Michael H. Hunt

Americans in the China Market: Economic Opportunities and Economic Nationalism, 1890s-1931

Historians of various “schools” have seen quite different things in the United States’ long years of business activity in China. The “realists” as Professor Hunt calls them, deny that significant business opportunities existed for Americans and point to obstacles that the Chinese put in the way of trade; the “Wisconsin school,” he says, emphasizes the public rhetoric of officials and businessmen who saw China as an outlet for capitalist surpluses. Citing three case histories — kerosene, cigarettes, and textiles — Professor Hunt shows that generalization is dangerous; that success depended more on businessmens own skill, resources, and control of their domestic industry than on help derived from an imperialistically minded government.

Pearl Buck-Popular Expert on China, 1931-1949

For two decades Pearl Buck was the most prolific and popular American interpreter of China. Her commentary appeared in such widely read journals as The New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Life, and Readers Digest. Her influence over the popular imagination, measured by such crude indices as polls, interviews, and book sales, was enormous. Her unique insight on China and her commitment and effectiveness as a publicist enabled her to transform the personal vision of an unchanging, earthbound China which she had shaped in the 1920s into a national vision during the following two decades. Bucks influence rested essentially on the success of The Good Earth, which, more than any other single contemporary work, shaped an American image of China. During Bucks heyday it sold more than a million and a half copies, a very impressive figure in those days before the economical paperback book. Translated into more than 30 foreign languages, it was known worldwide. By 1972 total sales had mounted to well over four

The Forgotten Occupation: Peking, 1900-1901

A GENERATION TROUBLED BY THE Vietnam War has grown accustomed to expect the worst when Americans come into contact with Asians. The occupation of Peking by the U.S. Army (August 1900-May 1901) was one of those situations rich in potential for conflict and abuse of power. The army came to China as part of an international force assembled to put down the Boxer movement and protect foreign interests. It arrived unprepared for the occupation duties it assumed as a consequence of intervention. The army carried with it no experts on China. The only obvious sources of guidance were the American missionary sinologues and their English-speaking Chinese followers. Both were in a bitter and vengeful mood after a summer of suffering. The arriving American troops, dispatched from the Philippines, were no better disposed toward the Chinese. They shared the contemporary American image of the Chinese as a backward and contemptible people. By the time they had reached the China coast in July 1900, it was alive with tales of terrible atrocities suffered by foreign missionaries

Conclusions: the Decolonization Puzzle in US Policy — Promise versus Performance

To the historically uninitiated it might seem that the United States had arrived by the final months of the Second World War at one of those rare moments when a country’s fundamental principles were in accord with no less fundamental global trends. Americans had long nurtured a faith in self-determination. Inscribed in popular discourse and enshrined in seminal policy statements, that principle seemed fully in accord with the palpable movement toward decolonization in what postwar observers would come to call the ‘Third World’. Countries and peoples with a shared experience of foreign domination and often formal, preponderantly European colonial control were ready to launch a frontal assault on the status quo. Indeed, the pronounced movement of countries making strong claims to full independence in the immediate aftermath of the war would turn into a stampede. The rush began in Asia with India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam leading the way. It would come to a climax in the 1960s with the liberation of much of sub-Saharan Africa. The rise of new states out of collapsing colonial empires dramatically expanded the United Nations — from 51 charter members in 1945 to 127 by 1970 with more waiting in the wings. Seldom would one country’s core-values seem so fully aligned with the tide of history.

Resistance and Collaboration in the American Empire, 1898-1903: An Overview

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY witnessed a dramatic transformation of the American role in world affairs. The Spanish-American War, the Boxer crisis in China, and the seizure of an Isthmian canal resulted, in the span of a few years, in the United States assuming control over peoples in such farflung places as the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, China, and Panama. These articles seek a deeper understanding of the significance of that transformation and the nature of that control by examining the interaction between American occupiers and foreign occupied in four distinct cases. The occupations treated here--Cuba, two regions of the Philippines, and Peking-display a considerable variety whether considered with regard to American motives, the length and intensity of the American commitment, or the local conditions which Americans encountered. But whatever

Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach . By Quansheng Zhao. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996. 281 pp.

This book applies the micro-macro linkage approach to Chinese foreign policy. The author examines the processes, situations, and structures of Chinese foreign policy and analyses the effect of the international environment and domestic constraints. He explores the key trends of modernization, nationalism, and regionalism and reviews the literature of and approaches towards Chinese foreign policy.