Asia (magazine)

Last updated

Origins and development

Asia magazine was established by the American Asiatic Association in 1898 as Journal of the American Asiatic Association. An editorial in the Journal explained: "The ignorance of our people in regard to the countries of the Far East is unquestionably a serious obstacle to the legitimate extension of American influence." [1] In 1917 Willard Straight, who had been involved in promoting American trade and investment in Korea and China since the turn of the century, and his wife, Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight, bought the magazine and renamed it Asia and continued its publication as a popular journal of commerce and travel. The Straights also were co-founders of The New Republic magazine. [2]

When Willard Straight died of influenza in 1918, his widow took over publication of the magazine. She married Leonard K. Elmhirst in 1925. The editors included Louis D. Froelick and John Foord, and associate editors Gertrude Emerson and Marietta Neff. Elsie Weil, who joined the staff about 1920, was the long time managing editor. [2]

Frank H. McIntosh painted many of the covers. [3]

Under Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck

In January 1934, although ownership remained unchanged, Richard J. Walsh, head of John Day publishers published his first issue as editor. He announced that the magazine would no longer be a tourist handbook, and despite objections from some readers, the magazine was shifted from advertising luxury goods, travel and promotion of American commerce in the Orient to discussion of international affairs and current Asian culture and literature. In the first editorial Walsh promised readers a wide range of topics and views. The magazine's political stance changed as well. Walsh wrote that it would "look upon Communism as objectively as upon art, and bring to religious concepts as open a mind as we bring to economic problems." Walsh soon brought his new wife, Pearl S. Buck, into the editorial process. [4]

In the following years, Asia underwent revolution and war. Walsh, as publisher of John Day, and Buck, as America's most influential writer about Asia, attracted and recruited a new range of Asian and American writers, many of whom promoted an anti-colonial agenda, such as support for Indian independence, and anti-racist program. Subscriptions rose as Americans become more worried about the oncoming Second Sino-Japanese War. Writers included William Ernest Hocking, the Harvard liberal theologian; Hu Shih, leader of China's New Culture Movement; Owen Lattimore, the emerging authority on Central Asia; Lin Yutang; Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian independence leader; and reporters such as Nathaniel Peffer; Edgar Snow, Nym Wales, and Theodore H. White, who reported from the front line on China before World War II. Buck wrote a regular book review column titled “Asia Book Shelf.” The magazine recruited corresponding editors to gather articles, including Gertrude Emerson Sen in India and H.J. Timperley, an Australian journalist in China. [4]

In 1941, Walsh and Buck bought the magazine from the Elmhirsts. They changed the name to Asia and the Americas in November 1942, and Buck assumed the editorship. She continued her attacks on imperialism, particularly British, and offered strong support for colonial independence movements. [5] With the end of the war in 1945, however, Americans lost interest in Asia and the magazine suffered a financial crisis. Buck resigned as editor in 1947 merged the magazine with Free World and Inter-American to form a new journal, United Nations World. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pearl S. Buck</span> American writer (1892–1973)

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for The Good Earth a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China" and for her "masterpieces", two memoir-biographies of her missionary parents. She was the first American woman to win that prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere</span> Japanese imperialist concept

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, also known as the GEACPS, was a concept that was developed in the Empire of Japan and propagated to Asian populations which were occupied by it from 1931 to 1945, and which officially aimed at creating a self-sufficient bloc of Asian peoples and states that would be led by the Japanese and be free from the rule of Western powers. The idea was first announced on 1 August 1940 in a radio address delivered by Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka.

<i>The Good Earth</i> 1931 novel by Pearl S. Buck

The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a Chinese village in the early 20th century. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. The realistic and sympathetic depiction of the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moorfield Storey</span> American lawyer and civil rights leader

Moorfield Storey was an American lawyer, anti-imperial activist, and civil rights leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. According to Storey's biographer, William B. Hixson, Jr., he had a worldview that embodied "pacifism, anti-imperialism, and racial egalitarianism fully as much as it did laissez-faire and moral tone in government." Storey served as the founding president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving from 1909 to his death in 1929. He opposed United States expansionism beginning with the Spanish–American War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Payne Whitney</span>

Dorothy Payne Elmhirst was an American-born social activist, philanthropist, publisher and a member of the prominent Whitney family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beatrice Straight</span> American actress (1914–2001)

Beatrice Whitney Straight was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner as well as an Emmy Award nominee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willard Dickerman Straight</span> American financier, publisher, and diplomat (1880–1918)

Willard Dickerman Straight was an American investment banker, publisher, reporter, diplomat and by marriage, a member of the very wealthy Whitney family. He was a promoter of Chinese arts and investments, and a major supporter of liberal causes.

