James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. (b.
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, New Jersey, September 14, 1931 d. August 11, 2002) was an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
and
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
who served in the government, taught at
Harvard and
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
Universities, served as curator of the
Neiman Foundation for Journalism.
Early life
Born in
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, New Jersey when his parents were on home leave from China, where his father taught chemistry at
Nanking University
Nanjing University (NJU; ) is a national public research university in Nanjing, Jiangsu. It is a member of C9 League and a Class A Double First Class University designated by the Chinese central government. NJU has two main campuses: the Xianl ...
. He spent most of his youth in
Nanjing
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
. In Nanjing, his mother was neighbor and good friend of
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) 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 for the Novel, Pulitze ...
, whom he called "Aunt Pearl." His siblings were Anne (Nancy), Sydney, and John, and he was a friend and brother in law to theologian
Robert McAfee Brown, Sydney's husband.
Thomson returned to the United States to become a student at
Lawrenceville School
The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational preparatory school for boarding and day students located in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Lawrenceville is a member of the Eight Scho ...
. He returned briefly to China to travel with a friend,
Winthrop Knowlton, in the summer of 1948, when Mao Zedong's revolution was gathering force. In 1953 he graduated with a
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
from
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, where he was editor of the
Yale Daily News and elected to
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...
. As a Yale-Clare Fellow at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
, he received a B.A. in history in 1955, and an
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
in 1959. He received his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in history from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1961 under the direction of
John K. Fairbank. He married Diana Butler in 1959.
Career in politics and scholarship
As a member of the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
, Thomson was an assistant to Senator
Chester Bowles
Chester Bliss Bowles (April 5, 1901 – May 25, 1986) was an American diplomat and ambassador, governor of Connecticut, congressman and co-founder of a major advertising agency, Benton & Bowles, now part of Publicis Groupe. Bowles is best known ...
of Connecticut during the
Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign of 1956. Bowles invited Thomson to be his advisor when he joined the
Kennedy administration. In the
Johnson
Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...
administrations Thomson was China specialist on the staff of the
National Security Council headed by
McGeorge Bundy. In May 1964 he was involved in drafting what would eventually become the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. He later called the original idea "fairly benign," yet it was shelved in June of that year due to the threat of a congressional filibuster. In 1966 he resigned in protest of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
.
He then became a lecturer in history at Harvard University, and taught a popular undergraduate course in American-East Asian Relations. In 1972 he was appointed curator of Harvard's
Nieman Foundation for Journalism. He then taught at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
from 1984 until 1997.
He continued to publish both academic and journalistic work. His article "How Could Vietnam Happen?" in the April 1968 ''Atlantic Magazine'' examined and condemned American involvement in Vietnam in terms of State Department bureaucratic politics, the purging of expertise in the McCarthy era, and Democratic administration remembrance of the "loss of China" charges. Thomson's doctoral dissertation, finished while he was serving in Washington, was published in 1969 by Harvard University Press, ''While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928-1937''. The book describes the efforts of American oriented reformers to provide China with effective political and social change, especially the
Rural Reconstruction Movement
The Rural Reconstruction Movement was started in China in the 1920s by Y.C. James Yen, Liang Shuming and others to revive the Chinese village. They strove for a middle way, independent of the Nationalist government but in competition with the ...
.
After his return to Cambridge, he supported the efforts of John Fairbank and others to form the Committee on American-East Asian Relations under the aegis of the American Historical Association. He and
Ernest May edited ''American-East Asian Relations: A Survey.'' (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), a series of essays from a conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, which assessed the state of the field of American relations with Asia. In 1981, he co-wrote ''Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia'', with
Peter W. Stanley and
John Curtis Perry
John Curtis Perry also known as John Perry (born 18 July 1930) is an East Asian and Oceanic studies professor and historian. He is the Henry Willard Denison Professor Emeritus of History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Universi ...
. Thomson drew upon this youthful acquaintance in writing "Pearl S. Buck and the American Quest for China" for a conference celebrating Buck's centennial. In it, he describes Buck as the most influential writer on China since
Marco Polo[Elizabeth Johnston Lipscomb, Frances E. Webb and Peter J. Conn. ed., ''The Several Worlds of Pearl S. Buck: Essays Presented at a Centennial Symposium, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, March 26–28, 1992.'' (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Contributions in Women's Studies 144, 1994). .]
His death in 2002, two years after his wife's, was due to a heart attack. Both of their funerals were held in the
Memorial Church of Harvard University
The Memorial Church of Harvard University is a building on the campus of Harvard University. It is an inter-denominational Protestant church.
History Predecessors
The first distinct building for worship at Harvard University was Holden Chapel, b ...
, and they are both buried in
Heath
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler a ...
, Massachusetts.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomson, James C. Jr.
1931 births
2002 deaths
American male journalists
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
American anti–Vietnam War activists
Historians of Asia
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
People from Princeton, New Jersey
Yale University alumni
Harvard University faculty
Harvard University alumni
Children of American missionaries in China
Historians from New Jersey
20th-century American male writers