Accidental Holy Land is validation that in the right hands these types of state-published collections, despite having undergone unclear processes of editorial curation, can be used to fashion empirically rich and highly original reassessments of the past that undermine both grand narratives and unduly deterministic conclusions.
James Leibold, La Trobe University, author of Ethnic Policy in China:
Weiner has done an exceptional job piecing together a coherent, chronological narrative from fragmented, value-laden archival documents, reading his sources with critical adroitness, and a sharp analytical mind.
Emily T. Yeh, University of Colorado Boulder, author of Taming Tibet:
Engagingly written, Weiner's analysis in this book is fresh, packed with insights, and based on work in an area where historical data are very difficult to gather.
Charlene Makley, Reed College, author of The Battle for Fortune:
The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is one of the few accounts in English of the relatively neglected watershed year of 1958, when the so-called Chinese revolution was actually brought to non-Chinese communities in the western frontier zone. Compellingly narrated, this book has remarkable contemporary relevance.
Benno Weiner's The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is a detailed and powerful account of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted to incorporate Tibetans living in Amdo into the newly created Chinese socialist nation-state in the 1950s; Scholars of empire, nationalism and socialism in East Asia and Inner Asia will significantly benefit from reading it.
Benno Weiner's excellent book makes two main contributions to what we know about the history of the Amdo / Qinghai region in western China. His careful empirical narrativization of the political history of the southern Qinghai highlands from the 1940s to the 1960s is pathbreaking, detailed, and nuanced. Second, his focus on the United Front as a set of ideas and policies similarly establishes a compelling baseline framework for regional and national historical analyses that connect the imperial past, Chinese socialism, and the Xi Jinping present. But Weiner also makes an important contribution to how we ought to think about the region.
This book is a remarkable contribution to our understanding of this era as state archival material from this period is rarely accessible to researchers. [The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is] a landmark publication in modern Tibetan history, early PRC history and the history of Chinese nation-building in its frontier regions. This book should be required reading for anybody interested in the history of Sino-Tibetan relations or modern Chinese nation-building.
This book will become a must-read overseas in the field of ethnic history of China's periphery.
The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier offers precious insights into a hidden history.
In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner masterfully reconstructs the CCP's colonial encroachment on the Tibetan-speaking population of Amdo during the 1950s.
Pathbreaking. [A] superb contribution to the literature on the early years of Chinese Communist rule over Tibet.
A landmark study. Accessibly written, this book will be of value to all students of PRC history and indeed Communist regimes. An impressive and timely achievement.
Benno Weiner is undeniably a serious thinker, and The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is a fascinating and important book. It's going to be a while until the next one of these comes along.
Utilizing never before available documents, Weiner has given us a fascinating, detailed insider's look at the discussions, disagreements, problems, orders, and more during this critical period of consolidation of power and nation-building this important, distinctly written and meticulously documented study provides critical insight into an area and period that we have known far too little about.
The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier provides valuable detail on how the party tackled the problem of establishing control in an area culturally, linguistically, economically and politically so different from the interior. Seldom is the veil lifted from Tibet, which makes Weiner's chronicles all the more worth reading.
