Ray Huang was a talented
ChineseChinese refers to anything pertaining to China.* Chinese people, people of Chinese ethnicity and/or nationality** Zhonghua minzu, the supra-ethnic Chinese nationality** Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in mainland China and Taiwan...
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, 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 study of all events in time...
and renowned philosopher. He was an officer in the Nationalist army and fought in the
Burma campaignsThe Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, Thailand, the Burmese Independence Army and the Indian National Army...
. He earned a Ph.D in history from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
, worked with
Joseph NeedhamNoel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British academic and sinologist known for his research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941; and he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1971...
and is a contributor of Needham's
Science and Civilisation in ChinaScience and Civilisation in China is a series of books initiated and edited by British biochemist and China scholar Joseph Needham . They deal with the history of science and technology in China...
. Huang taught in the U.S., and is mainly famous in his later years for the idea of macro history.
Ray Huang was born in
ChangshaChangsha is the capital city of Hunan, a province of south-central China, located on the lower reaches of Xiang river, a branch of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of 11,819 sq. kilometers and has a population of 6,017,600 ....
,
Hunan' is a province of China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
Province, in 1918.
Ray Huang was a talented
ChineseChinese refers to anything pertaining to China.* Chinese people, people of Chinese ethnicity and/or nationality** Zhonghua minzu, the supra-ethnic Chinese nationality** Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in mainland China and Taiwan...
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, 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 study of all events in time...
and renowned philosopher. He was an officer in the Nationalist army and fought in the
Burma campaignsThe Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, Thailand, the Burmese Independence Army and the Indian National Army...
. He earned a Ph.D in history from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
, worked with
Joseph NeedhamNoel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British academic and sinologist known for his research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941; and he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1971...
and is a contributor of Needham's
Science and Civilisation in ChinaScience and Civilisation in China is a series of books initiated and edited by British biochemist and China scholar Joseph Needham . They deal with the history of science and technology in China...
. Huang taught in the U.S., and is mainly famous in his later years for the idea of macro history.
Early Life
Ray Huang was born in
ChangshaChangsha is the capital city of Hunan, a province of south-central China, located on the lower reaches of Xiang river, a branch of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of 11,819 sq. kilometers and has a population of 6,017,600 ....
,
Hunan' is a province of China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
Province, in 1918. His father, Huang Zhenbai (黄震白), was an early member of the revolutionary group,
TongmenghuiThe Tongmenghui , also known as the Chinese United League or the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, was a secret society and underground resistance movement organized by Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren in Tokyo, Japan, on 20 August 1905...
, who became less active in the group over the years. Ray Huang grew up in Hunan and went to study
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
at
Nankai UniversityNankai University is a public university in Tianjin, P.R. China. It is among the most famous universities in China and has a great reputation....
,
Tianjin' is the sixth largest city of the People's Republic of China in terms of urban population. Administratively it is one of the four municipalities that have provincial-level status, reporting directly to the central government...
in 1936. At the outbreak of the
Second Sino-Japanese WarThe Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany and the Soviet Union...
in 1938, he returned to Changsha and wrote for the
Japanese War Report (《抗日战报》).
Afterwards, he entered the Kuomintang Central Officer Training School (国民党中央军校) at
ChengduChengdu , located in southwest People's Republic of China, is the capital of Sichuan province and a sub-provincial city. Chengdu is also one of the most important economic centers, transportation and communication hubs in Southwestern China...
,
Sichuan' is a province in Southwestern China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, 四川 , is an abbreviation of 四川路 , or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from 川峡四路 , or "Four circuits of rivers and gorges", named after the division of the...
, graduating in 1940. He was appointed
Second LieutenantSecond Lieutenant is the lowest commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.In British English the rank is pronounced second /lɛf'tɛnənt/ , while in American English it is pronounced second /lu'tɛnənt/ ....
