Jonathan Spence

Jonathan Dermot Spence (11 August 1936 – 25 December 2021) was a British-American sinologist and historian who specialised in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. He was best known for his book The Search for Modern China (1990), a survey of the last several hundred years of Chinese history. He published over a dozen books on China. Spence's major interest was modern China, especially the Qing dynasty, and relations between China and the West. Spence frequently used biographies to examine cultural and political history.