Jonathan D. Spence
The Search for Modern China, a survey of Chinese history from the late Ming dynasty to the late twentieth century, is among Jonathan Spence's most cited works and has served as a standard text for students approaching the subject in English.
Spence was born in Surrey, England, on August 11, 1936, and received his early education at Winchester College before going on to study at Clare College, Cambridge. He later pursued graduate work at Yale University, where he built his academic career as a historian and sinologist. Working in both English and Standard Chinese, he held the Sterling Professorship of History at Yale from 1993 to 2008.
Among his other notable works is Treason by the Book. Over the course of his career he received a number of significant honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Newberry Library Award, the John Addison Porter Prize, and the Lionel Gelber Prize. He was a citizen of the United States.
Spence died on December 25, 2021, in West Haven, Connecticut. His tenure as Sterling Professor at Yale, which ran from 1993 to 2008, placed him at the center of Chinese historical studies in the American academy, and The Search for Modern China remained the work most closely associated with his name.
Quotes by Jonathan D. Spence
The written word has its limits and its challenges, for the primal sound in the whole world is that made by the human voice, and the likeness of this human voice must be rendered in dots and strokes... Yet I never forget that the voice, too, is important... Don’t mumble or hesitate. Speak... in a loud voice, clearly, and without fear.
Shelves full of books are all around me. Opening the different volumes I take a look, and find the pages covered with writings in unknown scripts – tadpole traces, bird feet markings, twisted branches. And in my dream I am able to read them all, to make sense of everything despite its difficulty.
If you want to really know something you have to observe or experience it in person; if you claim to know something on the basis of hearsay, or on happening to see it in a book, you’ll be a laughingstock to those who really know.
The written word has its limits and its challenges, for the primal sound in the whole world is that made by the human voice, and the likeness of this human voice must be rendered in dots and strokes...Yet I never forget that the voice, too, is important...Don't mumble or hesitate. Speak...in a loud voice, clearly, and without fear.
If you want to really know something you have to observe or experience it in person; if you claim to know something on the basis of hearsay, or on happening to see it in a book, you'll be a laughingstock to those who really know.
Shelves full of books are all around me. Opening the different volumes I take a look, and find the pages covered with writings in unknown scripts — tadpole traces, bird feet markings, twisted branches. And in my dream I am able to read them all, to make sense of everything despite its difficulty.
Seek joyfulness when you can, for seeking joy leads to an auspicious atmosphere.