Nation building across national borders: a Uyghur hero in three socialist states

Abstract

ABSTRACT The process of nation building often entails the articulation of communal heroes. This paper argues that the elevation of such heroes is particularly significant for minority nations divided between multiple states. The project of building the Uyghur nation, carried out across the borders of three twentieth-century socialist states, offers a unique opportunity for examining this phenomenon. In particular, the Uyghur case offers insight into the many minority communities whose nation building process was linked to twentieth-century socialism. This paper traces the posthumous reputation of Sadir Palwan, a nineteenth-century resistance fighter against the Qing empire who in the twentieth century was reinterpreted as a Uyghur national hero. Drawing on poetry, fiction, journal articles, and textbooks, the paper demonstrates that the project of articulating a heroic canon allowed Uyghur intellectuals to work across state borders as they shaped an identity for their nation outside the nation-state framework.