LATTIMORE, OWEN 1900-1989

Asian scholar

Asian Expertise

Owen Lattimore, who served from 1938 to 1941 as director of the Walter Himes Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University, was a noted Asian scholar whose expertise was put to use by the United States government during World War II and the subsequent reconstruction of Asia. In 1941 he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as political adviser to Chiang Kai-shek of China, an appointment based mainly on his understanding of China, Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia.

More Overseas Posts and Recall to Duty

In late 1942 Lattimore became the deputy director of the overseas branch of the United States government and was in charge of the Pacific operations with the Office of War Information. He remained in this post until June 1944, when he was asked to return to China as a member of the vice-president's diplomatic party. He resigned in 1945 so that he could return to his initial love, teaching. However, his return to academic life was short-lived. In October 1945 President Harry S Truman asked him to become the special economic adviser to Edwin W. Pauley, whom Truman had named as the head of an economic mission to Japan. This request was due in part to the impression that Lattimore during his diplomatic career and in his writings had consistently supported democracy in Asia.

Major Works

As a writer Lattimore is best remembered for three groundbreaking works. His Inner Asian Frontiers (1940), a history of China's northern and western frontiers, was followed by Mongol Journeys (1941), a work described by The New York Times as "an easily and sometimes beautifully written book." But perhaps his most noted work was Solution in Asia (1945), supposedly one of only two books on the president's desk when he announced the surrender of Japan. This work, which was greeted enthusiastically by reviewers, discussed the future of Asian countries after the war and called for the Allies to develop an understanding of the Asian need for self-identity. He noted that Asians "may be illiterate, but they know the kind of world they want to live in." This work became one of the three books selected by the Recommended Book Committee of the Council of Books in Wartime.

Witch Hunt Victim

All of the good that Lattimore did for American education and foreign policy was forgotten when he was accused by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1950 of being the top Soviet espionage agent operating in the United States. Evidence against Lattimore was scarce, and the testimony against him was almost comical. When he appeared before the McCarran Subcommittee in February 1953 he was charged with being a Communist sympathizer; two and a half years later the government dropped the case. However, his academic career was destroyed, for few students dared to study under him. He left the United States to teach at Leeds University in England before he returned to China in 1972, where in 1974 he was accused of being an international spy but was exonerated.

Source:

Andrew Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).

Institute for Pacific Relations. Founded in 1925 by Stanford University president Ray Lyman Wilbur, the businessman Frank Atherton, and Merle Davis, who, like many others, was formerly linked to the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR) sought to advance understanding of Asia through conferences with Asian leaders, annual meetings, research, and publications. By 1939, eleven national IPR councils had been established in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and France. From the start, the American council exerted the greatest influence because of its size (nearly fourteen hundred members by 1939) and fund‐raising abilities. In the 1930s, under Edward C. Carter, secretary of the American council and later secretary‐general of IPR itself, IPR became the premier organization for the study of Asia. It published Pacific Affairs and Eastern Survey; gave scholarly research grants; and provided reliable information to scholars, the government, and the public at a time when such information was scarce. The respected Asian scholar Owen Lattimore, who edited Pacific Affairs from 1933 to 1941, brought to the post a wealth of experience; insatiable curiosity; and impressive language proficiency in Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian.

Despite its nonpartisan beginnings, IPR became embroiled in controversy in the 1940s, when some members resigned over what they considered its left‐leaning slant. Principal among the disgruntled was the textile importer Alfred Kohlberg, who charged Lattimore and others with turning the organization into a front for communist propaganda. Senator Joseph McCarthy picked up these charges in the early 1950s, particularly targeting Lattimore, who had moved to Johns Hopkins University. IPR never recovered; its membership declined, and it ended in 1960. In its heyday, however, IPR stood high among international nongovernmental organizations seeking to expand knowledge of Asia and to bring scholarly expertise to bear on the shaping of international relations.
See also Anticommunism; Cold War; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia; YMCA and YWCA.

Bibliography

John N. Thomas , The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics, 1974.
Robert P. Newman , Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China, 1992.

T. Christopher Jespersen