Benno Weiner, "The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier," (Cornell University Press, 2020)

In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner provides the first in-depth study of an ethnic minority region during the first decade of the People's Republic of China: the Amdo region in the Sino-Tibetan borderland. Employing previously inaccessible local archives as well as other rare primary sources, he demonstrates that the Communist Party's goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state- building, but also nation-building. Such an objective required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community. As Weiner shows, however, early efforts to gradually and organically transform a vast multiethnic empire into a singular nation-state lost out to a revolutionary impatience, demanding more immediate paths to national integration and socialist transformation. This led in 1958 to communization, then to large-scale rebellion and its brutal pacification. Rather than joining volunatarily, Amdo was integrated through the widespread, often indiscriminate use of violence, a violence that lingers in the living memory of Amdo Tibetans and others. East Asian Studies Podcast Chinese History Podcast Tibetan History Podcast Sino-Tibetan relations Amdo region history Benno Weiner The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier Tibetan frontier under Communist China Chinese nation-building in Tibet Ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China 1950s Amdo rebellion and pacification Socialist transformation in Tibetan regions Chinese Communist Party policies in Tibet Tibetan integration into China Multiethnic empire to nation-state in China Violence in Sino-Tibetan history Communist state-building in Tibet Tibetan memory of Chinese rebellion Amdo’s role in the Chinese Revolution Nation-building challenges in China Sino-Tibetan borderlands history Tibetan resistance under Communist rule Revolutionary impatience and Tibetan unrest Tibet-China relations in the 1950s Historical accounts of Amdo Tibetans Socialist transformation in borderland regions Modern Tibetan Studies Tibetan Studies Podcast