Albert Feuerwerker:An American Pioneer In China Studies

Albert Feuerwerker (1927-2013) was one of the most outstanding China Experts in the post-1945 generation. He entered Harvard University in 1945 and got trained on the field of regional research and Chinese history, with the guide of John King Fairbank. He completed his China’s Early Industrialization:Sheng Hsuan-Huai and Mandarin Enterprise in 1957, which brought him widespread reputation in academic field upon its publication. In the early 1960s, he established the later well-known Center for Chinese Studies in the University of Michigan, where he taught all along till 1996. He also worked as the chairman of JCCC and vice chairman of CSCPRC, during which he contributed a lot to the Sino-American academic and cultural communication through frequent visit to the PRC in the 1970s and 80s.Al’s China Studies mainly focused on the Chinese modern economic and social history, as well as the Chinese communist historiography. He wrote and edited more than 10 monographs, such as Economic Trends in the Republic of China:1912-1949, The Chinese Economy:1870-1949, State and Society in Eighteenth-Century China: The Ch’ing Empire in Its Glory, Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century China, Chinese Communist Studies of Modern Chinese History, and History in Communist China. And he worked as the chief editor of the famous Cambridge History of China. Vol.13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part Ⅱ, together with John. Al spent over half a century in the field of China Studies. Although his view and research methods reflected the characteristic attitude of Western scholars towards China during the Cold War, his prudent and meticulous scholarship, however, showed his profound learning and wide humanistic feelings, which are worth learning and appreciation by us.