri styled themselves rather pitifully, telling Lattimore they were “bereft of all valuables” and “penniless.” Despite their material condition, the men remained committed to telling the world of Xinjiang’s plight under the repressive regime of the Chinese and Soviet communists. [...]

Lattimore, Bughra, Alptekin, and Sabri wanted material and financial support. Addressing the China-expert as an “Adviser to the State Department,” they asked for “[help] from you or your friends,” noting that in the midst of the difficult journey to India, they and their 600 followers had lost all worldly possessions. If they were to survive in India—let alone agitate for the independence of Xinjiang—the three men desperately needed some assistance.

Upon reading the letter, Lattimore did seek out money for Xinjiang…but not in the way Bughra, Alptekin, and Sabri had hoped. The request prompted Lattimore to try to recruit a language and area studies expert for Johns Hopkins or another university in the United States. He sent off letters to the Foreign Service Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the University of Pennsylvania, all asking for funds to recruit a Xinjiang specialist. [...]

At the time of Pivot’s publication and Lattimore’s fundraising effort, the United States Consulate in Urumqi had closed, a CIA operative named Douglas Mackiernan had been killed while evacuating from Chinese Central Asia, and the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union had inked a series of agreements to jointly develop Xinjiang.

All of this meant that the United States was denied access to Xinjiang, an important listening post in the Global Cold War. Lattimore probably feared that a knowledge gap about this “pivotal” region in Central Asian and Sino-Soviet affairs would develop among policymakers and policy analysts in Washington. So to prepare for after the Chinese revolution, Lattimore wanted the United States to have academics and educators familiar with the languages and locales of Xinjiang.