Xinjiang is an autonomous region within the People’s Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country where Central Asia and East Asia converge. It is the largest province-level division in China.
The name Xinjiang is simply the current iteration of a land that has been changing hands by empires and peoples for thousands of years. Xinjiang’s history is extremely complex and involves one group of people displacing another, century after century for thousands of years. The Han Dynasty first conquered the area known as Xinjiang in 87 BC from the Xiongnu, a proto-Mongolic people who had been ravaging Northern Chinese territory since ancient times. Prior to this, the Xiongnu themselves were the ones who conquered Xinjiang from another people, the Indo-European Tocharians.
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