Platoon Leader in 1941; he was a staff
First LieutenantFirst Lieutenant is a military rank.The rank of Lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations , but the majority of cases it is common for it to be sub-divided into a senior and junior rank...
stationed in
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
in 1942, and a Staff
MajorIn many European languages, the term Major is a military rank, implying seniority at one of usually various levels of rank. For example:*"General-Major" or "Major-General", denoting a senior ranking general officer....
in the New First Army in the
Burma theaterChina Burma India Theater was the name used by the United States Army for its forces operating in conjunction with Allied air and land forces in China, Burma, and India during World War II...
from 1943-1945. After the war he attended the American Army Staff College (graduating in 1947), and was part of a military delegation to
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
from 1949-1950. However, with the loss of mainland China in 1949, the Nationalist army in Taiwan was downsized (and purged of political opponents) and as a result, Huang was discharged from the Nationalist Army in 1950. His military career was over.
Academic career
Huang went to the United States to study Chinese History. At the University of Michigan, he received his Bachelors Degree in 1954, his Masters Degree in 1957 and his Doctorate in 1964. He was appointed Visiting Associate Professor at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
in 1967, and a
ProfessorThe meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual...
at the
State University of New YorkThe State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the world, with a total enrollment of 438,361 students, plus 1.1 million...
, New Paltz Branch in 1968-1980. He was a research fellow at the Harvard Center for East Asian Research in 1970, where he worked with the leading American Sinologist
John K. FairbankJohn King Fairbank , was a prominent American academic and historian of China.-Education and early career:Fairbank was born in Huron, South Dakota on 24 May, 1907...
, with whom he had close personal ties. Nevertheless, Huang and Fairbank disagreed in research methodology. Fairbank liked concentrated analysis in short time frames and limited areas, while Huang liked synthesis covering broad time periods (though Huang's classic work
1587 had a very tight focus).
In 1972 Huang went to Cambridge University and assisted
Joseph NeedhamNoel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British academic and sinologist known for his research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941; and he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1971...
in Needham's monumental work on the history of Chinese science and technology, (he found Needham sympathetic to his own research approach). Huang's chosen field of study became financial administration in
MingMing is a common personal name among Chinese people, Vietnamese people, and Korean people. In pinyin, it is written Míng, in romanized Vietnamese, it is written as Minh, and in Korean it is pronounced Myeong...
China, and he published one of his major works,
Taxation and Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China, in 1974 (translated into Chinese only in 2001).
He returned to Cambridge in the mid 1970s, and contributed two chapters to the Ming Dynasty Volumes of the Cambridge History of China. Around the late 1970s, he retired from teaching and focused on writing instead, even occasionally contributing to a column in
Yazhou ZhoukanYazhou Zhoukan , literally as "Asia Weekly", is the only Chinese language international affairs newsweekly which has been published for over 20 years...
. Nonetheless, he often travelled to Taiwan even after retirement to give lectures and participate in various academic exchanges.
His other works include
The War in Northern Burma (1946),
1587, a Year of No Significance (1981) (also published in Chinese as
The Fifteenth Year of Wan Li/《萬曆十五年》, 1985),
Broadening the Chinese Field of Vision (in Chinese, 1988),
Chinese Macrohistory (1988) (in Chinese 1993),
Conversations about Chinese History on the Banks of the Hudson River (in Chinese 1989),
Discussions of Here and There and Old and New (in Chinese 1991),
Capitalism and the Twenty First Century (in Chinese 1991),
From a Macrohistory Perspective in Reading Jiang Jieshi's Diary (in Chinese 1993),
Contemporary Chinese Outlets (in Chinese 1994),
The Affair of Wan Chong (in Chinese 1998),
Yellow River Qing Mountain: Record of Huang Renzi's Recollections (in Chinese 2001), and
Bianjing Unfinished Dreams.
Personal Life
He married Gayle Bates in 1966 and the two had a son, Jefferson. He died of an heart attack in 2000.
Books
- 1587, A Year of No Significance. First published in English (Yale University Press, 1981), with Chinese (Wanli Shiwunian) and other language translations.
- China: A Macro History
- Fiscal Administration during the Ming Dynasty
- Conversation on Chinese History by the Hudson River (in Chinese)
- Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History: Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons
- Capitalism and the 21st Century(in Chinese)
- The Grand Canal during the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 (Doctoral dissertation)