Muslims in Amdo Tibetan Society: Multidisciplinary Approaches ed. by Marie-Paule Hille, Bianca Horlemann, and Paul K. Nietupski (review)

This edited volume emerged from a panel organized for the 12th seminar of the International association for Tibetan studies, in 2010 in Vancouver. It is hence the result of the work of an international team of researchers, spanning several continents, and who master a variety of languages relevant to this study. Muslims in Amdo Tibetan Society provides a rich and meticulous analysis of intercommunity relations in the Amdo Tibetan region, which includes the Tibetan parts of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan province. It relies on a large variety of sources, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of this book, spanning from oral history to local archives and even to privately-held documents. The rich material studied is well detailed and presented throughout the chapters through quotes, pictures, and maps.

A carefully drafted introduction sets up the ambition of the edited volume. While no overall argument is put forward, the study is driven by shared questions regarding the multifaceted interactions between Muslim and Tibetan communities in Amdo and the fluidity of identities in this region favorable to cultural and linguistic exchanges. Through snapshots focusing on different periods and groups in the recent history of the region, this book highlights the diversity of Muslim communities in Amdo. It enriches the existing literature on the topic not only with new material but also by challenging narrow approaches to Tibetan-Muslim relations in the region often presented as purely conflictual or commercial.

Reflecting this ambition to go beyond the stereotypical views of Tibetan-Muslim relations in the region, several chapters highlight the complex interactions between these communities in recent Amdo history. In their chapter titled "A Study of Qing Dynasty 'Xiejia Rest Houses in Xunhua Subprefecture, Gansu" Yang Hongwei and Max Oidtmann show how the rest houses held by Muslim groups were used as para-governmental structures by the Qing frontier administration to govern the Tibetans and Mongols in the area. The rest houses were used to keep tabs on local commerce, take a census, tax the Tibetan population, as well as mediate in case of conflicts. Their role as brokers grew over time and was fundamentally tied to the relationships they managed to maintain with local elites on one side and the Qing administration on the other. Marie-Paule Hille's very rich chapter on Xidaotang merchants and their relationships with Tibetans also sheds new light on the complex intercommunal interactions in Amdo. Focusing on the late Qing and Republican era, she shows how this small Sufi community was able to develop trade relations with various Tibetan communities and maintain strong ties across the region. From their position as middlemen, they established contacts with local religious and political elites which went beyond pure business. They could, for example, rely on the support of monasteries in certain cases of conflict mediation. According to Hille, the ties of mutual-protection developed were based on shared interest but also the vision of a closed and collectivist community that the Xidaotang merchants shared with the Tibetan monks.

Other chapters delve into the conflictual relations between Tibetan and Muslim communities, highlighting the complex reasons behind conflicts which cannot only be understood through the lens of ethnic or cultural differences. In her chapter titled "Victims of Modernization? Struggles Between the Goloks and the Muslim Ma Warlords in Qinghai, 1917-1942," Bianca Horlemann shows how the conflict between the Qinghai Muslim administrators and Tibetan Goloks was not triggered by religious differences but rather by structural economic evolutions. The modernization of the local economy and of the Muslim Warlords armies, together with the increasing intra-Golok conflicts, created new strategic opportunities and led to conflict. In his work on the economic restructuring of Qinghai province on the contemporary period, Andrew Martin Fischer also highlights how economic changes can lead to intercommunal conflict. The labor market reforms and economic modernization...