John King Fairbank (b. 24 May 1907 in Huron, South Dakota; d. Huron is a city in Beadle County, South Dakota, United States. South Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America. 14 September 1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was among the most prominent American scholars of East Asia in the twentieth century. Cambridge Massachusetts is a City in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The twentieth century of the Common Era began on His works have been translated into a number of languages, and, in China, he is known mainly by his Chinese name Fei Zhengqing (Pinyin: Fèi Zhèngqīng; 费正清). China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use
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Education and early career
Fairbank was educated at Sioux Falls High School, Phillips Exeter Academy, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard College, and Oxford University (Balliol). Sioux Falls (ˌsuː ˈfɔːlz is the largest city in the US state of South Dakota. Phillips Exeter Academy (also called Exeter, Phillips Exeter or PEA) is a Co-educational independent Boarding school for grades 9–12 Harvard College is the undergraduate section and oldest school of Harvard University, a Private university in the United States founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts The University of Oxford (informally "Oxford University" or simply "Oxford" located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is the Balliol College (ˈbeɪlɪəl founded in 1263 is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. In 1929, when he graduated from Harvard summa cum laude, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in order to study British imperial history. Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an Academic degree was earned Rhodes Scholarship Rhodes scholar redirects here Rhodes Scholar redirects here Rhodes scholars The British Empire was the largest empire in history and for over a century was the foremost global power. At Oxford, Fairbank learned that the Qing imperial archives were being opened, and he decided to go to Beijing to do research for his doctoral degree in 1932. Not to be confused with Qin Dynasty, the first dynasty of Imperial China In Beijing, he studied at Tsinghua University under the direction of the prominent Chinese historian Tsiang Tingfu. Tsinghua University ( THU;) is a University in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Tsiang Tingfu (Jiang Tingfu 蔣廷黻 17 February 1895 - 9 October 1965 Chinese historian and diplomat In 1936, Oxford awarded him a D.Phil. for his thesis on the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. "PhD" redirects here for other uses see PhD (disambiguation. The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until its bifurcation in 1949 He returned to Harvard to take up a position teaching Chinese history.
War service
Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, Fairbank was enlisted to work for the US government, which included service in the OSS and the Office of War Information. The Pacific War was the part of World War II —and preceding conflicts—that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands and in East Asia, between The Office of Strategic Services ( OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. The United States Office of War Information (OWI was a US government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services During the war, Fairbank also had the opportunity to visit Chongqing, the temporary capital of Nationalist China. Chongqing ( Postal map spelling: Chungking; Wade-Giles: Ch'ung-ch'ing) is the largest and most populous of the People's Republic of China REPUBLIC OF CHINA ARTICLE GUIDELINES There, like most foreign observers, he witnessed the corruption of the government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, which left a deeply negative impression of the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek ( POJ: Chiúⁿ Kài-se̍k Jyutping: zoeng2gaai3sek6 GCB ( October 31, 1887 &ndash
McCarthy Era
After the end of the war, Fairbank returned to Harvard, where he resumed his teaching and research duties. In the debate why the Nationalists had lost the Mainland to the Chinese Communists in 1949, Fairbank was briefly targeted for criticism of being "soft" on Communism, and in 1952, he testified before the McCarran Committee. The Communist Party of China ( CPC) ( also known as the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP) is the founding and ruling political party of the The Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 1951-77 more commonly known as the Senate Internal Security Ironically, many of Fairbank's Chinese friends and colleagues who returned to China after 1949, such as Fei Xiaotong and Chen Han-seng, would later be attacked for being "pro-American". China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Fei Xiaotong, or Fei Hsiao-Tung ( ( November 2, 1910 – April 24, 2005) was a pioneering Chinese researcher and professor Chen Han-seng ( Simplified Chinese: 陈翰笙 Pinyin Chén Hànshēng ( February 5 1897 &ndash March 13[[ 004]] was a Chinese sociologist and
Return to academia
Fairbank remained at Harvard for the rest of his career and published a number of both academic and non-academic works on China, many of which would reach a wide audience outside academia. In 1948, he published his best-selling work The United States and China, which would be republished in several editions. He also published an expanded revision of his doctoral dissertation as Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast in 1953. Fairbank also trained a number of influential China historians at Harvard and worked hard to make Harvard a center for Chinese studies. He founded a center for research in East Asia, which was later named the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research in his honor.
In 1966, Fairbank and fellow Sinologist Professor Twitchett, then at Cambridge University set in motion the plans for what would become the "Cambridge History of China". Sinology in general use is the study of China and things related to China but especially in the American academic context refers more strictly to the study of classical language Denis Crispin Twitchett (1925-2006 was a British Sinologist. He was a lecturer at the University of London (1954-56 and Cambridge (1956-60 the Chair of Chinese at the universities The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University) located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the Originally intended to cover the history of China, in English, in six volumes, the project grew until it reached its present expected size of 15 volumes. Twitchett and Fairbank divided the history between them, with Fairbank editing (and sometimes writing) the volumes on modern (post 1800) China, while Twitchett took responsibility for the period from the Ch'in to early Manchu. Fairbank edited and wrote parts of volumes 10 through 15; the last of which appeared in the year after his death. Despite Fairbank's death in 1991, the project has continued.
Representative works
- Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
- "Patterns Behind the Tientsin Massacre. " Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20, no. 3/4 (1957): 480-511.
- Ch'ing Administration: Three Studies. (with Têng Ssu-yü) Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies, V. 19. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
- Chinabound: a fifty-year memoir. New York : Harper & Row, 1982.
- The United States and China. 4th, enl. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
- China: A New History. (with Merle Goldman) Enl. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
References
- Evans, Paul M. John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern China. New York: B. Blackwell, 1988.
External links
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