China scholar Jonathan Spence deciphered complex history for Western readers
- The historian and long-time Yale University professor died on Saturday at his home in Connecticut, aged 85
- His best-known work ‘The Search for Modern China’ remains widely used in classrooms
Spence, a long-time Yale University professor and author of the 1990 bestselling book The Search for Modern China, died at his home in West Haven, Connecticut, on Saturday. His wife Annping Chin, also a Yale professor, said the cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease.
The recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, a Los Angeles Times book prize and numerous other honours, Spence wrote more than a dozen books on China, along with reviews, essays and lectures.
His best-known work, at 870 pages, begins in the 17th century at the peak of the Ming dynasty and continues through the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. As suggested by its title, Spence approached China as if writing a detective story – deciphering for Western readers one of the world’s largest, most populous and complex countries.
Drawing upon scores of previous books and original papers, he documented China’s history of extreme upheavals and lasting traditions.
Spence noted the “patterns of generational deference and concepts of obligation” and the rebellions designed to shatter them, whether the sacking of Beijing in 1644, the 1911 fall of the last emperor or the communist triumph of the late 1940s.