Stuart Reynolds Schram (February 27, 1924 – July 8, 2012) was an American
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
,
political scientist
Political science is the science, scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of politics, political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated c ...
and
sinologist
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...
who specialised in the study of modern Chinese politics. He was particularly well known for his works on the life and thought of
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
.
Biography
Schram was born in
Excelsior
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Arts and entertainment Literature and poetry
* "Excelsior" (Longfellow), an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
* ''Excelsior'' (Macedo ...
,
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
, a small lake town outside of Minneapolis, in 1924. His parents, both of whom had professional careers, divorced when he was very young. Schram enrolled at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
, and graduated ''
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...
'' in 1944. After graduation he was drafted into the US army, and was assigned to work on the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
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, coordinates =
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, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, as a member of the team responsible for developing of an
atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
.
Schram's work on the project involved devising information storage systems for the vast amounts of data generated.
After the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, influenced by his involvement on the development of the atomic bomb, he decided to change his focus of academic study, and enrolled at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in
New York
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where he studied for a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
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** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in political science. He went to France to carry out research for his dissertation on the political behavior of French Protestants, and after receiving his PhD he moved to France.
![TiChin1967](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/TiChin1967.jpg)
In the early 1950s, Schram wrote several articles on East and West Berlin. Although these articles were not overtly supportive of the East German regime, they drew the attention of the U.S. State Department, which withdrew his passport. After multiple letters to Minnesota Senator
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Mi ...
, Schram regained his passport in 1955. From 1954 to 1967 he carried out research at the
in Paris, but as a non-French citizen he could not become a Professor or oversee doctoral dissertations.
During the late 1950s he turned his attention to Chinese politics, and started to learn
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
so that he could base his research on the primary sources. He focused his research on
Chairman Mao
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC ...
, and by 1963 he had completed a book on the ''Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung''.
In 1966
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[School of Oriental and African Studies
SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...]
(SOAS) in London offered Schram a chair. Once established in London, Schram led establishment of the Contemporary China Institute and the continued development of journal,
China Quarterly
''The China Quarterly'' (CQ) is a British double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1960 on contemporary China and Taiwan.
It is considered the most important research journal about China in the world and is published by the Cam ...
.
He also translated a large number of unofficial writings by Mao which had been released by zealous Red Guard groups in China in 1967-1968 during the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...
.
In 1989 he retired from his position at SOAS, and moved back to America. He was in Beijing in May 1989, when he provided analysis to the British Embassy and predicted that Deng Xiaoping would crack down on the students in
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: ''Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng''; Wade–Giles: ''Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3'') is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananmen (" ...
violently.
At the invitation of
Roderick MacFarquhar
Roderick "Rod" Lemonde MacFarquhar (2 December 1930 – 10 February 2019) was a British China scholar, politician, and journalist.
MacFarquhar had a varied career. He was founding editor of ''China Quarterly'' in 1959. He served as a Member of ...
, Director of the
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is a post-graduate research center promoting the study of modern and contemporary China from a social science perspective. The center hosts and organizes academic activities, provides re ...
at
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 higher le ...
, he started work on the translation and editing of a ten-volume collection of the revolutionary writings of Mao Zedong, seven volumes of which were published before his death.
An eighth volume was published in 2015.
He died in France in July 2012 after a
stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
.
He was survived by his wife Marie-Annick Lancelot, who he married in 1972, and his son, Arthur.
Legacy
Schram made a huge impact on Western understanding of Mao during the 1960s and 1970s. Both his translations of new materials along with his interpretation of officially-available sources from Beijing provided insights to government analysts and readers in the general public. However, in the view of his colleague and fellow Mao scholar,
Roderick MacFarquhar
Roderick "Rod" Lemonde MacFarquhar (2 December 1930 – 10 February 2019) was a British China scholar, politician, and journalist.
MacFarquhar had a varied career. He was founding editor of ''China Quarterly'' in 1959. He served as a Member of ...
, Schram wrestled with the problem of making any overall assessment of Mao. MacFarquar recalls Schram saying “I agree with the current Chinese view that Mao’s merits outweighed his faults, but it is not easy to put a figure on the positive and negative aspects. How does one weigh, for example, the good fortune of hundreds of millions of peasants in getting land against the execution, in the course of land reform and the 'Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries,' or in other contexts, of millions, some of whom certainly deserved to die, but others of whom undoubtedly did not? How does one balance the achievements in economic development during the first Five-Year Plan, or during the whole twenty-seven years of Mao’s leadership after 1949, against the starvation which came in the wake of the misguided enthusiasm of the Great Leap Forward, or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution?” Schram added, “In the last analysis, however, I am more interested in the potential future impact of his thought than in sending Mao as an individual to Heaven or to Hell.” Commenting on Schram's Mao biography and his ''The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung'', Harvard scholar
Tony Saich
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observed: “I do not think he got Mao wrong but his analysis was very much text-based and this meant that he did not focus so much on the hard politics that Mao engaged in.”
Schram's writings on Mao Zedong were translated into French and German during the 1960s and 1970s, and his work on Mao Zedong had a kind of revival in the People's Republic of China in the 1990s and thereafte
Selected works
* 1954. ''Protestantism and Politics in France''. Corbière & Jugain.
* 1966. ''Mao Tse-tung''. Penguin Books.
* 1967. trans. ''Mao Tse-Tung: Basic Tactics''. Pall Mall Press.
* 1969. ''The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung''. Praeger.
* 1974. ''Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed''. Penguin Books.
* 1975. ''Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956–1971''. Pantheon Books.
* 1983. ''Mao Zedong: a Preliminary Reassessment''. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
* 1985. ed. ''The Scope of State Power in China''. School of Oriental and African Studies.
* 1989. ''The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung''. Cambridge University Press.
* 1992–. With Nancy Jane Hodes. ''Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949''. New York: M. E. Sharpe.
** 1992. Volume I: ''The Pre-Marxist Period, 1912–1920''.
** 1992. Volume II: ''National revolution and social revolution, December 1920–June 1927''.
** 1995. Volume III: ''From the Jinggangshan to the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927–December 1930''.
** 1997. Volume IV: ''The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Soviet Republic, 1931–1934''.
** 1998. Volume V: ''Toward the Second United Front, January 1935–July 1937''.
** 2004. Volume VI: ''The New Stage, August 1937–1938''.
** 2005. Volume VII: ''New Democracy, 1939–1941 ''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schram, Stuart Reynolds
1924 births
2012 deaths
People from Excelsior, Minnesota
American nuclear physicists
American political scientists
American sinologists
Writers from Minnesota
Manhattan Project people
University of Minnesota alumni
Columbia University alumni
Academics of SOAS University of London
United States Army personnel of World War II