Old Rebellions, New Minorities: Ma Family Leaders and Debates Over Communal Representation Following the Xinhai Rebellion, 1911

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following the 1911 Xinhai Rebellion, the new leadership began to stress the fundamental unity of the peoples of the new Republic of China, even as newspaper commentaries foretold the need for separate Muslim representation as the only way to buy the participation of that constituency in the new state. Influential Chinese Muslim military leaders controlled much of the northwest; their participation in the new state was crucial to its survival. However, whilst the legacies of a nineteenth century process of minoritization meant it was often assumed Muslims would want either separate representation or independence, separate representation was never a cause the northwestern leadership truly espoused. Instead, although figures such as Ma Anliang, Ma Bufang and Ma Fuxiang were recognized unofficially as ‘Muslim leaders’, they promoted themselves as experts on other minorities, and as guardians of the integrity of the old, multi-ethnic space that had been the Qing empire. This article argues that in rejecting their own minoritization, the Chinese Muslim leaders sought to ensure the place of other minorities – Tibetan, Mongolian, Turkic – in the emerging framework of the Chinese Nationalist state, often with great violence. Only then could they be afforded space within that new state as one minority among others.