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Understanding the Mighty Empire : = Chinese Area Studies and the Construction of Liberal Consensus, 1928-1979.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Understanding the Mighty Empire :/
Reminder of title:	Chinese Area Studies and the Construction of Liberal Consensus, 1928-1979.
Author:	Linton, Matthew D.
Description:	1 online resource (389 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 79-12, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International79-12A.
Subject:	American history. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9780438051591

Understanding the Mighty Empire : = Chinese Area Studies and the Construction of Liberal Consensus, 1928-1979.
Linton, Matthew D.

Understanding the Mighty Empire :Chinese Area Studies and the Construction of Liberal Consensus, 1928-1979. - 1 online resource (389 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 79-12, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2018.

Includes bibliographical references

Chinese area studies was formed in the late 1920s by a coalition of foundation officers, academic administrators, internationalists, European scholars, and graduate students. This group believed that China was on the brink of a cultural and political renaissance that would restore it to global prominence. The United States had an opportunity to work with a rising China to create a new world order based in the Pacific Ocean; leaving petty European rivalries behind in the process. The United States was ill-equipped to seize this opportunity, however. American politicians and the public were poorly informed about China. Furthermore, there were few credible public experts to educate Americans about their opportunity in China.This dissertation explores how this coalition created Chinese area studies and how the field navigated the travails of mid-20th century domestic and foreign politics. Chinese area studies was an interdisciplinary method whereby insights from across the humanities and social sciences were integrated to provide a holistic picture of Chinese civilization. This method was born out of a new progressive liberal confidence that collaboration between disciplinary specialists would give special insight into particularly large or thorny problems. Furthermore, the area method allowed administrators like the American Council of Learned Societies' Mortimer Graves and the Institute of Pacific Relations' Edward C. Carter to concentrate and maximize scarce resources.Though Chinese area specialists achieved early success through their work in intelligence and training during World War II, their long-term efficacy was beset by political controversy and scholarly infighting. The "loss" of China to communism in 1949 simultaneously made China specialists national security assets and targets for anticommunist critics of Democratic liberalism. McCarthyism painted liberal China specialists as unduly sympathetic to communism; damaging the careers of leading specialists like Owen Lattimore and John Fairbank in the process. Anticommunists specialists fared little better when, after McCarthyism subsided, they were ostracized from the profession for their collaboration with Congressional investigators. Political controversy and professional animosity stunted China studies' development during the 1950s and the field nearly collapsed.The field was rescued by a new liberal coalition of China specialists and Ford Foundation officers who rebuilt the field around the Joint Committee on Contemporary China (JCCC). The Joint Committee was organized by John Fairbank and provided a space for scholars to air their political grievances in private. Ford used JCCC to infuse millions of dollars into the field; facilitating its expansion during the 1960s and alleviating tensions between competing specialists in the humanities and social sciences. With financial stability came political rehabilitation. China specialists returned to public political advocacy in 1966 by presenting their opinions on contemporary China before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Trouble was looming on the horizon, however. As liberal China specialists sought to increase their influence in Washington by forming an official lobbying organization called the National Committee on US-China Relations, young radical experts were upset by the close ties between their older peers and government officials promulgating an unjust war in Vietnam. They formed their own body, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), to criticize mainstream Asian studies and question the role of the intellectual in modern society. While mainstream China specialists saw government as a vehicle to turn their ideas into policies, radicals argued that this instrumental view of ideas sacrificed ethics at the altar of political expedience. Mainstream China specialists were able to accomplish much of their political agenda during the 1970s - the resumption of a formal diplomatic relationship with communist China, in particular - but the break between older and younger specialists never fully healed and the field would never again be united as it was during the early 1960s.Intellectual disagreement was compounded by a changing institutional environment. Ford began shrinking its financial commitment to the field in 1968. The Nixon Administration did the same with federal funding in the early 1970s. Universities also started hiring fewer China specialists; making it difficult for young scholars to find employment. In the midst of this crisis, leading programs like Harvard University tried pivoting to a new sponsor: multinational corporations. Fairbank and others reasoned that as corporations expanded into East Asia, they would need to be guided by regional experts. While these partnerships had some early success, disagreement about the purpose of higher education and the utility of expert knowledge for corporations, ultimately led to its demise. Fortunately, the resumption of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China led to new opportunities abroad for American China experts. This diffuse scholarship persists to today, but in a globally integrated academic community, there is little public engagement and there is little that it distinctly American about it.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9780438051591Subjects--Topical Terms:

1179188
American history.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Area studiesIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Understanding the Mighty Empire : = Chinese Area Studies and the Construction of Liberal Consensus, 1928-1979.
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Chinese area studies was an interdisciplinary method whereby insights from across the humanities and social sciences were integrated to provide a holistic picture of Chinese civilization. This method was born out of a new progressive liberal confidence that collaboration between disciplinary specialists would give special insight into particularly large or thorny problems. Furthermore, the area method allowed administrators like the American Council of Learned Societies' Mortimer Graves and the Institute of Pacific Relations' Edward C. Carter to concentrate and maximize scarce resources.Though Chinese area specialists achieved early success through their work in intelligence and training during World War II, their long-term efficacy was beset by political controversy and scholarly infighting. The "loss" of China to communism in 1949 simultaneously made China specialists national security assets and targets for anticommunist critics of Democratic liberalism. McCarthyism painted liberal China specialists as unduly sympathetic to communism; damaging the careers of leading specialists like Owen Lattimore and John Fairbank in the process. Anticommunists specialists fared little better when, after McCarthyism subsided, they were ostracized from the profession for their collaboration with Congressional investigators. Political controversy and professional animosity stunted China studies' development during the 1950s and the field nearly collapsed.The field was rescued by a new liberal coalition of China specialists and Ford Foundation officers who rebuilt the field around the Joint Committee on Contemporary China (JCCC). The Joint Committee was organized by John Fairbank and provided a space for scholars to air their political grievances in private. Ford used JCCC to infuse millions of dollars into the field; facilitating its expansion during the 1960s and alleviating tensions between competing specialists in the humanities and social sciences. With financial stability came political rehabilitation. China specialists returned to public political advocacy in 1966 by presenting their opinions on contemporary China before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Trouble was looming on the horizon, however. As liberal China specialists sought to increase their influence in Washington by forming an official lobbying organization called the National Committee on US-China Relations, young radical experts were upset by the close ties between their older peers and government officials promulgating an unjust war in Vietnam. They formed their own body, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), to criticize mainstream Asian studies and question the role of the intellectual in modern society. While mainstream China specialists saw government as a vehicle to turn their ideas into policies, radicals argued that this instrumental view of ideas sacrificed ethics at the altar of political expedience. Mainstream China specialists were able to accomplish much of their political agenda during the 1970s - the resumption of a formal diplomatic relationship with communist China, in particular - but the break between older and younger specialists never fully healed and the field would never again be united as it was during the early 1960s.Intellectual disagreement was compounded by a changing institutional environment. Ford began shrinking its financial commitment to the field in 1968. The Nixon Administration did the same with federal funding in the early 1970s. Universities also started hiring fewer China specialists; making it difficult for young scholars to find employment. In the midst of this crisis, leading programs like Harvard University tried pivoting to a new sponsor: multinational corporations. Fairbank and others reasoned that as corporations expanded into East Asia, they would need to be guided by regional experts. While these partnerships had some early success, disagreement about the purpose of higher education and the utility of expert knowledge for corporations, ultimately led to its demise. Fortunately, the resumption of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China led to new opportunities abroad for American China experts. This diffuse scholarship persists to today, but in a globally integrated academic community, there is little public engagement and there is little that it distinctly American about it.
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