The area came under the rule of the Chinese Empire in the eighteenth century and the name Xinjiang ('New Frontier') was first used in 1768. Xinjiang was constituted a province of the empire in 1884, following the repression of a Moslem uprising in the 1870s. Xinjiang has a non-Han Chinese majority; the main group, Uyghur, being a Turkic people (an obsolete alternative name for Xinjiang was 'Chinese Turkestan'). | The area came under the rule of the Chinese Empire in the eighteenth century and the name Xinjiang ('New Frontier') was first used in 1768. Xinjiang was constituted a province of the empire in 1884, following the repression of a Moslem uprising in the 1870s. Xinjiang has a non-Han Chinese majority; the main group, Uyghur, being a Turkic people (an obsolete alternative name for Xinjiang was 'Chinese Turkestan'). |