C. Martin Wilbur

C. Martin Wilbur 1907-1997.

Prominent historian of China, the George Sansom Professor of Chinese History at Columbia University from 1947 to 1976.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Wilbur went at an early age with his parents to China, where they worked with the YMCA. He returned to Ohio for college, graduating from Oberlin in 1931. His first job after receiving his PhD from Columbia University in 1941 was with the Field Museum, in Chicago, where he produced Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty, 206-AD 25. After moving to Columbia University in 1947, he was a key force in turning the graduate program into one of the nation's leading programs and supervised many influential graduate students. He was also responsible for the Columbia Oral History Project. Upon his retirement in 1976, his students present him with the volume Joshua A. Fogel William T. Rowe, eds., Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor of Professor C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion of His Retirement (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979).

Major Publications

* C. Martin Wilbur Julie Lien-ying How, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920-1927 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
* C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat-Sen, Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

References

C. Martin Wilbur, Anita M. O'Brien, China in My Life: An Historian's Own History (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Studies of the East Asian Institute).

Links

William Rowe, Obituary Journal of Asian Studies [http://www.jstor.org/view/00219118/di015144/01p0091j/0]