James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. was an American historian and journalist who served in the government, taught at Harvard and Boston Universities, served as curator of the Neiman Foundation for Journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Emerson Baum</span> American artist and educator (1884–1956)

Walter Emerson Baum was an American artist and educator active in the Bucks and Lehigh County areas of Pennsylvania in the United States. In addition to being a prolific painter, Baum was also responsible for the founding of the Baum School of Art and the Allentown Art Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gertrude Emerson Sen</span>

Gertrude Emerson Sen was an early 20th-century expert on Asia and a founding member of the Society of Woman Geographers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willard Straight Hall</span> Student union in New York, USA

Willard Straight Hall is the student union building on the central campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is located on Campus Road, adjacent to the Ho Plaza and Cornell Health.

Dorothy Elmhirst Straight is an American author who wrote How the World Began in 1962 at the age of 4 for her grandmother, Dorothy Payne Whitney, making her among the youngest published authors in history.

<i>The Big Wave</i> 1948 novel by Pearl S. Buck

The Big Wave is a 1948 novel by Pearl S. Buck. She won the 1948 Child Study Association's Children's Book Award for The Big Wave. The book contains illustrations from Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Absalom Sydenstricker</span>

Absalom Andrew Sydenstricker was an American Presbyterian missionary to China from 1880 to 1931. The Sydenstricker log house at what later became the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace in Hillsboro, West Virginia, was Absalom's early childhood home.

Free World (1941–1946) was the monthly magazine of the International Free World Association, published by Free World, Inc. in New York City. It was edited by "Louis Dolivet," an émigré writer, film producer, and alleged Soviet spy born in Romania as Ludovici Udeanu with French citizenship under the alias Ludovic Brecher. Free World was militantly anti-Fascist, articulating the perspective of left-liberal Popular Front intellectuals and international political figures who supported the Allies in World War II and championed the creation of the United Nations as a successor to the failed post-World War I League of Nations.

Frank Joseph Rawlinson born in Langham, Rutland, England, was an American Protestant missionary to China from 1902 to 1937 known for his theologically liberal views, openness to Chinese culture, and support for Chinese nationalism. From 1912 to 1937 he was editor of The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, published in Shanghai, the leading English-language journal of the Protestant missionary community.

The New Qing History is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a wide-ranging revision of history of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. Orthodox historians tend to emphasize the power of the Han people to "sinicize" their conquerors in their thought and institutions. In the 1980s and early 1990s, American scholars began to learn Manchu and took advantage of newly opened Chinese- and Manchu-language archives. This research found that the Manchu rulers were savvy in manipulating their subjects and from the 1630s through at least the 18th century, emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule, while blending with models from other ethnic groups across the vast empire, including those from northern China, the Eurasian Steppe, Inner Asia, and Central Asia. According to some scholars, at the height of their power, the Qing regarded the Han Chinese as only a part, although a very important part, of a much wider empire that extended into the Inner Asian territories of Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria and Xinjiang.

Louis Dolivet born as Ludovici Udeanu was an émigré writer, editor of Free World, film producer, and alleged Soviet spy born in Austria-Hungary, who later obtained French citizenship. From 1942 to 1949, he was married to Academy Award and Tony Award winning actress Beatrice Whitney Straight, of the prominent American Whitney family.

Willard J. Peterson is an American historian and sinologist. He is Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Emeritus, and Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Emeritus at Princeton University. His research specialties include early Chinese philosophy and Chinese intellectual history and history of science during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Liu Kwang-ching, who sometimes published under the name K.C. Liu, was a China-born American historian of China. He taught at University of California-Davis from 1963 until his retirement in 1993. He is best known for his scholarship in late-Qing history, astute bibliographical work, and edited volumes, including co-editing Cambridge History of China volumes.

References

  1. ↑ Journal of the American Asiatic Association. Asia: 17.1 (March 1917). .
  2. 1 2 "Records of Asia Magazine" RG 4, pp. 207 208, "Papers of Pearl S. Buck," Archived 2015-09-05 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Ask Art
  4. 1 2 Conn (1996), p. 159-160, 171-173.
  5. ↑ Conn (1996), p. 243.
  6. ↑ Conn (1996), p. 297-298.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.