Owen Lattimore

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Owen Lattimore (ca.1945)

Owen Lattimore (born July 29, 1900 in Washington, DC , † May 31, 1989 in Providence , Rhode Island ) was an American sinologist and Mongolist . He fell victim to the McCarthy era in the 1950s and became the first foreigner to be appointed to the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 1969 .

Life

Studies, first trips and publications

Lattimore, the son of a businessman working in China, spent his early childhood in China and attended various schools in England and Lausanne before working as a businessman and journalist in China himself in the early 1920s . During this time he traveled through Mongolia and Manchuria and he returned to the USA, where he studied at Harvard University . He then returned to China, where he married Eleanor Holgate in Beijing in 1925 , who had studied at Northwestern University and was working as a teacher in China at the time .

Together with his wife, Lattimore undertook extensive trips to Central Asia in the late 1920s and published outstanding descriptions of his travels and observations such as The Desert Road to Turkestan (1928) and High Tartary (1930).

Between 1934 and 1941 he was the editor of Pacific Affairs , a trade journal of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and during this time wrote not only Mongolian Journeys (1941), but also his masterpiece Inner Asian Frontiers of China in 1940 . In 1938 he also took over a professorship at Johns Hopkins University .

World War II, adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and OWI

Chiang Kai-shek with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Cairo Conference on November 25, 1943

During the Second World War he worked for the US State Department between 1941 and 1944 at the request of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek . However, he resigned from this position because he failed to convince Chiang Kai-shek to implement a program for social justice.

He then worked for the US Office of War Information (OWI) from 1944 to 1945, where he was director of operations in the Pacific region . During this time he was one of the so-called China Hands , the specialists at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for China.

Postwar and victim of the McCarthy era

Joseph McCarthy

After the end of the war he published numerous important columns on Central Asian topics, which were collected in Solution in China (1945) and The Situation in China (1949).

In the early 1950s, Lattimore, who was participating in a UN mission in Afghanistan at the time, came under suspicion of espionage for the Soviet Union in the course of the McCarthy era and the so-called Second Red Fear . Finally dealt with him, Philip Jessup and John Stewart Service and their work in the diplomatic service and for the left-wing magazine Amerasia also the Tydings Committee, named after the Democratic Senator Millard Tydings . He was supported by the Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as a "top Soviet agent in the United States" ( identified as "top agent of the Soviet Union in the United States") and "chief architect of a United States foreign policy did resulted in the Communist party's conquest of mainland China "(" the authoritative architect of a US foreign policy which resulted in the [Chinese] Communist Party conquering [all] mainland China "). Lattimore, however, denied being a supporter of communism or a supporter of communist interests. He presented the initial phase of the allegations against him in the autobiographical book Ordeal by Slander , which appeared in 1950.

During this time there were five perjury proceedings , all of which were discontinued despite the burden of other university professors such as Nikolaus Poppe . In 1955, a US federal court finally dismissed the charges against him as informal and obscure.

Lattimore, who received a Guggenheim scholarship , became the first professor of Sinology at the University of Leeds in 1963 and taught there until his retirement in 1975. In 1969 he was the first foreigner to be appointed to the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Through his many years of teaching and authoring activities, he is considered the father of Mongolian Studies and Central Asian studies in the USA and Great Britain and placed the emphasis on Chinese studies more on the Chinese than on the Western perspective.

In his numerous books he dealt with Central Asian topics such as Buddhism in Mongolia or the Hezhen people . In addition, he also wrote articles and introductions for the works of other authors such as for China shakes the world by Jack Belden . His estate is in the Library of Congress .

The pelvic dinosaur Goyocephale lattimorei , discovered in 1982, was named in his honor. Since 1943 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .

His younger brother was the poet and Bible translator Richmond Lattimore .

Publications

  • The Desert Road to Turkestan (1928)
  • High Tartary (1930)
  • Manchuria, Cradle of Conflict: Cradle of Conflict (1932)
  • The Mongols of Manchuria: Their Tribal Divisions, Geographical Distribution, Historical Relations with Manchus and Chinese, and Present Political Problems (1934)
  • Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940)
  • Mongol Journeys (1941)
  • The Making of Modern China: A Short History , co-author Eleanor Holgate Lattimore (1944)
  • Solution in Asia (1945)
  • An Inner Asian Approach to the Historical Geography of China (1947)
  • The Situation in Asia (1949)
  • Ordeal by Slander , Memoirs (1950)
  • Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian Frontiers of China and Russia (1950)
  • Nationalism and Revolution in Mongolia (1955)
  • Nomads and Commissars: Mongolia Revisited (1962)
  • Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers, 1928-1958 (1962)
  • Silks, Spices, and Empire: Asia Seen Through the Eyes of Its Discoverers , co-author Eleanor Holgate Lattimore (1968)
in German language
  • Nomads and commissioners: Mongolia - yesterday and today , Stuttgart 1964

Background literature

  • John T. Flynn: The Lattimore Story , Devin-Adair, 1953
  • James Cotton: Asian Frontier Nationalism: Owen Lattimore and the American Policy Debate , Manchester University Press, 1989
  • Robert P. Newman: Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China , University of California Press, 1992
  • Lionel S. Lewis: The Cold War and Academic Governance: The Lattimore Case at Johns Hopkins , SUNY Press, 1993

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ^ McCarthy publicly attacks Owen Lattimore (This Day in History, April 8, 1950)
  2. ↑ Department of Chinese Studies (Homepage of the University of Leeds )
  3. ^ Owen Lattimore: The Gold tribe of the lower Sungari . In: Memoires of the American Anthropological Association 40, 1933, pp. 1-77
  4. ^ Owen Lattimore Papers ( Library of Congress )
  5. ^ Member History: Owen Lattimore. American Philosophical Society, accessed January 4, 2019 .
  6. ^ Google Books
  7. ↑ E-book version
personal data
SURNAME Lattimore, Owen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sinologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1989
Place of death Providence , Rhode Island