💬 Famous Quotes
📋 Basic Information
📖 Biography
Miner Searle Bates (May 27, 1897 – October 1978), Chinese name Bei Deshi (贝德士), was an American historian.
Life
He was born in 1897 in Newark, Ohio, in the United States. In 1916 he received a bachelor's degree from Hiram College, and in 1920 a master's degree from the University of Oxford in England.
In 1920 he went to China as a missionary to teach at the University of Nanking. In 1927, during the Northern Expedition, the Nanjing Incident broke out: some of the soldiers entering the city of Nanjing turned violently anti-foreign, attacking, burning and looting churches, schools and even foreign residents (accounts of the cause differ: Chiang Kai-shek's side held that the Chinese Communist Party and Soviet advisers had instigated it, while a Nationalist Government statement blamed deserters from Zhang Zongchang's army). Dr. John Elias Williams, vice-president of the University of Nanking, was killed, and Bates was arrested by a group of soldiers. After his release, Bates withdrew with his wife and children to Japan, and returned to the University of Nanking after the unrest had subsided. In 1935 he received a PhD from Yale University in the United States, and in 1935 he returned to the History Department of the University of Nanking.
In 1937, when the War of Resistance against Japan broke out, Bates, as vice-president, was responsible for staying behind to look after the university's property. Around the fall of Nanjing he took part in initiating and organizing the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone (later renamed the Nanking International Relief Committee), and served as its last chairman. In 1950 he was forced to leave China.
Bibliography
- The Bates Papers
- Bates's List
