Jonathan Spence

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Jonathan Dermot Spence (* 11. August 1936 Surrey in England ) is an American sinologist and emeritus professor of history at Yale University . He is considered a specialist in modern Chinese history from the 1st Opium War to the present day.

Life

Jonathan Spence is the son of Dermot and Muriel Crailsham Spence. After graduating from Winchester College in 1954, Jonathan Spence spent two years as a soldier in Germany. He then studied history at Cambridge University . In addition to his scientific ambitions, he dealt intensively with literature - he wrote articles and satires for the student newspaper there, Varsity, of which he was editor-in-chief for a year.

Access to Sinology was opened to Spence through a Mellon Fellowship at Yale University. There, the lectures of the history professor Mary Wright , b. Clabaugh, his interest in Chinese history. Mary Wright promoted Jonathan Spence and arranged a meeting with the China historian Fang Chao-ying (Fang Zhaoying, 1908–1985). As the first western sinologist and historian, Spence used the secret palace memoranda of the Qing Dynasty (Manchu Dynasty) in the Palace Museum on Taiwan ( National Palace Museum ). After a PhD on the early Manchu Dynasty and a second publication, To Change China: Western Advisers in China from 1620-1969 , which was enthusiastically received by sinologists , Spence received a chair in history at Yale University in 1971. Spence was also chairman of the history faculty between 1983 and 1986, and headed the Whitney Humanities Center in 1988-89 . From 1993 until his retirement in 2009, he was a Sterling Professor at Yale University. In between he held the annual Reith Lectures on the BBC in 2008 and the Jefferson Lecture of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010 . In 2000 he received US citizenship. The first time in China was Spence 1974. Before that he was in Taiwan for the first time in 1963.

From the sinologist and historian John K. Fairbank to Mary Wright to Johnathan Spence there is a tight line: Mary Wright supervised Spence's dissertation and was one of the first Fairbanks undergraduates: “When I began teaching Chinese history at Harvard in 1936 my first students turned out to be the brightest I would ever have — Theodore White as an undergraduate and Mary Clabaugh as a Ph.D. candidate. (...) Twenty years later, when both Wrights were invited from Stanford to come to Yale as professors of history, Mary Wright found her brightest student in the person of Jonathan Spence. "

Work and reception

Spence published his most famous work in 1990, the book Chinas Weg in die Moderne ( The Search for Modern China ), which has since become one of the most important foundations of modern China research and describes China 's development from the 17th century to the modern age in a multifaceted manner. His other books often focus on people and their biographies and characterizations. For his work he always worked extensively on Chinese sources or, when it came to relations between China and the West, also on Western sources, both archival and published materials. Even if it is not always clear which historical question is answered in the books, Spence is still valued for his attentive and precise look. His focus is on the precise processing of the sources and the narration, while theoretical references and methodological reflection rarely appear in Spence's works.

Many of Jonathan Spence's books have been translated into German, Chinese and Italian, among others, and are read in both the West and China. His books are written in an understandable way and he lets the portrayed people speak through the sources. In response to the publication of Jonathan Spence's dissertation ( Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor. Bondservant and Master, 1966 ), sinologist Joseph R. Levenson found that Spence writes like an angel (“The man writes like an angel "). Jürgen Osterhammel described Jonathan Spence as “one of the greatest artists of the visualization of foreign worlds” and elsewhere euphorically stated: “If there were more than a century after Theodor Mommsen's award in 1902, the will again, a linguistically compelling, with unusual imagination To award talented historians the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jonathan Spence would have to be one of the strongest candidates, as he is a master of historical storytelling who is unmatched by any contemporary. ”Although Jonathan Spence is highly valued by sinological and historical experts, his literary writing style allows him to also made him known in the wider public, in some eyes appear more as an author of high-quality literature than as an author of non-fiction books. Especially in his book The Question of Hu (German: Der kleine Herr Hu. A Chinese in Paris ), opinions differed greatly in this regard. Jürgen Osterhammel attributes this to the gap between “science” and “aestheticization”, which repeatedly leads to heated discussions. Spence is obviously a proponent of combining professional science and literary presentation.

honors and awards

Jonathan Spence has received numerous honorary doctorates and awards. His dissertation was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize in 1965. He was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, the American Philosophical Society in 1992 , the British Academy in 1997, and in 2001 Queen Elizabeth II appointed Spence Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George . In 1988 he was a MacArthur Fellow . In 2004/2005 he was President of the American Historical Association .

