William Holland (Asian explorer)

William Lancelot Holland (born December 28, 1907 in South Malvern , Canterbury , New Zealand, † May 8, 2008 in Amherst , Massachusetts) was a New Zealand-American economist who worked for the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) from 1928 to 1960 has researched. He was its American executive secretary, editor of the research journal Far Eastern Survey , later general secretary of the IPR and editor of the journal Pacific Affairs . From 1961 to 1970 he taught at the University of British Columbia .

Life

Holland was the eldest of four sons of a railroad worker and sheep farmer. He attended Timaru Boys' High School and received a first degree from Canterbury College in Christchurch in 1928 . He financed his education by working on sheep farms in the area.

At the age of 21 he traveled to Kyoto , Japan, to prepare for the 1932 Institute of Pacific Relations conference . He was to work for the IPR until it was closed in 1960. In 1934 he received his master's degree in economics from King's College, University of Cambridge, where John Maynard Keynes was one of his teachers. He became a US citizen in 1944 in order to take on the role of deputy director in the Chungking office of the Office of War Information in China.

In the early 1950s, unproven allegations by the American Congress that the IPR was being communistically influenced severely curtailed its activities. The tax eligibility was lost and the financial resources were running out. Holland became the United States' Executive Secretary of the IPR and editor of its journal Pacific Affairs . The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada offered him the leadership of the newly created research area Asian Studies , where the journal Pacific Affairs should continue to appear. In 1961 he accepted the offer and made the University of British Columbia an important center for Asian studies. He retired in 1972 and continued to publish the magazine Pacific Affairs until 1978. In 1989 the university awarded him an honorary doctorate in law.

Holland married Doreen Patricia McGarry from Auckland, New Zealand, in Hong Kong in 1932. After her death in 1990, he moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he lived with his only daughter, Patricia G. Holland, until his death.

Holland's written estate can be found at Columbia University , the University of British Columbia and the University of Hawaii . In 2003 he donated the William L. Holland Prize for the best article published in Pacific Affairs magazine that year .

Fonts

• Source Materials on the Institute of Pacific Relations, Pacific Affairs 58: 1, 1985, pp. 91-97
• Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland , Tokyo 1995, edited and introduced by Professor Paul F. Hooper, University of Hawaii.

literature

• William Holland: December 1907- May 2008 , obituary on the Pacific Affairs websiteat pacificaffairs.ubc.ca
• John King Fairbank, "William L. Holland and the IPR in Historical Perspective," Pacific Affairs 52: 4, 1979, pp. 587-590
• EG Pulleyblank, "William L. Holland's Contributions to Asian Studies in Canada and at the University of British Columbia," Pacific Affairs 52: 4, 1979, pp. 591-594