Clarence Martin Wilbur (1908 – June 18, 1997)[1] was the
George Sansom Professor of Chinese History at
Columbia University from 1947 to 1976.
Biography
Born in
Dayton, Ohio, Wilbur went at an early age with his parents to China, where they worked with the
YMCA. He returned to Ohio for college, graduating from
Oberlin College in 1931. His first job after receiving his PhD from
Columbia University in 1941 was with the
Field Museum, in Chicago, where he prepared for publication a study of plant migration left by
Berthold Laufer after his death and developed a monograph on slavery in the
Han dynasty.
After moving to Columbia University in 1947, he was instrumental in turning the graduate program into one of the nation's leading programs and supervised many graduate students. He was also active in building the study of China as a profession, and in 1971 was elected president of the
Association for Asian Studies. His focus of research was
Republican China, especially the career of
Sun Yatsen and the rise of the
Nationalist Party. He was also a central figure in organizing the
Columbia Oral History Project.
Upon his retirement in 1976, his students presented him with Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor of Professor C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion of His Retirement ed. by
Joshua A. Fogel and
William T. Rowe, Westview Press (1979)
ISBN978-0-89158-091-1[1]
Major publications
Berthold Laufer, C. Martin Wilbur, The American Plant Migration (Chicago, 1938. Anthropological Series. Field Museum of Natural History, V. 28, No. 1 Publication 418).
ISBN978-0-527-01888-7.
C. Martin Wilbur, Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.-A.D. 25 ([Chicago, 1943. Field Museum of Natural History. Publication, 525). 490p.
OCLC615419001; reprinted, New York: Russell & Russell, 1967
OCLC2118215.
C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat-Sen, Frustrated Patriot, Columbia University Press (1976)
ISBN978-0-231-04036-5.
C. Martin Wilbur, The Nationalist Revolution in China, 1923–1928 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
ISBN978-0-521-31864-8. First published 1983 as chapter 11 of John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China, volume 12.
C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920–1927, Harvard University Press (1989)
ISBN978-0-674-57652-0
China in My Life: An Historian's Own History, (edited by Anita M. O'Brien) M.E. Sharpe (1996)
ISBN978-1-56324-763-7
Rowe, William., Fogel, Joshua, & Zelin, Madeleine (1997). C. Martin Wilbur (1907–1997). The Journal of Asian Studies, 56(3), 878-878. doi:10.1017/S0021911800035282