the search for modern china by jonathan d spence

Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-Hsi used the seventeenth-century Qing emperor’s own words from public and private documents to create a kind of autobiography in translation, a marked example of Spence’s light and yet generous hand with quoted material. A historian of great breadth, Spence also showed he was capable of important research and elegant writing on discrete figures and events. Spence’s next book was a compelling review of Western attempts “To Change China,” as the title put it, from the Italian Jesuits who came in the late sixteenth century to American military experts in World War II. Levenson remarked of this work, “Qing historical studies will never be the same. As recalled by his late colleague and longtime friend Frederic E. His prizewinning dissertation was published as Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master. Spence then became the first Western scholar to use secret Qing dynasty documents collected at the Palace Museum in Taiwan. Mary Wright became his mentor and sent the young scholar off to Australia to study with Fang Chao-ying, an important Chinese historian. So I plunged into the equivalent of Chinese History One and Basic Chinese Language One.” While talking to the Wrights, Spence recently recalled in Humanities magazine, “I suddenly thought this would be fun to explore. She and her husband, Arthur Wright, also a China scholar, had just accepted professorships at Yale.

When he graduated in 1959, an academic career seemed certain, though he had not yet settled on a field of study.Ī fellowship established by Paul Mellon brought Spence to Yale University, where he encountered the China scholar Mary Wright. At Clare College, Cambridge, he became a coeditor of the storied undergraduate magazine Granta, editor of the student paper, and a writer of parodies.

He followed his brothers-one of whom became a classicist, the other a chemical engineer-to Winchester College, where he won the History Prize. His mother was a lover of French literature. His father worked in publishing and edited one of Joseph Conrad’s books. If the West understands the culture and history of China better now than it did a half century ago, Jonathan Spence is one of the people to be thanked.

His books and articles form a body of work notable for groundbreaking research, fine literary quality, and extraordinary public value. For over fifty years, Jonathan Spence has been studying and writing about China.

The search for modern china by jonathan d spence