Surviving Troubled Times on the Borders of China: Sheng Shicai as a Successful Warlord in Xinjiang, 1931–34

Ethnicity, religion, and geopolitics affect historians’ interpretations of the history of Xinjiang, a very chaotic frontier region of China that did not come fully under the control of the People’s Republic of China until recent decades. The case of Sheng Shicai, an early Republican Era Chinese military officer, shows how professional training and, most importantly, the ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities contributed to his military success in Xinjiang from 1931 to 1934. This paper analyzes the Republic of China’s government documents, Sheng and his acquaintances’ memoirs, newspaper articles, and other sources to examine how Sheng applied his military training and employed regional and foreign military forces to win battles in northern Xinjiang. Professional military training helped officers to utilize their resources efficiently and take advantage of their geopolitical situations. Amid numerous talented Chinese military officers, Sheng rose in rank and successfully secured Xinjiang as a part of the Republic of China even when Xinjiang’s geopolitics seemed extremely challenging. This study highlights the value of Sheng’s military prowess, something that the literature has not previously appreciated.

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia examines the church architecture of Northern Mesopotamia between the fourth and eighth centuries. It focuses on settlements, plan types, artistic encounters, the remarkable continuity of the classical tradition in the architectural decoration, the heterogeneity of the building techniques, patrons, imperial motivations, dedications of churches, and stories that claim and make spaces. Employing archaeological and epigraphical material and hagiographical and historical sources, the book presents a holistic picture of the church architecture of this frontier region, encompassing the cities of Nisibis (Nusaybin), Edessa (Şanlıurfa), Amida (Diyarbakır), Anastasiopolis (Dara/Oğuz), Martyropolis (Silvan), Constantia (Viranşehir), and their surroundings, and the rural Tur Abdin region. The period covered spans the last centuries of Byzantine and the first century and a half of Arab rule, when the region was, on the one hand, a stage of war and riven by religious controversies, and a cultural interspace on the other. The book discusses the different dynamics in this frontier region and the resulting built environment and church architecture in pursuit of providing a regional contribution to the study of the transformation that the Byzantine civilization underwent in the late antique period and understanding the continuities and changes after the Arab conquest.

Introduction

This chapter gives an overview of the dynamics that shaped the landscape of this frontier region. The region was a stage of war with the Sasanians. This situation resulted in well-fortified cities and a network of fortifications. Christological debates also left a significant mark on the cities, the rural areas, and their churches. This chapter describes the frontier character of the region by giving a summary of the wars between the two Empires and provides an overview of the Christological debates and the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church hierarchy. It then focuses on the period after the Arab conquest. It looks at Muslim approaches to church building and Syriac accounts on building churches in that period. The chapter concludes with an overview of research on the region, including traveller accounts, surveys, and archaeological excavations.

The Archaeology of Gandhāra

The main themes of archaeological research in Gandhāra are currently developing along a timeline that starts in the Late Bronze Age and ends in the Shahi period. The majority of scholarship, however, is focused on the chronological phase between 150 bce and 300 ce. Because of the unbalanced level of studies, it is not easy to define what archaeology can positively say about the knowledge of the ancient world in this corner of Asia. However, the overall result of archaeological research in Gandhāra shows that the region was itself a center, not simply a frontier region of interaction between Central Asia and Iran, India, and its coastlands. Gandhāra appears to have played a central role in many of the developments that occurred throughout the period considered here. With the spread of domesticated rice during the mid-2nd millennium, a double-crop agricultural system and associated farm breeding system developed, linking Gandhāra with Kashmir and trans-Himalaya. Toward the end of the 1st millennium, the northern valleys saw the diffusion of burial and settlement features and associated material culture, which allows archaeological and genetic comparisons with earlier complexes of Central Asia and Iran up to 1000 ce. The initial urban phase in Gandhāra (500–150 bce) is defined by the evidence from Barikot, Bhir Mound (Taxila I), and Charsadda. Mature urban phases (150 bce–350 ce) are defined by the evidence of the restructuring of old cities (such as Barikot) and new urban foundations (e.g., Taxila III and Charsadda/Shahikhan-dheri) during the phases of contact with the Indo-Greek, Saka-Parthian, Kushana, and Kushano-Sasanian systems of power. During the last three centuries of the mature urban phase, the Buddhist art of Gandhāra developed a narrative biographical mode, which represents its most distinctive feature. The following period until 650 ce, distinguished by uncertain or scarce assemblages, is defined as post-urban. The post-650 to c. 1000 ce evidence, marked by cultural material associated with the Shahi dynasties and the first phase of contact with the Islamic dynasty of the Ghaznavids, defines the late ancient period.

