Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1996

research, his research has not absorbed him so much as to prevent his writing ， his writing has not been such as to prevent its publication: on the contrary his publications have been very successful both with professional historians and the public at large. The simple bu t significant dedication of his epic The Search for Modern China is To r My Students', a dedication that suggests the author's real care for his students, demonstrating that teacher, researcher, and writer are at their best one living being, who combines all three activities, so that they feed and enrich one another. Jonathan Spence embodies another truth — that those who write well care; they write, because they care. His other publications include almost a dozen significant books, such as Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture (1992), some of his own favourites, The Death of Woman Wang (1978), The Gate of Heavenly Peace (1981), The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984), The Question of Hu (1988 )， and then his studies of foreign attempts to influence China, To Change China: Western Advisors in China Sixteen Twenty to Nineteen Sixty (1969). These publications and all the others I cannot mention here ， Mr. Chancellor, have not prevented Prof. Spence from shouldering the burden of administration: he has been chairman of his department and director of the Division of Humanities at Yale. He has been a leader in the development of graduate studies in history and of East Asian studies at Yale. At the national and international levels he has served as director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Seminars and has vigorously promoted Sino- US academic exchange. In 1993 he was named honorary professor at the University of Nanjing. His association w i t h The Chinese University of Hong Kong is very natural i n a Yale alumnus and teacher, for our links with Yale are strong. It is also logical i n one who values China and Chinese culture. Furthermore, in 1992 Prof. Spence delivered a series of public lectures in our university as the Distinguished Visiting Scholar of United College. I remember them with pleasure and also a seminar he gave in the History Department on that occasion. He spoke in such a way as to awaken curiosity in his audience so that they wished to find out more. That is the essence of good teaching. In The Outline of History, H.G. Wells pointed out that ‘Our true nationality is mankind.' In taking modem Chinese history as his field, Prof. Spence has chosen to tell the recent story of at least one quarter of mankind. That an Englishman who is also American has succeeded so triumphantly, i n the opinion of many learned Chinese readers, in this epic task of understanding another country , another culture, the one with the deepest sediment of the past, is indeed remarkable. It suggests, too, he has obtained this Wellsian, truly human nationality, the one nationality that really matters. Jonathan Spence is a writer who makes history not just an academic exercise but something enticingly readable. Like all the best historians, he is essential reading for those who wish to understand human beings and their actions. Histories, we are told, begin in the hearts of men and women. I f we read them carefully, they can make us wise. I count it my special privilege, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you a man wit h many friends among us, Prof. Jonathan Dermot Spence ， for the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa. • 7