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The Foundations of the Association for Asian Studies, 1928–48
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963
References
1 People whose names are italicized were present at the luncheon on March 26.
2 Borton was Associate Editor, 1941–48; Treasurer, 1948–51; and President, 1957–58; he also became President of Haverford College in 1957.
3 Professor Harris died on September 4, 1958; see JAS, XVIII (02 1959), 309–310.Google Scholar
4 Fahs was also Editor of Notes on Far Eastern Studies in America (started by Mortimer Graves in June 1937, and put out by the ACLS in twelve issues between 1937 and 1943) from January 1938 through June 1940. The Notes were continued in the Quarterly from August 1945 onward.
5 Also Editor of Notes on Far Eastern Studies in America from July 1940 to June 1942, and a member of the ACLS Committee on Far Eastern Studies in the 1940's.
6 See FEQ, VIII (11 1948), 45–63Google Scholar for an article on MacNair and FEQ, IX (02 1950), 185–191Google Scholar, for one on McCune.
7 The invited guests were Fahs, Fairbank, Lockwood, and Pritchard. Graves and Fahs, as representatives of the ACLS and the Rockefeller Foundation respectively, were technically observers, but in view of their great contribution to the promotion of Asian Studies, I believe they should be considered members of the founding group. George A. Kennedy and Earl Swisher of the ACLS Committee were absent and hence not members of the founding group.
8 The legal change of name became effective February 6, 1957; for the original constitution, etc., see FEQ, VII (08 1948), 410–418Google Scholar, and for the revisions of 1956, see JAS, XVI (08 1957), 679–688Google Scholar. Most recent revisions are in JAS, XXII (05 1963)Google Scholar. Southeast Asia had always been within the area of interest of the Quarterly and Association, and in 1948 when the Southeast Asia Institute dissolved, its officers recommended that its members join the new Association.
9 See FEQ, VIII (08 1949), 452–453.Google Scholar
10 Kennedy was murdered while on a field trip in Java on April 27 or 28, 1950; see FEQ, X (02 1951), 170–172Google Scholar. Menzies died in Toronto on March 16, 1957; see JAS, XVI (08 1957), 672–673.Google Scholar
11 At this point the following passages from a letter of Dr. Leland, dated March 23, 1963, at Washington, D. C., were read; some parts of the letter duplicated in the body of the paper have been omitted:
I have already expressed to you my sincere regret that I am unable to join with you on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Association for Asian Studies. I beg now to offer my congratulations to the Association and yourself on the successes of the past years and the promise of their continuation in the future.
Since anniversaries are occasions for looking back to origins and beginnings, I venture to offer a few remarks on what I may term the prehistory of your Association.
Certainly an important date in its pre-history is the year 1842 when the American Oriental Society was organized in Massachusetts, …
A much later relay-point is the first Conference on Chinese Studies which was held in the Harvard University Club of New York on December 1, 1928….
[Among those present,] Walter T. Swingle of the U. S. Department of Agriculture should be especially noted, for it was he who brought back from his annual agricultural expeditions to China the makings of the great Chinese collections of the Library of Congress. From his accounts of his findings, both agricultural and historical and literary at Herbert Putnam's Round Table luncheon room in the Library of Congress and from talks with Arthur Hummel, I found myself suddenly possessed of an interesting idea. This was that the ACLS, of which I had recently become the chief executive, had a clear obligation and a splendid opportunity to endeavor to promote Chinese studies in the United States as a first step toward our declared objective to broaden the horizon of American scholarship.
At its annual meeting in January, 1928, I proposed that the Council should undertake to organize a conference on Chinese studies and was authorized to proceed….
I like to think, and I believe, that the Association for Asian Studies is a successor of the ACLS Committee. I am happy to think that your Association, now a constituent of the ACLS, may be regarded as its progeny.
With all best wishes and confident hopes that you will do all and more than we dared to dream of in the ACLS, I am convinced that your activities are ever more in the public interest than our present designs on the moon.