Fortresses

This chapter examines the role of river transportation in Ottoman state-building in Iraq. From the sixteenth century, the Ottoman state organized a steady supply of grains and arms to be shipped from Aleppo, Diyarbakır, and Mosul to the downstream fortresses of Baghdad and Basra. The Ottoman state, as a result, could deploy in Iraq sizable garrisons capable of stabilizing its authority in a volatile frontier region. In addition, Istanbul improved the communication infrastructure of the drainage basin by investing in seaports, docks, rafts, and bridges, which smoothed the movement of men and provisions between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. The janissary and artillery corps deployed from the capital profited greatly from the imperial patronage of provincial religious foundations and their cadre, which buttressed the legitimacy of Ottoman hard power in the region.

Emergence and Development of Pottery in the Andean Early Formative Period: New Insights from an Improved Wairajirca Pottery Chronology at the Jancao Site in the Huánuco Region, Peru

This article presents a high-resolution chronology of Wairajirca pottery in the Huánuco basin, which has been identified as a frontier region between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian rain forests: its pottery is known for having mixed features from both areas. However, the lack of fine-grained pottery and radiocarbon datasets has handicapped comparative studies’ attempts to track in detail its early development process. Our new high-resolution chronology of Wairajirca pottery is based on stratigraphic excavation data, a detailed ceramic typology, and a Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon date from the Jancao site. The five-staged ceramic sequence from the late eighteenth to late twelfth century cal BC displays specific features of this development, including radical changes in vessel type over several centuries and connections with other pottery traditions. The earliest phase shows close relation with highlands traditions, whereas the influence of tropical rain forest patterns intensified in later phases alongside the continuation of local pottery traditions. This indicates that frontier dynamics based on fluid interactions across different ecological zones and regional sociopolitical movements played a crucial role in this long-term social process.

Kushites in Egypt, 664 BCE–14 CE

After the end of the 25th Dynasty in 664 bce, Kushite kings no longer had territorial control over Egypt. Nevertheless, reflecting the long history of interaction between the two lands, Kushite presence in Egypt continued. This article discusses evidence for Kushites in Egypt from the beginning of the 26th Dynasty to the end of the reign of Augustus, and argues that the continuing presence of Kushites in Egypt was largely driven by the shared religious practice of the two cultures. The differing cultural backgrounds of the two lands, in particular their incompatible views of territorial borders, meant that religious interaction often went side by side with political conflict. This conflict produced a unique religious architecture in the frontier region in which the two-way, entangled nature of interaction between Kushite and Egyptian culture can be seen.

Influência dos Indicadores Socioeconômicos nas Exportações: um estudo em municípios da região das Missões e Fronteira Noroeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul ## Influence of Socioeconomic Indicators on Exports: a study in municipalities in the region of the Missions and the Northwest Border of the State of Rio Grande do Sul

ResumoO desenvolvimento de uma dada região passa pela exportação dos produtos locais e regionais. Desse modo, o presente artigo objetiva verificar a influência dos indicadores socioeconômicos nas exportações de produtos básicos e manufaturados dos municípios da região das Missões e Fronteira Noroeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa caracteriza-se como descritiva em relação a seu objetivo, aplicada quanto aos procedimentos, por meio do levantamento e a utilização de dados secundários, e quantitativa em relação à abordagem do problema, utilizando-se análise discriminante. Quanto aos resultados, observou-se que o indicador que possui maior influência nas exportações de modo geral é a população ocupada com 0,6679, na sequência, tem-se o IDEB com 0,5354, a urbanização de vias públicas com 0,4931 e o salário médio com 0,1267, considerando os 45 municípios da região das Missões e Fronteira Noroeste como cenário de pesquisa. Com a análise discriminante, foi possível mensurar, por meio dos coeficientes padronizados, quais dos indicadores que possuem maior influência no caso de o município ser ou não exportador. Por fim, foi possível aceitar a hipótese de que existe uma relação de influência entre os indicadores socioeconômicos nas exportações tanto gerais quanto de produtos básicos e manufaturados. AbstractThe development of a given region involves the export of local and regional products. Thus, the present article aims to verify the influence of socioeconomic indicators on the exports of basic products and manufactured goods from the municipalities of the Missions and Northwest Frontier region, of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Methodologically, the research is characterized as descriptive in relation to its objective regarding the procedures can be considered as applied research from the secondary and quantitative data collection in relation to the approach of the problem, being analyzed through statistical techniques. Regarding the results, we have that the indicator that has the greatest influence on exports in general is the employed population of 0.6667, thus, we have the IDEB with 0.5354, the urbanization of public roads with 0, 4931 and the average salary of 0.1277, and the 45 municipalities in the Missions and Northwest Frontier region as a research scenario. These indicators had as function to measure through the standardized coefficients, which of these had greater influence of the municipality being or not exporter. Finally, it was possible to accept the hypothesis that there is a relationship of influence between the socioeconomic indicators in general exports as well as of basic and manufactured products.