Works (selection)

Fiction
Non-fiction
  • I, Emperor of China. A self-portrait of the Kangxi -Kaisers ( "Emperor of China"). Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1985, ISBN 3-458-14248-7 .
  • Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor. Bondservant and Master . 2nd Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1988, ISBN 978-0-300-04278-8 .
  • The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980 ("The Gate of Heavenly Peace. The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980"). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-30307-7 (former title Das Tor des Himmlischen Friedens ).
  • Chinese roundabout. Essays in History and Culture . Norton, New York 1993, ISBN 0-393-03355-4 .
  • The story of Ms. Wang. Life in a Chinese province of the 17th century ("The Death of Woman Wang", 1978). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-30390-5 (reprint of the Berlin edition 1987).
  • God's Chinese Son. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan . Norton, New York 1994, ISBN 0-393-03844-0 .
  • The century of China ( "The Chinese century"). Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-570-12282-4 .
  • The Chan's Great Continent. China in Western Minds . Penguin Books, London 2000, ISBN 0-14-028174-6 .
  • China's path to modernity ("The Search for Modern China"). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-30795-1 .
  • Mao ("Mao Zedong"). Claassen Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-546-00261-X .
  • The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci . Quercus Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-84724-344-7 (reprint of the New York 1984 edition).
  • The return to the Drachenberg. An eccentric in 17th century China ("Return to Dragon Mountain"). Hanser, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-446-23415-4 (biography about Zhang Dai ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Frederic E. Wakeman Jr .: The Making of Jonathan Spence. From Winchester College to The Search for Modern China. In: Humanities . tape 31 , no. 3 , 2010 ( neh.gov ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Jürgen Osterhammel: History column . China's voice. Jonathan Spence . In: Mercury. German magazine for European thinking . tape 65 , 2 (issue 741), 2011, pp. 152–158 ( uni-konstanz.de [PDF]).
  3. ↑ Jonathan Spence. Jefferson Lecture 2010. In: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). 2010, accessed on September 2, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Jonathan Spence. Jefferson Lecture 2010. Interview by Jim Leach with Jonathan Spence. In: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). 2010, accessed on September 3, 2019 .
  5. ^ John K. Fairbank: From the Ming to Deng Xiaoping . May 31, 1990, ISSN  0028-7504 ( nybooks.com [accessed September 3, 2019]).
  6. ^ Ni Tao: Jonathan Spence, rare Western sinologist avidly read in China. In: ShanghaiDaily. March 27, 2014, accessed September 3, 2019 .
  7. ^ Professor Johannes MM Chan SC (Hon) 陳文敏: Book Recommendation by Professor Johannes MM Chan for Jonathan D Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace (USA: Penguin Books, 1982). In: Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong. www.law.hku.hk, 2003, accessed on September 3, 2019 (English).
  8. ↑ Jürgen Osterhammel: Introduction to the new edition . In: Jürgen Osterhammel, Fritz Stern (ed.): Modern historians. Classical texts from Voltaire to the present (revised and expanded version of the original "The Varieties of History. From Voltaire to the Present" published in English in 1956, German edition 1966) . CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61613-6 .
  9. ↑ Bruce Mazlish: The Question of the Question of Hu . In: History and Theory . tape 31 , no. 2 , 1992, ISSN  0018-2656 , pp. 143-152 , doi : 10.2307 / 2505593 , JSTOR : 2505593 .
  10. ^ Member History: Jonathan Dermot Spence. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 27, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Spence, Jonathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spence, Jonathan Dermot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sinologist and professor of history at Yale University
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Surrey , England