Jonathan Spence, an English-born American scholar and author specializing in Chinese history whose most popular book, The Search for Modern China, was based on a course he taught at Yale University, died December 25 at age 85. He wrote reviews, essays and more than a dozen books on China, particularly in his areas of expertise: the Qing dynasty, modern China and relations between China and the West. Spence often used biographies to examine wider cultural trends and explored the ways many Western attempts to change China have been frustrated. He taught at Yale for nearly 40 years, including as Sterling Professor of History from 1993 until his retirement in 2008. He was president of the American Historical Association between 2004 and 2005, received numerous honorary degrees from institutions in the U.S. and China, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1988, and in 2010 delivered the annual Jefferson Lecture at the Library of Congress, which, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."
In addition to The Search for Modern China (1989), Spence's books include To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620-1960 (1969), The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980 (1982), Mao Zedong (1999) and Treason by the Book (2001). His final work was Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man (2007). --Tobias Mutter
