Jerome Ch'en FRSC (Chinese: 陳志讓; pinyin: Chén Zhìràng; October 2, 1919 – June 17, 2019) was a Chinese-Canadian historian.
| Jerome Ch'en | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jerome Chen in 2003 | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 陳志讓 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 陈志让 | ||||||||
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Early life and education
editCh'en was born as Ch'en Chih-jang in Chengdu, Sichuan, Republic of China in October 1919. He was educated at Tianjin Nankai University, National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming during the Anti-Japanese War and at the London School of Economics (LSE), which he attended funded by a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and where he studied under Friedrich Hayek.
Academic career
editIn the 1950s, Ch'en worked for the Chinese Service of the BBC. Before emigrating to Canada he was a Reader in history at the University of Leeds for a number of years. He was Professor of Chinese History at York University in Toronto, Canada from 1971 to 1987. He was the director of the University of Toronto/York University Joint Centre of Asia Pacific Studies (JCAPS) from 1983 to 1985.[1]
Honours
editCh'en was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1981. In 1984, he was named Distinguished Research Professor at York.[2]
Death
editCh'en died in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada in June 2019 at the age of 99.[3]
Selected publications
edit- Yuan Shih-ka̕i, 1859-1916: Brutus Assumes the Purple (George Allen & Unwin, 1961).
- The Highlanders of Central China: a History 1895 – 1937
- Mao and the Chinese Revolution
- The Military-Gentry coalition—the Warlords Period in Modern Chinese History
- China and the West: Society and Culture 1815 – 1937 (Hutchinson, 1979)
Ch'en also edited:
- Great Lives Observed: Mao
Some of his works have been translated into Chinese or Japanese.
References
editFurther reading
edit- Lary, Diana. "Jerome Ch’en obituary: Historian of modern China, cut off from his roots, who rued the rise of the military and the Communist conquest" The Guardian 18 July 2019. online