12 Accounts of the activities of the ACLS and of its Committees relating to Asian Studies may be found in its Bulletins from 1929 onwards, especially Bulletins No. 10, 04 1929Google Scholar; No. 11, June 1929 and No. 25, July 1936. See also Progress of Chinese Studies in the United States of America, Bulletin No. 1 05 1931Google Scholar, prepared by Messrs. Graves and Latourette for the China Committee, and Chinese Studies in America: A Survey of Resources and Facilities: I. Eastern Canada and New England (ACLS, 1935)Google Scholar by Charles S. Gardner. Other valuable publications put out by the Institute of Pacific Relations were: Carter, Edward C.'s China and Japan in Our University Curricula (New York, 1929)Google Scholar, Hodous, Lewis' Careers for Students of Chinese Language and Civilization (University of Chicago Press, 1933)Google Scholar, and Takaki, Yasaka's A Survey of Japanese Studies in the Universities and Colleges of the United States (Honolulu, 1935).Google Scholar
13 A letter from Mr. Graves and my own recollections indicate that ACLS activities in the 1930's comprised:
(a) Encouraging promising young men to go into Asian Studies and providing them with study and research fellowships and aids out of general ACLS funds. The Rockefeller Foundation also made fellowship grants and searched out likely candidates. These training grants initially involved most language training abroad, but American centers soon were able to provide die basic training which was followed by a year or more of study in China, Japan, or India.
(b) Finding jobs for trained Americans. This involved locating institutions that were willing to start such esoteric subjects, selling the scholar to them, and getting them in contact with Dr. Stevens of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Foundation policy, generally speaking, was to support the scholar at a decreasing rate for several years, after which the institution was pledged to assume responsibility for the post dius established. Library funds generally accompanied such grants. It was also necessary to convince some institutions that they should use trained Americans rather than foreigners.
(c) Promoting and supporting basic research projects for their own sake and to provide work and experience for people who had been trained. Two major projects of this sort were Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period conducted at the Library of Congress under the direction of Dr. Hummel, and the translation of the Ch'ien Han-shu by Homer H. Dubs (with Carnegie support).
(d) The publication of a monographs series, bibliographies, etc.
(e) Organization of Summer Seminars aimed at teachers of history and the social sciences from 1932 onwards. These soon developed with IPR and foundation support into Summer Institutes providing intensive training in Chinese and Japanese. The one at Michigan, beginning in 1938, where George A. Kennedy directed Chinese and Joseph K. Yamagtwa Japanese language work, was especially notable.
(f) Providing information, publicity, and general needling.
14 Died after the meeting, in April, 1963.
15 Among the pioneers of Asian Studies in the United States who preceded those mentioned in the body of this paper, the following may be noted:
China—Elijah C. Bridgman, S. Wells Williams, W. A. P. Martin, Arthur H. Smith, Calvin W. Mateer, Chauncey Goodrich, Frank H. Chalfant, and Harlan P. Beach, missionary authors of language texts, dictionaries, and books on China. S. Wells Williams was also the first Professor of Chinese at Yale (1876–84) and later, Beach, as Professor of Missions and Comparative Religions, also offered language work at Yale, while Williams' son, Frederick Wells, taught Chinese history. Ko Kun-hua initiated Chinese at Harvard in 1879, but his death in 1882 ended this venture until the 1920's. At Columbia, first Friedrick Hirth and then Thomas Francis Carter occupied the Dean Lung Professorship of Chinese from 1902 to 1925, and at the University of California John Fryer held the Agassiz Professorship of Chinese from 1896 until 1915. Paul S. Reinsch of the University of Wisconsin became Minister to China and in 1920 urged ACLS interest in Asian Studies, while William W. Rockhill was perhaps the most notable Sinologist among American diplomats. H. B. Morse, a Harvard graduate, who served with the Imperial Maritime Customs Service and later lived in England, became the historiographer of China's international relations.
India—Sanskrit scholars included Edward Elbridge Salisbury (appointed 1843), William Dwight Whitney (appointed 1854) and Edward W. Hopkins at Yale; Charles R. Lanman at Harvard; Maurice Bloomfield at Johns Hopkins; Arthur W. Ryder at California, and Fitzedward Hall, a Harvard graduate of 1846 who studied in India and later held a post at Oxford. Notable missionary scholars were Henry R. Hoisington, David O. Allen, and William R. Alger.
Japan and Korea—James C. Hepburn (Lexicographer), Lafcadio Hearn (Littérateur) and August Karl Reischauer (Buddhist scholar) dealt with Japan. William E. Griffis wrote about the history and institutions of both Japan and Korea, while Homer B. Hulbert was the historian of Korea.
For more details see Latourette, K. S., FEQ, XV (11 1955), 3–12Google Scholar and Tsien, T. H., “Asian Studies in America: A Historical Study” in Asian Studies and State Universities, Proceedings of a Conference at Indiana University. November 11–13, 1959 (Bloomington, 1959).Google Scholar
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