Immanuel C. Y. Hsu

Immanuel Chung-Yueh Hsü (1923 – October 24, 2005, 徐中約; pinyin; Xú Zhōngyuē) was a sinologist, a scholar of modern Chinese intellectual and diplomatic history, and a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Immanuel C. Y. Hsu
Born	Immanuel Chung-Yueh Hsü 1923 Shanghai, Republic of China
Died	October 24, 2005 (aged 82) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Nationality	Chinese
Education	Yenching University University of Minnesota Harvard University
Known for	Academician
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	徐中約
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xú Zhōngyuē

Biography

Born in Shanghai in 1923, he studied at Yenching University in Beijing, and the University of Minnesota. He held a Harvard-Yenching Fellowship at Harvard University from 1950 to 1954. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard, he spent the years 1955–1958 as a Research Fellow at Harvard's East Asian Research Center. He taught modern Chinese history at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1959 until his retirement in 1991, serving as Chair of the History department from 1970 to 1972. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1962–1963, as well as a Fulbright Fellow. His most widely read book is The Rise of Modern China, a survey of Chinese history from 1600 to the present, and a standard textbook.

He died of complications from pneumonia on October 24, 2005.[1][2]

Tribute

According to Jonathan Spence in the Preface to the Chinese translation of his book The Search for Modern China, the "two most prominent previous (to The Search for Modern China) English-language surveys" (of modern Chinese history) were the one "by John King Fairbank in the 1960s and the one by Immanuel Hsu in the 1970s." Spence acknowledged that he had learned much from these two scholars.[3]

Notes

1. Newsletter of the UCSB History Associates, Nov 2005 (with a photograph of Hsu) Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
2. List of 1962 Guggenheim Fellows Archived 2007-04-13 at the Wayback Machine
3. Preface to the Chinese translation of Spence's The Search for Modern China, dated March 31, 2001.

Publications

• The Rise of Modern China, Oxford University Press (First edition, 1970; sixth edition, 2000).
• Intellectual Trends in the Ch'ing Period
• China's entry into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858–1880
• The Ili Crisis: A Study of Sino-Russian Diplomacy, 1871–1881
• China Without Mao: The Search for a New Order, Oxford University Press, 1983.
• Chapter on Late Ch’ing foreign relations, 1866–1905 in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 11: Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911, edited by John K. Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu, Cambridge University Press. (Publisher's Catalogue)