Journal of American-East Asian Relations 19 (2012) 211–234 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/18765610-01904003 brill.com/jaer John K. Fairbank’s Construction of China, 1930s-1950s: Culture, History, and Imperialism* Xiaoqing Diana Lin Indiana University Northwest Email: dchenlin@iun.edu Abstract This paper explores John K. Fairbank’s use of the concept “culture” in his explanations of modern Chinese history. Several factors influenced Fairbank’s use of culture. Culture started as a way to explain the social and political chasm between China and the West in the 1930s, and culture eventually also became Fairbank’s way to express hope in the modernization of China despite the stark social and political reality in the 1940s and after the establishment of Communist China. The modernization theory prevalent in the mid-twentieth century situated his study of China in a universal and rational framework based on fundamen- tally Western values. On the other hand, Fairbank’s extensive experience living in China and befriending Chinese progressives showed him the dilemmas in implementing this pur- portedly universal and rational plan. Keywords Historiography, imperialism, Tsiang Ting-fu, Chinese communism, Franz Boas, Owen Lattimore, Karl Wittfogel, Teng Ssu-yü (Deng Siyu), H. B. Morse, culturalism To ascribe the preponderant influence to imperialism is really to regress to the old Victorian blue-book history of modern China that out of ignorance used to have Christianity initiating the Taiping rebellion and Chinese Gordon suppressing it…. Foreign wars and treaties, what was done in China and to China by foreigners … seemed to have been overplayed. What were the Chinese * This article grows out of a paper I presented at a conference in honor of Frank B. Gibney, “Translating Cultures: Enlightenment East and West,” Foundation for Pacific Quest, Chicago, 2005. I am indebted to Guy Alitto for comments; Ernest Young for feedback and allowing me to quote from his “Synarchy, What Happened to It?” (Unpublished paper pre- sented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Toronto, 2012); and Charles Hayford for his meticulous editing and numerous helpful suggestions that have made this paper infinitely better than it otherwise would be.