Last Saturday (25th) the Anglo-American historian Jonathan Spence, considered one of the greatest authorities in the study of China and author of the classic “In Search of Modern China”, among others, died.
Retired since 2008 from Yale University, where he worked for most of his life, Spence died at age 85 in West Haven, Connecticut, of complications from Parkinson’s disease.
Author of dozens of books about China, Spence became known around the world as “In Search of Modern China”, published in Brazil by Companhia das Letras with 960 pages and is now out of print.
The book covers the story of the Asian giant from the 17th century to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989—going through the rise and fall of the country’s last two dynasties, Ming and Qing, rule by foreign powers, the fall of the empire in 1911, the civil war, the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of capitalist reforms in the late 1970s.
Spence also wrote “The Palace of Memory of Matteo Ricci” (Companhia das Letras), about an Italian Jesuit who lived in China and India in the 16th century. In “The Chinese Son of God”, published in Brazil by the same editor, tells the story of the Taiping rebellion, when a Chinese leader in the 19th century proclaimed himself a child of God, created an autonomous government in the interior of the country, and assembled an army of 2 million soldiers — an estimated conflict with the government has left more than 20 million dead. Both books are also out of print.
Spence gave three great interviews for the leaf since the beginning of this century. In 2001, he was already analyzing diplomatic tensions between China and the United States. In 2003, he spoke about the difficulties that China would have to become the greatest power of this century. In the last one, in 2005, he spoke about the country’s unprecedented process of internationalization and already commented on the possibilities of an invasion of Taiwan.
“It is the largest land area that China has lost and has not gotten back since the Japanese took Taiwan in the 19th century. Since then, the island has been separated from mainland China. Taiwan’s identity is an intricate problem in law and In that sense, I think they really want Taiwan back. They wanted the northeast region [Manchúria] back and got it. They wanted Mongolia but lost because of the former Soviet Union. They wanted Tibet and they got it, they wanted Xinjiang and they got it. Taiwan is a huge area that was controlled by the central government and now is not. There is a huge debate,” he said.
The death was mourned by researchers around the world. “Jonathan Spence, a great sinologist and scholar of the Jesuits in China, a historian who wrote very well, he left yesterday”, wrote historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro. Joanne Freeman, also a professor at Yale, called her “an incredibly creative historian and writer—and also a good-hearted one.”
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